Last April, after three days of steady spring rain, I stepped into our new orchard and found something magical had happened overnight. Dozens of mushrooms had erupted from the soil around our young apple trees, their caps gleaming in the morning light. I knelt to examine them, these visible fruits of an invisible network that had been quietly working beneath the surface for months or perhaps years.

In that moment, I felt a strange kinship with these fungi—organisms that dwelled at the boundaries of my understanding. For much of my life, I had been someone who prized clear categories and firm boundaries. But there in the orchard, examining these mysterious fruiting bodies, I recognized a profound truth about myself that had been unfolding through years of gardening and spiritual formation: I had spent much of my life running from connection rather than embracing it.

Necessary Dependence: The Seedling Stage

All trees begin as seeds, utterly dependent on the right conditions to germinate and grow. They require a delicate balance of water and warmth, protection from threats, and nutrient-rich soil. This initial dependence isn't weakness—it's the necessary first stage of development.

Human development follows a similar pattern. Our earliest years are marked by total dependence on caregivers. I was fortunate to have parents who provided reliable nurturing, even if emotional connection sometimes remained elusive in our stoic Southern household. Like a seedling drawing everything it needs from the soil that surrounds it, a child absorbs not just physical care but models for understanding the world.

When we purchased our home years ago, the realtor disclosed something after we'd placed our offer: the previous owner—a builder who had constructed this house for himself—had installed a massive gun vault and rifle range in the subterranean basement. The vault was bank-sized, reinforced concrete walls protecting an arsenal I had no interest in housing, despite my Navy training with 45-caliber pistols and M-16 rifles.

In what my family now recognizes as a quintessentially "me" decision—they joke that like the father in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" who saw Greek origins in everything, I see theological metaphors everywhere—I transformed that weapon vault into an underground greenhouse. The space designed for instruments of destruction now nurtures life. Seeds germinate where ammunition once sat. The windowless concrete vault that once stored tools of death now captures life breaking through crusty soil, always reaching toward the artificial light I provide—much as we humans reach toward divine light.

The seedlings in this converted sanctuary each spring remind me of the necessary phase of dependence—their vulnerable stems and unfurling leaves completely reliant on my attentive care. There's something sacred about this mutual relationship: their dependence on me, my commitment to them. A tiny tomato needs no justification for requiring water and light; it simply receives what it needs to grow.

The Anti-Dependence Detour: The Isolated Tree

But somewhere along my journey from seedling to sapling, I took a defensive detour. Rather than moving naturally from dependence to healthy independence, I developed what my counselor would later help me identify as fierce anti-dependence—a reactive stance against vulnerability and connection.

This anti-dependence found philosophical reinforcement during my college years, when I discovered Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Their celebration of individualism and market efficiency seemed to validate my deep discomfort with needing others. I embraced neoclassical economics with religious fervor, finding in its axioms of rational self-interest a framework that transformed my emotional defenses into intellectual virtues.

My Naval Academy and nuclear submarine officer training further cemented this worldview. Leadership meant standing apart, making decisions without emotional entanglement. Efficiency meant eliminating unnecessary connections. Productivity meant measuring output against input in neatly quantifiable metrics. I cultivated a life that avoided "entanglements" that might slow me down or make me vulnerable—relationships that required reciprocity, commitments that couldn't be optimized for productivity.

Even my early gardening reflected this mindset. I approached my first garden beds like an engineering project, with spreadsheets tracking inputs and outputs. Each plant was an individual production unit, success measured by yield per square foot. I sought the most efficient spacing, the optimal fertilizer ratios, and the maximum productivity, unaware of the complex community beneath the soil that made growth possible.

When connection is perceived as entanglement, we miss the very networks that could nourish us.

Toward Healthy Independence: Finding Your Roots

As my naval career ended and my business career progressed, I gradually developed authentic independence—the capacity to stand on my own, make decisions, and face consequences. Yet even this independence retained an edge of defensiveness. I confused solitary strength with maturity, failing to recognize that true strength emerges through connection rather than isolation.

My garden became the unexpected teacher of this lesson. One summer, I decided to grow corn using the "Three Sisters" companion planting method I'd read about—corn, beans, and squash grown together as they had been by indigenous farmers for centuries. I planned the project with skepticism, my engineering mind doubting the efficiency of this seemingly chaotic approach.

To my surprise, the interplanted bed outperformed my neatly ordered single-crop rows. The beans fixed nitrogen for the corn, the corn supported the climbing beans, and the squash suppressed weeds with broad leaves. What looked like entanglement was actually mutual support. What seemed like inefficient chaos was actually resilient order.

Still, I regarded this as merely an interesting gardening technique, not yet recognizing it as a metaphor for what my life was missing.

Discovering Interindependence: The Mycelial Revelation

A few years ago, while researching companion planting and imagining the possibility of an orchard, I stumbled upon the concept of mycorrhizal networks—the vast underground systems of fungal threads that connect plants in seemingly magical ways. I learned how trees share nutrients through these networks, how "mother trees" support seedlings, how forests communicate warnings about pests and disease through what scientists poetically call the "wood wide web."

This knowledge coincided with a period of personal reckoning. My mother died, I remarried, and my children and I struggled to reinvent ourselves as a blended family. Through counseling, I began to recognize the limitations of my anti-dependent stance - though I didn’t recognize it as such for years. The productivity metrics I'd used to justify isolation were revealing their inadequacy. My carefully constructed defenses against vulnerability had succeeded primarily in keeping me lonely.

That recent revelation struck me with unexpected force: what if my fierce anti-dependence wasn't strength but fear? What if connection wasn't entanglement but the path to genuine resilience?

I remember standing in our newly planted orchard one day, contemplating the invisible network beneath my feet. The trees appeared to be separate entities, each standing alone. But below ground, they were engaged in constant communication and resource sharing through mycorrhizal networks. The most resilient trees weren't the most isolated, but the most connected.

When Sudhir and I planted the new orchard, I made a deliberate choice that reflected my evolving understanding. Instead of giving each tree its isolated space, we planted them in shared holes, four trees to a pit. We lined the holes with charred wood from the cottonwood trees we’d cut down—trees whose pollen had caused allergies for Sunidhi. Those trees, which had grown in isolation, were now becoming nourishment for a community.

As I tamped the soil around those young trees, I felt something shift within me. The anti-dependence that had once seemed like strength now looked like immaturity—a developmental stage I had stretched far beyond its usefulness.

The mycorrhizal revelation wasn't just about gardening. It was about recognizing that mature strength emerges not from isolation but from connection.

Practicing Interindependence: Cultivating the Network

The path from anti-dependence to interindependence isn't instantaneous. Like my young orchard, it requires intentional cultivation and time. Over the past few months, I've been practicing interindependence in both my garden and my relationships, often feeling like a novice learning basics that others mastered long ago.

In the garden, this means embracing companion planting not just as a technique but as a philosophy. It means recognizing that diversity creates resilience, that relationships between plants matter as much as the plants themselves. It means seeing my role not as controller but as participant in a complex living system.

In my relationships, it means the uncomfortable practice of allowing myself to receive as well as give. It means recognizing that needing others isn't weakness but maturity. It means trusting that vulnerability creates strength rather than diminishing it.

Recently, I experienced a health challenge that forced me to depend on others in ways my anti-dependent self would have found intolerable. Instead of seeing this as failure, I tried to approach it as participation in a natural pattern—like a tree drawing resources from the mycorrhizal network during a difficult season. To my surprise, receiving help didn't diminish me; it deepened connections that made me stronger.

This journey toward interindependence aligns with what I've come to understand as mature Christian faith. The Trinity itself models perfect interindependence—distinct persons in perfect communion, neither losing their identity nor existing in isolation. Jesus consistently demonstrated this interindependence in his ministry, receiving hospitality as readily as he offered healing, asking for water from the woman at the well even as he offered living water to her.

As I tend my garden now, I'm aware of cultivating more than plants. I'm cultivating a different way of being in the world—one that embraces connection rather than fearing it, that sees interindependence as strength rather than weakness, that recognizes the mycelial wisdom that has been growing beneath the surface all along.

When the mushrooms appear after rain, I no longer see them as isolated oddities but as the visible fruiting bodies of an ancient pattern of connection—a pattern I'm slowly learning to trust and embody.

From My Garden

This is part of my "Rooted & Reaching" series exploring spiritual formation through the metaphors of gardening, cooking, and endurance training. This essay belongs to the Phase 2: Transformation Practices collection, where I explore the journey from isolation to communion that lies at the heart of spiritual growth.

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• Sermon: Mark 4:1-20 (Parable of the Sower) →

• Lexicon: Relational Receptivity →

This week, we've explored how faith involves trust rather than certainty, and how duty finds meaning through covenant rather than contract. As we reflect on the Triduum and Easter, let's consider practices that help us embody covenant relationships daily.

Understanding Covenant Practice

Covenant relationships differ fundamentally from contractual ones. While contracts focus on transactions and individual rights, covenants center on mutual commitment and shared flourishing. In the Passion narrative, we see Jesus demonstrating the ultimate covenant commitment - not calculating what was owed, but giving himself fully out of love.

Daily Practices

1. Reframing Relationships

Practice: Take 10 minutes to reflect on one important relationship (family, friend, community). Ask yourself:

• Am I approaching this relationship as a transaction or a covenant?

• What would change if I focused less on what I'm getting and more on mutual flourishing?

• How might I commit more fully to this relationship, beyond what is "required"?

Application: Choose one specific action that moves this relationship from contract toward covenant.

2. Practicing Presence Beyond Utility

Practice: Identify someone in your life who can't "do" anything for you in a practical sense (perhaps an elderly neighbor, a child in your community, or someone outside your usual social circle).

Action Steps:

• Spend time with this person with no agenda other than being present

• Listen to their story without trying to "fix" anything

• Notice what you learn when the relationship exists outside a transactional framework

3. Community Covenant Renewal

Practice: With your family, small group, or faith community:

• Read Joshua 24:14-18 (Joshua's covenant renewal) or John 13:1-17 (Jesus washing disciples' feet)

• Discuss what covenant commitment looks like in your community context

• Identify one specific way your group can practice covenant relationships with:

  • Each other

  • Your broader community

  • Those who are marginalized or vulnerable

4. Easter Covenant Reflection

Practice: During this Easter weekend, set aside 20 minutes for this guided reflection:

• Read John 13:1 - "Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."

• Consider how Jesus' commitment transcended what was "fair" or "required."

• Journal about areas where you feel God calling you to a more profound covenant commitment

• Identify one concrete step toward embodying this covenant calling in the week ahead

Weekly Challenge

This week, practice moving from contract to covenant by:

1. Doing something for someone with no expectation of return

2. Fulfilling a commitment joyfully rather than out of obligation

3. Looking for opportunities to express gratitude for others' covenant faithfulness

4. Noticing instances where you slip into contractual thinking, and gently redirecting yourself

Remember, covenant relationships reflect God's way of being with us, not measuring and calculating what we deserve, but giving freely out of love and commitment to our flourishing.

This is part of our "Practicing Participatory Freedom" series, offering practical ways to embody the theological concepts we explore each week. These practices help us live into the covenant relationship at the heart of Easter, where God's commitment to us transcends all calculation of merit or desert.

An Easter sermon for Sunday, April 20, 2025

Growing up in Louisiana, I had a memorable experience at my grandparents' camp on False River. Now, if you've never seen these Louisiana waters, picture something black-green and completely opaque. Though I'd been swimming before at the YMCA with my family, this was different. I'd heard stories about alligator gars, had seen eels and snakes, and the sounds of bullfrogs and crickets at night from my bed in their unfamiliar house had already put me on edge.

When my grandfather tossed me into that mysterious water, I thrashed around in panic. I couldn't see what was below me and was absolutely convinced I was about to become breakfast for whatever lurked beneath.

"Stop fighting the water!" my father called out. "Be still and calm. Be a part of it!"

It was the most counterintuitive thing I'd ever heard. Stop fighting? Be one with the very thing I feared would swallow me? But in my desperation, I tried it. I stopped the frantic splashing, laid back, and...floated. I discovered I could rest in a kind of participatory freedom, existing as part of the created order designed to be with—not against—the world surrounding me. The very thing I feared was actually supporting me.

I've been thinking about that moment a lot this Holy Week. Because the Easter story is, at its heart, about the most significant reversal in human history—a reversal as counterintuitive as discovering that what seems to be drowning you is actually holding you up.

For three days, it seemed like death had won. The disciples were hiding behind locked doors, the women were preparing spices for a body, and the great teacher they'd followed was sealed in a tomb. Everything pointed to defeat.

And then, the great reversal. The stone rolled away. The tomb empty. Death itself undone.

But this wasn't just any reversal. It wasn't just a surprise ending to a sad story. Easter reveals the true pattern of God's presence in our world—what looks like absence is actually presence; what looks like defeat is actually victory; what looks like death is actually the birth of new life.

This is why we've been reflecting on incarnational theology and participatory freedom this week. Easter shows us that God's very nature is to be with us. The incarnation isn't a rescue mission or a divine intervention to fix something broken—it's the revelation of who God has always been and will always be. As theologian Sam Wells reminds us, God's purpose and means are the same: being with us. Or as Karl Barth beautifully expressed it, we witness in Christ the revelation of God's divine self-establishment—God's decision "never-to-be-except-to-be-with-us."

When Jesus rises from the dead, he doesn't discard his humanity like it was a disguise he no longer needs. He keeps his wounds. "Put your finger here," he tells Thomas. These wounds that should represent failure and defeat have become the very proof of love's victory—the evidence of God's determination never to abandon us, even in our suffering.

In our theological language, we might say that Easter reveals the true nature of freedom as interindependence. We aren't freed from one another, but freed for one another. We aren't autonomous individuals achieving salvation alone, but participants in a divine life that connects us all.

Let me try to make this concrete. Imagine three different ways of thinking about freedom:

First, there's what we might call "imperial freedom"—the freedom of domination. This is the freedom to do whatever you want regardless of consequences for others. It's the freedom of Caesar, of empire, of power over others. This kind of freedom always comes at someone else's expense.

Then there's what we might call "liberal freedom"—the freedom from constraint. This is the freedom to be left alone, to not be interfered with. It's valuable but ultimately empty if that's all freedom means. A person alone on a desert island has perfect freedom from constraint, but what good is it?

Easter reveals a third kind of freedom—what we've been calling "participatory freedom" or "interindependence." This is the freedom to love, to be with, to participate in one another's lives. It's not freedom from others or freedom over others, but freedom with others.

When Jesus rises from the dead, he immediately seeks out his friends. "Mary," he says in the garden. "Peace be with you," he says behind locked doors. He eats with them, walks with them, and restores relationships with them. His resurrection freedom is expressed as presence, as being with.

This is what we mean by participatory freedom as interindependence. We depend on each other, but not in a way that diminishes us. Rather, we become more ourselves by being present to one another. As we've been discussing in our theological reflections, we receive the gift by being the gift, and we are the gift by receiving it. This mutual giving and receiving reflects the very life of the Trinity—the eternal dance of divine relationship that is God's nature.

The women who went to the tomb that first Easter morning weren't going there seeking resurrection. They were going to perform one last act of loving presence—to anoint a body. But in that faithful act of being with, even in death, they became the first witnesses to new life.

This is the pattern of God's presence with us. When imperial power said, "We rule through domination," God answered by being born in a feeding trough. When religious authorities said, "We determine who belongs," Jesus ate with sinners and outcasts. When the powers of death said, "We have the final word," God spoke a new word of life from within the grave itself.

This Easter, we're invited to live in this great reversal—to stop fighting the water, so to speak, and discover that what we thought would drown us is actually holding us up. We are invited to trust that even in our darkest moments, God is present—not observing from a distance but being with us, transforming our reality from within.

Easter isn't simply an event that happened 2,000 years ago. It's God's "yes" that resounds across time—God's affirmation of our true identity as creatures made to be with God and with one another. Sin and death aren't eradicated from the world, but God's will to be with us conquers our enmeshment in them, recreating us so that all things are made new.

I experienced this kind of reversal during a difficult period in my own life. On Election Day 2024, within moments of learning the presidential results, I received the devastating news of my own: a diagnosis of amyloidosis, a rare disease with a name as difficult to pronounce as it was to understand its mechanisms.

My wife and I lived in fear, beginning to anticipate that our life together would be shortened. I, always one whose robust health was celebrated by my physician, suddenly contemplated a crushing death within the short term. One night, I remember my wife Sajeena weeping. Still, she never failed to be with me through it all—accompanying me to the endless wave of appointments in which my body was probed and tested in an effort to assess the disease's progress and prognosis.

After a few months of trauma, we learned I have a rare form of a rare disease that renders it much more manageable, with a long life possible with certain changes in my nutrition and attention to important longevity practices. But in that period of vulnerability, I discovered something I couldn't have learned any other way. The community that formed around me wasn't diminishing my freedom—it was expanding it. By accepting help, by acknowledging my dependence on others, I didn't become less myself. I became more fully human, more connected, more alive to the gift of each day.

This is participatory freedom. This is interindependence. This is the pattern of the resurrection life. Like justification, it's renewed each morning—indeed, in each moment—as we accept God's invitation to be who we were created to be.

The Easter story invites us to live in the great reversal, to find strength in vulnerability, to discover life in letting go, and to experience freedom not as the absence of connections but as the fullness of loving presence.

When Jesus appears to his disciples after the resurrection, he breathes on them and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit." This breath, this Spirit, is the very life of God flowing through the human community. It's not something we possess individually but something we participate in together.

As we celebrate Easter in this community today, we're practicing participatory freedom. We're showing up for each other, breaking bread together, and being with one another in joy and sorrow. We're living in the great reversal, where our interconnectedness isn't a limitation on our freedom but the very expression of it.

This is what it means to live in God's Easter hope. Not that all our problems will magically disappear. Not that suffering won't touch us. But that even in our darkest moments, God is with us. And that through God's presence, what seems like drowning can become floating, what seems like an ending can become a beginning, and what seems like death can become life.

Easter invites us to recognize that God's will to be with us isn't about fixing what's broken in the world but about revealing and sustaining who God has always been—the one who refuses to abandon us despite our enmeshment in structures that embody our decision not to be with God, with each other, and not to steward the superabundance with which God sustains us.

Christ is risen—indeed. In his rising, we discover our own resurrection—not as isolated individuals but as members of one body, breathing the same Spirit, participating in the same divine life that flows through us all.

So today, I invite you to float in the waters of baptism. To trust that what seems most threatening—our vulnerability, our interdependence, our need for one another—is actually what holds us up. To live in the freedom that comes not from dominating others or separating from them but from being with them in love.

Accepting God's "yes" - choosing to be who God called us to be—this is Easter's ongoing invitation. This is the greatreversal. This is resurrection. This is joy.

Amen.

This Easter reflection is part of our ongoing theological exploration of participatory freedom. If you've found it meaningful, please share it with others who might benefit from this perspective on resurrection hope.

"You're going to fail," my trainer and sometimes muse, Josh, said matter-of-factly, adjusting the weight on the barbell. "And that's the point."

I stared at him incredulously. In my early sixties, having spent decades as a naval officer, corporate executive, and priest, I'd built my entire identity around not failing. Failure was the enemy. Failure was weakness. And yet here was my trainer – half my age with twice my wisdom – telling me that failure wasn't just acceptable but necessary.

"Training to failure is how muscles grow," he continued, seemingly unaware of the existential crisis he'd ignited. "You need to reach the point where you can't lift the weight one more time. That's where the transformation happens."

What began as a simple fitness regimen to keep pace with my stud wife in my later years became an unexpected classroom for spiritual formation, teaching me more about grace, growth, and genuine strength than decades of achievement ever did.

The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency

I’ve always been an athlete, and strength-training was always part of my life, but it was instrumental to my life as a runner. My first months of strength training as a longevity practice were an exercise in humility. The weights weren't particularly heavy – embarrassingly light, in fact, compared to those Sajeena could handle – but they were honest in a way my previous achievements hadn't been. There was no faking it, no working around limitations, no delegating the difficult parts. It was just me and gravity in a relationship of complete transparency.

This was a radical departure from my professional life, where I'd cultivated what I now recognize as practical atheism—a way of living that functionally denied my limitations and dependency, even while maintaining religious beliefs. I excelled by creating the illusion of self-sufficiency, never revealing weakness, and always being the person who could handle more work, more responsibility, and more stress.

Looking back, I see how profoundly theological this stance actually was, though I wouldn't have recognized it at the time.

My workaholism wasn't merely a bad habit; it was a theological statement. It declared that success came through relentless self-effort and that weakness was failure rather than the very place where grace operates.

Progressive Resistance

"Progressive overload," Josh explained during another session, "is the foundation of strength. You gradually increase the weight, forcing your muscles to adapt to greater demands."

As a metaphor for spiritual formation, this principle illuminated my understanding of how God works in our lives. Grace isn't opposed to effort, but it operates very differently from our achievement-oriented culture. Grace meets us in our weakness and gradually strengthens us to bear more of life's weight.

The paradox was becoming clear: true strength emerges not from denying weakness but from honestly acknowledging it.

In my professional life, I'd treated challenge as something to conquer through sheer determination. In recovery from workaholism, I've discovered that challenges are not obstacles to overcome but weights intentionally added to develop spiritual strength. The resistance itself is the pathway to growth.

I remember the afternoon I failed on the fifth repetition of a bench press. The weight wasn't excessive, but my chest wouldn't complete another rep. As Josh helped me set the bar back on the rack, I felt a familiar shame rising – the sense that I should have been stronger. Then came the surprising realization: this failure was exactly what was needed for growth to occur.

Proper Form Over Maximum Weight

"Drop the weight and fix your form," Josh instructed, watching me struggle with a barbell deadlift. "The weight means nothing if your form is compromised."

This simple correction revealed a profound truth about spiritual life. I had spent years focused on the "weight"—the visible accomplishments, measurable output, impressive feats—while neglecting the "form"—the character, integrity, and motives behind my actions.

The metrics I'd been measuring were all wrong, valuing appearance over substance, outcomes over process, achievement over formation.

Proper form ensures that the right muscles bear the load and prevents injury in strength training. In spiritual life, proper form ensures that our actions flow from love rather than fear, from integrity rather than image management, and from genuine commitment rather than performance.

This understanding illuminated my recovery journey. The goal wasn't to stop working hard but to transform why and how I worked. It wasn't to accomplish less but to act from a place of security rather than insecurity, from a place of gift rather than obligation.

Adaptation and Recovery

Perhaps the most counterintuitive lesson from strength training has been the importance of rest. Contrary to the "no pain, no gain" mentality I'd embraced for decades, Josh emphasized that growth doesn't happen during the workout but during the recovery period afterward.

"You're not getting stronger when you're lifting," he explained. "You're actually creating microscopic damage to your muscle fibers. It's during rest that your body repairs those fibers, making them stronger than before."

This insight echoed Augustine's understanding that our souls, like our bodies, find their true rest not in idleness but in proper relationship with their Creator.

This principle has transformed my understanding of spiritual formation. Growth doesn't come through constant or frenetic striving but through the rhythm of engagement and rest, work and sabbath, effort and surrender. We need both the weight-bearing moments and the recovery periods where grace does its restorative work.

This insight has been revolutionary for someone who viewed rest as weakness and downtime as wasted time. I've had to learn that sabbath isn't an interruption of productivity but an essential component of genuine fruitfulness. As Tolstoy observed, the yoke that Christ offers is not the absence of burden but the right kind of burden, carried in the right way, with proper intervals of rest.

Grace as Spotter

In weight training, a spotter stands ready to assist when the weight becomes too heavy. The spotter doesn't lift the weight for you but provides just enough assistance to help you complete the movement when your strength fails.

During a particularly challenging bench press session, Josh's hands hovered just beneath the bar. "I'm not touching it," he said as I struggled with the final repetition, "but I'm right here." His presence gave me the confidence to push through what I believed was impossible.

In that moment, I glimpsed a more authentic understanding of grace than all my theological education had provided.

This image has helped me understand grace not as God doing everything for us, nor as God merely watching us struggle, but as God being present with us in our efforts, ready to provide what we lack when our strength fails.

The theological framework of Emmanuel presence – God's refusal to abandon us – takes on new meaning through this lens. Grace is the divine spotter, not eliminating the weight we bear but ensuring we're never crushed beneath it.

Building Spiritual Capacity

One day, I noticed something unexpected: weights that had once seemed impossibly heavy now felt manageable. This wasn't just about stronger muscles but about increased capacity – the ability to bear more without being overwhelmed.

This realization illuminated what spiritual formation actually produces: not perfect performance but expanded capacity for love, truth, suffering, and joy. Through progressive challenges and proper recovery, we develop the strength to fully engage with life's complexities.

What if the purpose of faith isn't to make us more successful but more capable of meaningful engagement with both beauty and brokenness?

The purpose of weight-bearing faith isn't to make life easier but to develop the spiritual muscles needed to carry what we're called to carry—to bear one another's burdens, endure hardship, and hold space for others' pain without being crushed by it.

Questions for Reflection

As I continue this journey of weight-bearing faith, I return to these questions:

Where am I emphasizing maximum weight (visible accomplishments) over proper form (character and integrity)?

What failure points in my life might be necessary for growth?

How might viewing grace as a spotter rather than a substitute change my approach to challenges?

Where must I trust the rhythm of challenge and recovery rather than constant striving?

I'm learning that true strength isn't about never failing but about how we grow through failure, not about independence but about honest dependence, not about constant performance but about integrity in both work and rest.

From My Garden

This is part of my "Rooted & Reaching" series exploring spiritual formation through the metaphors of gardening, health transformation, and recovery from workaholism. This essay continues my reflection on reconsidering what truly matters at age 65, examining how strength development offers insights into authentic spiritual growth.

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• Sermon: Mark 8:34-38 (Taking Up Your Cross) →

The English muffin sat on my countertop, and its perfectly round shape and uniform holes testified to the marvels of food engineering. Beside it lay the sourdough loaf I’d baked the previous day—lopsided, inconsistently holed, and unmistakably handmade. Both would nourish me, but only one bore the marks of my labor, the wild yeast captured from my garden and the time invested in its creation.

In truth, these years separated these events, but in the wee hours of the morning, as my wife slept peacefully next to me, I was my hyper-vigilant self. My mind’s eye merged them into one image to afflict me.

As I contemplated these two forms of bread, I realized I was looking at a metaphor for my life’s central struggle: the tension between the processed and the whole, between manufactured certainty and messy authenticity.

The Manufactured Self

For decades, I perfected a processed version of myself—meticulously engineered and quality-controlled. This processed identity had a consistent shelf life. It never surprised others with inconvenient feelings or needs. It performed reliably in professional settings, exceeding specifications for productivity and efficiency.

This manufactured self came with nutritional information that was easy to read and understand: Naval Academy graduate, submarine officer, successful executive, priest, and theologian. I carefully curated the ingredients list to include only the impressive achievements while omitting the chemical preservatives of fear, the artificial colors of conformity, and the excess sodium of resentment building beneath the surface.

My Duke classmates during pastoral clinical education noted the discrepancy during our debriefs, which are known as “verbatims,” but I wasn’t ready to hear their insights.

My workaholism wasn’t just a habit—it was the primary processing technique that transformed the complicated mess of my authentic self into a product others would reliably approve of. Just as processed food promises consistency and convenience at the cost of nutritional vitality, my processed self offered predictability and achievement at the expense of genuine presence.

The Garden’s Invitation

The first crack in this carefully constructed identity came unexpectedly through the soil.

Hands deep in the garden bed, I encountered a network of mycorrhizal fungi connecting my tomato plants—invisible threads of relationship that made individual flourishing possible. I suddenly recognized a discomforting parallel to my own life: I had severed many of these invisible connections in service to personal productivity.

My garden refused to conform to my executive timetables—seeds germinated according to their wisdom, not my project plans. Pollinators arrived unscheduled. Diseases appeared despite my prevention strategies. I could facilitate growth, but I couldn’t control it.

This realization was simultaneously frustrating and liberating. The garden taught me life operates through relationships and interindependence, not isolated self-sufficiency. The whole ecosystem functioned not through control but through connection.

Reclaiming Wholeness

My journey toward reclaiming authenticity began with small steps—like learning to make bread from scratch. There was something profoundly countercultural about accepting the unpredictable nature of wild yeast, the variations in each loaf, and the occasional failures.

As a young economics major and in my inculturation as an Anglo-Protestant male in the South, I’d embraced the teaching that adulthood was about constructing a life at the end of which I would have achieved such productivity that God and the world would, at last, declare me worthy. My workaholism wasn’t just a habit—it was a theological position, a misguided liturgy of worthiness through productivity.

But in the garden, kitchen, and recovery, I’m learning a different truth: worthiness is about being, not doing. It’s an action, yes, but an action that is relational—being in action that always drives toward the reunion of the separated, which is love. It’s about reconnecting with God, with others, with creation, and with myself—giving up my well-curated personas.

This revelation has transformed my understanding of work and my entire approach to life. In theological terms, I was learning what relational receptivity truly meant—an openness to encountering others and being encountered without immediately trying to control the interaction.

The shift from processed to whole hasn’t been a straight line. I still reach for the certainty of my old patterns, particularly when stressed or afraid. But I’ve come to see that authenticity—like good bread—requires patience, presence, and a willingness to work with rather than against the natural processes of human relationships. It means trusting that my worth isn’t produced at the end of life through accumulated achievements but is discovered in the midst of life through meaningful connection.

Discerning the Artificial

One of the most valuable skills I’ve developed is recognizing artificial ingredients in food and relationships. Just as I’ve learned to scan ingredient lists for hidden sugars and preservatives, I’ve become more attentive to how I substitute performance for presence, productivity for connection, and certainty for faith.

This discernment extends to my theological understanding as well. I’ve recognized how tribal epistemology functions like food processing—creating artificial certainty by removing complexity and nuance. Just as processed food promises satisfaction but creates deeper hunger, processed theology offers certainty while creating spiritual malnutrition.

The alternative isn’t chaos—it’s the wholeness that honors complexity. Just as whole foods contain the full spectrum of nutrients in their natural relationships, whole theology maintains the tension of mystery and knowledge, individual and community, freedom and responsibility.

The Unprocessed Table

The most profound moments of my recovery have happened around a table with others. Breaking real bread—with family and friends has become a practice of authentic presence, a small but significant act of resistance against the culture of efficiency and performance that dominated my life for so long.

This table fellowship embodies what I’m slowly learning: that my worth isn’t derived from what I produce but from participation in the relationships that constitute abundant life. It’s about being in action that reunites me with God and all of creation, with the gifts that sustain us in holy fellowship.

When I place a homemade, homegrown meal at the center of our table, I’m not just serving food. I’m making astatement about what I value: the nourishment that comes through patient cultivation, the satisfaction of work done with my hands, and the recognition that proper sustenance happens in a relationship, not isolation.

Questions for the Journey

As I continue this journey from processed to whole, I find myself returning to these questions:

Where in my life am I still substituting productivity for participation in the reunion of the separated?

What relationships am I processing for convenience rather than cultivated for genuine connection?

How might my faith become less about achieving worthiness and more about receiving and extending the gift of holy fellowship?

I don’t have complete answers, but I’ve found that asking these questions is a step toward wholeness—an acknowledgment that the journey toward authenticity is not about achieving a perfect end product but embracing the messy, interconnected process of becoming more fully human.

The garden, the kitchen, and my recovery journey all teach me the same essential truth: that worthiness isn’t something I construct through achievement but something I discover through relationships, through being in action that reunites the separated.

From My Garden

This is part of my “Rooted & Reaching” series, which explores spiritual formation through the metaphors of gardening, health transformation, and recovery from workaholism.

This essay continues my reflection on reconsidering what truly matters at age 65, examining how we might cultivate lives of greater authenticity and presence.

Related Content

• The Metrics That Matter →

• BLLSHT: Understanding MAGA Christianism's Truthfulness Problem →

• Lexicon: Relational Receptivity →

What is Truth?

Have you ever played the game "Telephone," in which a message is passed around a circle, becoming more distorted with each person? By the end, the final message often has nothing to do with how it started. That's kind of what's happening in our world with truth.

Truth isn't just about facts, though facts matter. Truth is about seeing reality as it is – not just the parts we like or the version that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Many people think the truth is whatever their group says it is. If you're on Team Red, you believe one set of facts. If you're on Team Blue, you believe another. But truth can't work that way. Reality doesn't change based on which team you're on.

Jesus said something important about truth: "The truth will set you free." Not "your truth" or "my truth," but "the truth." He wasn't talking about having the right opinions—he was talking about living in the right relationship with reality.

The problem is that we all have blind spots. We're all tempted to believe things that make us feel good or that our friends believe. That's why we need practices that help us see beyond our blind spots.

Practices for Truthfulness

1. Check Multiple Sources

When you hear something that confirms what you already believe, that's precisely when you should double-check it. Look for information from people who disagree with you. Ask yourself: "What if I'm wrong about this?" This isn't about doubting everything but being honest enough to test your beliefs.

2. Slow Down Your Reactions

When something immediately angers or excites you, take a breath before sharing it. Truth isn't usually discovered in a hurry. Try waiting 24 hours before responding to something that triggers a strong reaction.

3. Look for the Gray Areas

When someone presents something as totally black and white, that's usually a sign they're oversimplifying. Most important issues have complexity. Practice saying, "This is complicated," instead of jumping to simple conclusions.

4. Practice Confession

This might sound old-fashioned, but regularly admitting you're wrong builds the muscle of truthfulness. Start small – admit when you made a mistake or jumped to a conclusion. This is surprisingly hard but incredibly freeing.

5. Find Truthful Communities

Hang out with people who care more about truth than about winning arguments. Look for friends who will kindly tell you when you're wrong and who can accept correction themselves.

Why This Matters

When Jesus stood before Pilate, who had the power to execute him, Pilate asked, "What is truth?" It was a dismissive question from someone who thought truth was whatever served his power.

Jesus showed us something different. Truth isn't about power—it's about reality, and reality is ultimately shaped by love. When we practice truthfulness, we prepare ourselves to recognize love when we see it, even when it comes in surprising forms.

Practicing truthfulness is a radical act in a world full of convenient lies. It might not always be comfortable, but it leads to genuine freedom – not just having the correct opinions but becoming the kind of person who can recognize reality when you see it.

Questions for Reflection

1. What makes it hard for you to admit when you're wrong?

2. Can you think of a time when you believed something that later turned out to be false? How did you discover the truth?

3. Do your social media feeds expose you to different perspectives or repeat what you already believe?

4. What's one small practice of truthfulness you could start this week?

This week, we've explored truth as the foundation of authentic relationships with God and each other. But truthfulness isn't just an intellectual position—it's a practice that forms us spiritually. Here are concrete practices to cultivate truthfulness in a culture that often devalues it.

1. Examine Your Information Ecosystem

The Practice: Conduct an audit of your information sources.

Steps:

• List all your regular news and information sources

• Note which political or theological perspective each represents

• Identify gaps or over-representation

• Intentionally add 1-2 quality sources from perspectives different from your own

• Set a calendar reminder to review your information ecosystem quarterly

Reflection Questions:

• What makes me uncomfortable about certain sources?

• Can I distinguish between discomfort with style and discomfort with substance?

• How might my identity markers influence which voices I trust?

Biblical Connection: "Test everything; hold fast what is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

2. Practice Confession and Accountability

The Practice: Establish a regular practice of truthful self-examination and confession.

Steps:

• Set aside 15 minutes each evening for examination

• Review the day's actions, words, and thoughts

• Note moments of untruthfulness, self-deception, or convenient avoidance

• Acknowledge these to God in prayer

• Weekly, share one insight with a trusted friend

• Monthly, practice formal confession with a spiritual director or pastor

Reflection Questions:

• What patterns of untruthfulness am I noticing?

• What fears drive my reluctance to be fully truthful?

• How does confession create space for authentic relationships?

Biblical Connection: "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed." (James 5:16)

3. Cultivate Intellectual Humility

The Practice: Practice saying "I don't know" and "I might be wrong."

Steps:

• Keep a "Questions Journal" of things you don't fully understand

• Practice expressing uncertainty in low-stakes conversations

• When discussing contentious topics, start with what you're unsure about

• Ask genuine questions rather than rhetorical ones

• When you make a mistake, acknowledge it directly without qualification

Reflection Questions:

• What makes intellectual humility difficult in our culture?

• How might acknowledging uncertainty create space for deeper understanding?

• What do I fear might happen if I admit I don't know something?

Biblical Connection: "Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil." (Proverbs 3:7)

4. Practice the Pause

The Practice: Create intentional space between information and reaction.

Steps:

• Establish personal waiting periods before sharing information (24 hours for provocative content)

• Before sharing, ask three questions: "Is it true?" "Is it necessary?" "Is it kind?"

• Create physical reminders (bracelet, phone background) as triggers for mindfulness.

• Practice breathing exercises when encountering triggering content

• Partner with a friend who will ask you, "Have you paused to verify this?"

Reflection Questions:

• How does immediacy culture affect my relationship with truth?

• When have I regretted quick reactions to information?

• How might waiting create space for discernment?

Biblical Connection: “You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,* for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” (James 1:19, * echoing Prov 5:1, 2; 10:19)

5. Create Spaces of Mutual Truth-Seeking

The Practice: Establish or join communities committed to shared discernment of truth.

Steps:

• Identify or create a small group focused on truthful dialogue

• Establish ground rules that prioritize mutual understanding over winning

• Practice charitable interpretation of others' views

• Intentionally include diverse perspectives in the group

• Regularly evaluate how power dynamics affect truth-telling in the group

Reflection Questions:

• How do my communities help or hinder truthfulness?

• What makes a space safe for truthful exploration?

• How can I contribute to creating such spaces?

Biblical Connection: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." (Matthew 18:20)

Deeper Practice: Contemplative Truth-Seeking

For those seeking deeper formation in truthfulness, consider these contemplative practices:

Lectio Divina with Challenging Texts:
Apply the ancient practice of sacred reading to texts that challenge your assumptions. Approach scripture that makes you uncomfortable with openness, allowing God to speak through it.

Silence and Solitude:
Regular periods of silence create space to hear the truth beyond our preconceptions. Start with 10 minutes daily and gradually increase.

Examen of Consciousness:
Use the Ignatian Examen to review your day, paying attention to moments of truth and deception and asking for greater awareness of both.

Prayer for Truthfulness

Lord of Truth,

In a world of competing claims,
Grant us discerning hearts.
Where we cling to comfortable half-truths,
Grant us courage for the whole.
Where we use truth as a weapon,
Teach us truth that heals.
Where we fear what truth might cost us,
Remind us that your truth sets us free.

Form in us a love of truth
Not as possession but as participation,
Not as certainty but as relationship,
With you who are the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Amen.

— From the personal prayers of Craig Geevarghese-Uffman

This Week's Challenge

Choose one practice from this list to implement daily this week. Journal briefly about your experience each day, noting both challenges and insights. Share what you're learning with at least one trusted person.

Truthfulness isn't about having all the right answers—it's about orienting our lives toward reality as God sees it. Each small practice of truthfulness forms us more deeply into the image of Christ, who is Truth embodied.

The first time I held a chef's knife with real purpose was not in a moment of culinary ambition, but of desperate love.

Claudia's cancer diagnosis came like a sudden, brutal cut—slicing through the familiar landscape of our life together. In an instant, everything changed. She, who had always been our household's culinary artist, now lay exhausted on the couch, her strength stolen by chemotherapy's relentless assault. The Eagle Scout in me—trained in survival skills, confident in wilderness cooking over an open fire—suddenly felt utterly inadequate in our small kitchen.

My initial attempts were comically tragic. Boiling was my baseline—the one cooking skill I'd mastered during camping trips. Barbecue was my other culinary domain, where fire and meat met with predictable masculinity. But now, facing the delicate task of preparing nutritious meals for my fragile wife, I discovered how little I actually knew about feeding someone back to health.

Each cut was a lesson in vulnerability. A dull knife tears rather than separates, requiring more force and creating more damage. I learned this not from a cooking class, but from watching Claudia's body—how harshly treatment could wound, how precisely care needed to be administered.

My mentor, Reverend Chuck Simmons, a Methodist pastor who had guided me through the wilderness of my early spiritual formation, once told me that true care is never about grand gestures, but about persistent, attentive presence. "Ministry," he would say, "is learning to cut cleanly—separating what harms from what heals, without destroying the essential integrity of what you're touching."

Those words echoed in my kitchen as I slowly, painfully learned to chop, to slice, to create meals that might offer Claudia not just nutrition, but a small moment of comfort.

Grief and learning intertwined. Each vegetable became a meditation. Each careful slice a prayer. I learned that cooking, like spiritual formation, is about transformation—taking raw, disconnected ingredients and creating something that sustains life.

Claudia did not survive her cancer. But the lessons learned in that kitchen became a form of continued love—a way of honoring her by continuing to learn, to care, to create.

The Anatomy of a Clean Cut

In cooking, a clean cut preserves the integrity of what you're preparing. When you slice through a tomato with a sharp knife, you see the cellular structure, the inner life of the fruit. A dull knife crushes and tears, obscuring that delicate inner world.

So too with spiritual discernment. The goal isn't to wound or divide, but to see more clearly. To recognize the intricate systems of meaning, the complex human experiences that lurk beneath surface-level conflicts.

This is particularly crucial in our current moment of profound social and theological division. MAGA Christianism represents a form of spiritual dullness—an approach that tears and crushes rather than carefully distinguishes. It uses blunt ideological instruments where precision is required.

Learning to Cut Differently

Sajeena, my beloved wife, has been my greatest teacher in this practice of careful cutting. A physician whose work requires both technical precision and deep compassion, she moves through complex human situations with an extraordinary blend of clarity and care.

I've watched her listen to patients, cutting through medical complexity with a combination of scientific rigor and human tenderness. She doesn't deny difficulty, but neither does she let difficulty define the entire narrative. She's taught me that it's all about finding the margins where targeted love can penetrate difficult spaces. Each interaction is a kind of spiritual surgery—separating what harms from what heals.

The Spiritual Vegetables of Discernment

Years later, as I stand in the kitchen with my bonus children, teaching them how to hold a knife, how to move with intention and care, I realize this is deeper than cooking. I'm teaching them about presence. About paying attention. About the sacred art of transformation.

My 15-year-old, who's already become skilled in the kitchen, recently told me, "Beau Père, I never knew cooking could be so meditative." I smiled, thinking of that cancer kitchen, of Chuck Simmons, of my surgeon wife, and of all the mentors who've taught me how to cut cleanly through life's complexity.

In our garden, I've learned that how you prepare vegetables matters as much as how you grow them. A carelessly chopped vegetable loses flavor, nutritional integrity. But when prepared with intention, even the simplest ingredients reveal extraordinary complexity.

Spiritual discernment is similar. It's not about eliminating complexity, but about revealing it. About creating space for nuance, for the kind of understanding that heals rather than wounds.

This is the practice of participatory freedom—creating space for genuine human flourishing by moving with precision, care, and a commitment to seeing more deeply.

My knife skills have become a meditation. Each careful slice a prayer. Each moment of precision an act of love.

---

What practices help you cultivate care and discernment? I'd love to hear your reflections in the comments.

This essay introduces "Rooted & Reaching," a series exploring how working the soil of my land parallels working the soil of my soul—connecting physical stewardship with spiritual growth, recovery with healing, and mortality awareness with flourishing.

As I anticipate completing my 65th trip around the sun next month, I find myself doing what many of us do at milestone birthdays—taking inventory. But instead of counting the usual metrics of success—publications, speaking engagements, or professional accomplishments—I found myself drawn to different measurements altogether.

The Metrics We're Given

For most of my life, I've tracked progress through conventional metrics: degrees earned, career status, and 401(k) balance accumulated. These aren't inherently wrong—they've marked genuine achievements and contributions. But somewhere along my journey from Louisiana boy to Naval officer to priest and theologian, these metrics began to feel like mile markers on someone else's map.

Our culture continually reinforces these external measurements. Open any social media app and you'll find countless variations of the same message: success means more followers, more influence, more productivity, more material abundance.

Even in church contexts, we often adopt secular metrics with spiritual language: congregation size, budgets, programs offered. And in my own life, I've frequently fallen into the trap of measuring my spiritual journey by sermons preached, adults and children mentored in faith, or theological arguments won.

But as I sat watching through my kitchen window as birds flourish in the many gardens we've planted, I wondered: what if the metrics that actually matter look entirely different?

Rediscovering Measurement

My body, well into its seventh decade, has become an unexpectedly honest teacher. When I run these days, success isn't measured in pace or distance, but in the joy of movement itself and the attention I bring to each step. In my downstairs 'pain cave,' progress isn't about how much I can lift, but how my body feels afterward and whether I've maintained proper form to prevent injury.

This physical wisdom has gradually seeped into my spiritual understanding as well. Perhaps progress isn't measured in theological knowledge accumulated, but in my capacity to love difficult people. Perhaps success isn't about influence wielded, but presence offered.

I think of my father in his final years, confined largely to his favorite couch by the tumors that had spread to his brain. By conventional metrics, his progress had reversed. Yet on that couch, and especially in the waiting rooms amidst other cancer patients, he mastered a sort of luminous presence with whoever entered. The quality of his attention, the genuine interest he took in others, the complete lack of self-importance—these were metrics of spiritual maturity I'm only beginning to understand.

Alternative Measurements

So what metrics might actually matter as I enter this new season? Here are a few I'm considering:

Attention Capacity: Can I be fully present with the person in front of me, whether they're fascinating or frustrating, without reaching for my phone or mentally rehearsing my response?

Recovery Time: How quickly can I return to equilibrium after being triggered by anger, fear, or shame? Not by suppressing emotions, but by moving through them honestly and returning to a state of openness.

Truthfulness Quotient: What percentage of my speech and writing emerges from genuine conviction rather than what I think will please others or advance my position?

Gratitude Frequency: How often do I pause to genuinely appreciate the astounding gift of existence itself—from the taste of morning coffee to the complex web of relationships that sustains my life?

Liberation Capacity: Am I becoming more able to free others from my expectations, projections, and needs? Can I love people without requiring them to fulfill my unspoken agenda?

The Garden as Teacher

Our vegetable gardens and orchard have become both metaphor and classroom for these alternative metrics. The conventional metrics would measure its success by appearance—how lush, how colorful, how impressive to neighbors. But the metrics that actually matter are different: how many native pollinators find haven there, how the soil quality improves year by year, how the garden participates in the health of the broader ecosystem.

Just as healthy soil develops slowly through years of patient attention, so too does the soul. Growth happens in imperceptible increments. The most important changes rarely announce themselves with dramatic flourishes.

Each morning now, I walk with my coffee watching the subtle movements of our garden—the bees navigating flower to flower, the gradual unfurling of new leaves, the steady work of decomposition beneath the surface. This patience, this attention to slow processes hidden from casual observation—perhaps this is the truest metric of progress.

Navigating By Different Stars

I don't imagine I'll suddenly stop caring about conventional metrics altogether. They'll continue exerting their gravitational pull. But - largely due to my wife Sajeena's patient example - I'm learning to navigate by different stars, to measure progress by metrics that align more closely with the person I hope to become.

The metrics that matter at 65 aren't about expansion but integration. Not how much territory I can claim, but how fully I can inhabit the ground beneath my feet. Not how many people know my name, but how deeply I can know and be known by the handful of souls in my immediate orbit.

As I look toward the horizon of this new decade, I'm less interested in leaving a legacy than living a life of integrity and presence. The metric that matters most, perhaps, is simply this: am I becoming more fully alive, more fully human, more fully present to the miracle of existence itself?

What metrics matter most to you? I'd love to hear your reflections in the comments below

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The headlines have been filled with discouraging words lately, but I found a word of hope in this morning's bath in Scripture.

Today is Tuesday after the Sunday on which Christians across the globe celebrate the Reign of Christ. It's the last week of the Church year.

The year begins with the Son's advent and incarnation. It takes us through Jesus's mighty works, leaving us to name the conclusions we rationally draw after remembering the stories of Jesus's life, death, resurrection, and ascension. As Luke and Paul repeatedly remind us, Jesus is the Lord of Lords, King of Kings.

With that conclusion fresh in our minds, the lectionary confronts us with today's word from the prophet, Ezekiel (Ez 29:1-12). We contemplate YHWH's oracle against Pharoah, king of Egypt. Why? For reasons that evoke our contemporary context: Pharoah's declaration, 'My Nile is my own; I made it for myself' (Ez 29:3), is a stark reminder of the arrogance and self-centeredness that can be found in leaders today, who often claim ownership over resources that should be shared for the common good.

Pharoah, in Jewish thought, is the primary archetype of evil, the epitome of one who traveled so far from God as to be devoid of goodness. Pharoah makes the perennial claim of would-be autocrats: that the great river of blessings through which God sustains us was created by and belongs to them and their minions and not to the people YHWH calls and empowers leaders to serve. YHWH says through the prophet, "I will put hooks in your jaws and make the fish of your channels stick to your scales....I will fling you into the wilderness, you and all the fish of your channels; you shall fall upon the open field and not be gathered up....Then all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the Lord" (vv4-6).

It's quite a stern warning to the Pharaohs of our time and a word of hope for those of us who sometimes feel defeated and fearful for our future as we witness the ascent of pharaohs who arrogantly claim rights to our rivers of blessings and greedily plot evil against those who oppose them.

But there's more. Many American Christians recognize Mark's narration of how Jesus called his disciples, saying, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people" (Mk 1:17). Too often, we domesticate that story by reducing it to a New Age mandate to invite people to grow spiritually.

But Mark's gospel has a revolutionary edge: he's telling the story of how God established the reign of Christ in a world dominated by his era's pharaoh, the Roman emperor, who outdid Ezekiel's contemporary in his arrogance, greed, and violence.

Jesus's call for us to become "fishers of people" echoes not just Ezekiel but also the prophets Jeremiah (Jer 16:16-17) and Amos (4:1-2), whose oracles pronounced God's judgment upon those "who oppress the weak and abuse the needy."

When Jesus calls us into discipleship, it's not about becoming Cross-decorated New Age groupies who text each other platitudes when times are tough.

It's a call to revolution, a movement that invites Jesus's followers to the dangerous mission of constructing lives that falsify Pharoah's ways by embodying the depth and breadth of neighbor love made possible by our participation in Jesus's faith, hope, and love.

Now is not a time for despair but for courageous stillness, for joining arms with our neighbors, trusting in the reign of Christ, which is bringing about God's victory over the evil imagined by history's Pharaohs.

Don't be harassed by headlines. Don't despair at the ascent of despots. Because Christ reigns, hope is rational. Join the revolution that conquers caesars by steadfastly and creatively sharing bread and wine with our neighbors.

This morning's reading from the Hebrew Scriptures was Ruth 4:7-22. It's not just a story but a profound narrative of Boaz's redemption of Naomi and Ruth. The ancient Jews, in their wisdom, included the narrative 'Ruth' among five Festal scrolls read liturgically during the five major Jewish festivals each year. This act alone signals its immense significance. Matthew's gospel also calls us to attend to their story by calling Ruth out in his account of Jesus's genealogy (Matthew 1:5).

Naomi was Jewish, but her daughter-in-law, Ruth, was a non-Jewish immigrant—an outsider. Nonetheless, the Ruth narrative declares that God acted through this immigrant during a crisis to preserve the family line from Jacob to Jesus. St. Matthew notes that the non-Jewish Ruth became King David's great-grandmother and Jesus's ancestor. 

The central problem of Naomi and Ruth's story is the death, emptiness, and deprivation faced by Naomi as a consequence of the deaths of her husband and two sons after they settled in a foreign land due to famine. Naomi's only recourse is to return to Judah and rely on her people's covenant faithfulness to provide for her.

In compassion for her daughters-in-law, Naomi urges them to stay in their native land and remarry. But, in a reciprocal act of compassion, Ruth refused to abandon Naomi in her old age. Her commitment is inspiring, as she declared, 'Wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God' (Ruth 1:16). So, young, widowed Ruth sacrificed for the elderly, widowed Naomi by escorting her back to Judah.

Today's text moves that story forward by narrating the covenant faithfulness of a relative, Boaz. His role is pivotal, as he responds to Naomi's crisis by purchasing the right to act as her redeemer. He redeems Naomi by purchasing her late husband's inheritance and, interestingly, by marrying the young immigrant, Ruth, who faithfully provides for Naomi so that she has a long, prosperous life. Almost as a by-product of this reciprocal faithfulness, Ruth bears a son, Obed, David's grandfather. 

Why did the ancient Jews select the story of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz as one of their five paramount liturgical scrolls read at their most crucial harvest festivals?

I think it's because of its distinctive emphasis on how God exercises God's covenant faithfulness by inspiring ours. God wills the good for us, and when we return God's love, we learn to will what God wills and express the good God wills through ordinary events and ordinary people like Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. Our covenant faithfulness - our acts of grace and loving kindness for each other - is how God moves history toward Creation's fulfillment. 

As I read how Boaz, inspired by covenant faithfulness, acted to redeem an immigrant woman and a distant relative he hardly knew, my mind flew quickly to the lives of American citizens and residents we will soon disrupt as the new administration acts on its lust for mass deportations.

What will it be like for those deported to a land they've never seen? What will it be like for communities torn asunder when sorted into those whose roots remain intact and those whose roots are ripped from the soil where they'd begun to flourish? What will it be like for families divided between those welcomed and banished? What damage to the American soul will we sustain when we revert to our 1920s depravity: an immigrant nation sorting immigrant families into destinies of opportunity and deprivation?

More importantly, how do those of us who've promised to follow Jesus' Way embody covenant faithfulness in response to God's? Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz call out this morning, their examples preventing any easy dodges of our responsibility. God acts through ordinary people responding to ordinary events with reciprocal acts of covenant faithfulness. How will we redeem neighbors facing lives filled with anger, emptiness, and deprivation?

I don't know the answer. But the question will haunt me in the coming days.

During my morning reflection today, one verse from Psalm 119:1-8 particularly resonated with me: "I will give thanks to you with a heart that does right as I learn your righteous rules" (v. 7). The poet highlights the challenge and necessity of integrating our emotions with reason. It's a learning process. We don't simply decide to "walk in the Lord's Instruction" and immediately know how to do it or possess the willpower to stay on that path. Instead, we build that strength over time, much like an athlete who trains her muscles through repetitive sets of lifting increasing weights.

In this process, God teaches our emotions to respond to life's stimuli as individuals who love what God loves. We desire God's desires and learn to act according to that unified intent. It’s a will to love rather than a will to power—one that inspires us to create rather than dominate. The guiding principle that directs our path is an attitude of gratitude. When we turn our hearts toward God with genuine thanks, the mists of confusion clear, our minds realign, and we adjust our course to "walk in the Lord's Instruction" (v. 1).

Through years of addressing God and being addressed by God in this way, we learn how to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, ultimately becoming more fully human.

I grow things, so I'm touched, especially by the image of a farmer sowing seeds with tears. How apt a description of human life!

Regardless of our vocation, living faithfully within the communion of sufferings created by neighbor love often leads us to "plant with tears."

My wife, a surgeon, faces heartbreaking death daily. Yesterday, during a case, a colleague shared news of local immigrant children and parents who were tortured and murdered recently. The grief was too much. She wept, her tears blurring her vision as she cut away the cancer that burdened her patient and those who loved her—in her way, planting seeds with tears.

Of course, the poet does not leave us with that poignant image.

In context, this is a pilgrimage song. Jews from Judah, Galilee, and beyond “went out” from their hamlets, joining thousands of others on the days-long trail up to the Temple at Jerusalem. They'd herd festively decorated lambs, bulls, and oxen and carry the first fruits of their harvest as their sacrifice of thanksgiving to God for the abundance they expected God to provide.

In Jerusalem, Temple priests poured the livestock's blood into the Temple's intricate duct and combustion system, transforming it into smoke and incense, symbolizing prayers ascending to the heavens. The priest returned the consecrated meat and grain to the family for its eucharistic feast. Having sought and found atonement and blessings, pilgrims returned "home with joyful shouts, carrying bales of grain" (5-6).

From seeds sowed with tears to joyful harvest, the pilgrim's song aptly describes the journey within which the faithful cling tenaciously to God as the source of all hope and fruitfulness. I sing that song with the poet this morning, expecting the seeds we sow with tears today to yield an abundant harvest of the love and joy that sustain us.

The news bulletin was orange with big gold lettering. Memory is dim concerning the exact wording, but it etched two things in my mind with permanent markers. A date. April 4, 1968. And an event that I intuited was historic based on my parents' reactions. Someone killed Martin Luther King, Jr.

I didn't know who he was, but I knew we weren't ever supposed to say his name in our house. I knew that because Keith said Mamma told Marie that. Marie didn't say anything but just kept ironing and humming as though it was the most natural mandate in the world. Their relationship was complex. 

Dad once explained that the man was a troublemaker, which he often called me. He didn't like that I talked back, and I guessed that he thought the same of the dead man. 

But he didn't say that when that orange bulletin interrupted Daniel Boone. 

Urgency. Dad hollered for Mom to come see. She was washing dishes while we men watched TV. When Chet Huntley came on and told the world what happened, they seemed stricken. It was as though they knew we lost something precious that night because we desperately needed the trouble that troublemaker caused.

Late in life, I learned that he caused trouble by insisting Christians take seriously our baptismal promise to make Jesus's politics our own. A radical principle: we can't claim to love the neighbor we dominate.

I was able to audition for the youth production of Jesus Christ Superstar even though I didn't do youth group because the adults and teens knew me as their neighbor.

Things were different then. More connected. We teens grew up together. 

My elementary school friends were my baseball teammates. My baseball teammates were also my Cub Scout den. Some of their dads coached; Mom was our Den Mother. Except for Doug, who was Roman Catholic, we also did Sunday School at Broadmoor Methodist, Baptist, or Presbyterian churches. Our mothers ran the Sunday Schools. 

I got in trouble in second grade when I went to Broadmoor Baptist Church with Johnny Crutchfield. His dad coached the Broadmoor Baptist softball team. Mom permitted me to go. She got upset at learning that I answered the altar call and told the preacher I'd been "saved" so I could play second base for the Baptists.

In sixth grade, we walked from school to our respective churches so the Methodists and Presbyterians could be confirmed and the Baptists could be saved. Like trick-or-treating, we had no fear because the neighborhood moms were like aunts, benevolently ruling us and escalating things to our mothers if we got out of line.

Mrs. Roberts knew me because I visited her house weekly for Scout meetings. Kevin was my first patrol leader. Greg and I had been in the same Sunday School class since birth. 

I had a lifelong crush on Mrs. Roberts. Only Julie Andrews outranked her. Mrs. Roberts went to LSU with Mom.

Things were different then. Except for those from Michigan who immigrated in droves after the '73 oil crisis, kids grew up together. Moms knew us, and we knew the moms. Trust was easier then. 

So, when Dr. McQuire preached about loving our neighbors, that wasn't an abstraction. We knew our neighbors. They were the White middle-class families who surrounded us and ran things in Baton Rouge.

Not everyone counted as a neighbor. 

Today, neoliberal capitalism is transforming the world, building global cities where laborers enter and exit daily without the possibility of citizenship rights. As in ancient Rome, only the elite are eligible to become citizens. Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Singapore, Honduras, Dubai, Qatar. Models of capitalist efficiency where laborers work during the day and leave at night, always aware they lack the political power to address grievances. Like ancient day laborers, they work when market conditions favor employment and go hungry when they do not. Their lives depend completely on the whims of the citizens who alone possess dominative power.

Scholars credit 1980s neoliberals like Milton Friedman with the invention of these features of global capitalism. But it's merely a derivative of everyday life I witnessed in southeast Baton Rouge during the 1970s. 

Each day, our population would swell with the arrival of Black maids. Sometimes, they drove old cars, but eventually, city buses transported them near enough to walk a few blocks to their employer's home. At day's end, they'd return to their side of town.

Mom drove Marie home. She'd pile us into the station wagon and drive northwest toward the Mississippi River until we reached neighborhoods nearest the Exxon and Dow plants, where Marie and her large family had a house that seemed the size of our kitchen. 

Later, Mom dropped off Marie at a larger house in a nicer area further from the chemical plants that lined the Mississippi River. They called it Section 8 housing. The first day we took her home, she proudly gave us a tour. I noticed Marie took care of lots of Mom's old stuff. That made me happy. 

Mom and Marie had a complicated relationship. They cared for each other from their parenting phase to their golden years. Yet neither could look the other in the eye as equal neighbors do. 

Dr. McGuire preached about our duty to neighbors often. Unlike Martin Luther King, Jr., no one called him a troublemaker. For our sanctuary had secure walls. We knew our neighbors. We grew up together. 

As a kid, I never learned what Jesus said about people who didn't count as neighbors. Who weren't allowed to live in our neighborhood or stay after dark. Who lived across town in houses that looked nothing like our own. Like Marie.

Asked Dad about the folks who aren't our neighbors. Said, "I know about us. But what about them?" 

Dad called me a troublemaker and didn't answer.

I hesitated.

Not sure if she noticed. But I still remember that moment. Standing before me was a beautiful, enchanting girl - a new friend - asking me to dance. And I hesitated.

Not because I was otherwise committed. Not because I did not want to dance. Not for any other reason I would be unashamed to admit.

I hesitated because her invitation threw me into conflict. I wanted nothing more than to enjoy her company that night. But that meant crossing a line. I’d never seen a White boy dance with a Black girl before.

Some walls are invisible until you stumble into them. Like furniture, they’ve been there so long they’re part of the landscape. That’s especially true if the walls were erected and covered with ivy before your parents were born.

My mother was a planter’s daughter. Our family-owned a cotton plantation near Bayou Boeuf in central Louisiana before the Civil War. My grandparents reared nine children on the same land, farming it with the help of Black employees who didn’t join the Great Migration.

Imagine a little girl approaching a water fountain during the Great Depression. Or a bathroom. Or a swimming pool, restaurant, church, or school. Signs and the route they directed taught her how the world was ordered.

White women to the right. Colored Women to the left. White only. Colored in the rear only.

Signs that performed the hierarchy they signified. A profane sacrament enacted every hour of every day from the time you were born until the time your fifth son was born.

The hierarchy of human value was a given, ever-present in the landscape, something noticed only in the breach.

The water fountain’s sorting was binary. Either you were White or Colored. But that was just the first sort. The list of those who counted as White was in flux.

Anglo-Protestants were always in. So, too, were Northern European immigrant families like my Dad’s. Counting them as White was easy. They looked the same and tended to be Protestant.

In Louisiana, Italians were Colored at first. Still, by the time Mom was born, they occupied a middle space between White and Colored, along with Jews. Sorted with the Whites but ranked below Anglo-Protestants in the power hierarchy, they were equal under the law but culturally subordinate.

That water fountain liturgy indelibly shaped the lens with which Mom - and many of her generation - understood the world.

Mom was kind, gentle, brilliant, and loving. She cherished deep, mutually loving friendships with Blacks and non-Anglo Protestants that endured many decades.

But those friendships grew within muscadine-covered walls that secured each person’s place in the power hierarchy. All men are created equal, but those who counted as White were first among equals to whom deference was due. In any such friendship, she was the leader.

Marie grew up in a different town, but the water fountain liturgy was the same. That profane sacrament, enacted every hour of every day, shaped her identity, too. All men are created equal, but those who counted as White rule. The best way to thrive is to keep quiet, serve well, and cooperate with White power.

Mom and Marie were pregnant at the same time. Marie came to work for Mom when I was a toddler.

Under duress, Jim Crow took down the water fountain signs before Gary and I learned to read. Signs were no longer necessary. The walls they constructed were hidden in plain sight, like landscape features covered by fig leaves that did not impede their function.

Phil Moser had a concrete driveway with the only basketball goal in the neighborhood. Mrs. Moser didn’t mind if I practiced there when Phil wasn’t around.

Marie would often bring Gary to work during summer vacation. Can’t recall what else we did, but sweet memories remain of Gary and I shooting hoops at the Moser’s. We’d play H-O-R-S-E and 21 and one-on-one. Games were long because our best shots could barely reach the ten-foot goal. It was fun. Like we were friends.

But friendship evaded us. At that age, we were evenly matched, But we were not equals.

Gary was neither shy nor timid. He could do or say whatever he wanted with me, but he wasn’t free. Water fountain lessons ruled him. He was incapable of looking me in the eye without deference.

I didn’t recognize it, but water fountain lessons ruled me, too.

Water fountain walls were visible only in the breach. When breaches occurred, communal discipline reinforced the walls.

As a Boy Scout, I never missed an opportunity to usher at LSU football games. At one game, I escorted a young mixed-race couple to their seats. As the game progressed, so did the drunken anger of those seated behind them. They began with verbal abuse. Who did the couple think they were? They had no right to be in public together where children could see them. Slurs. Threats. A cup of beer thrown at the male. Eventually, off-duty police officers stepped in to restore peace. They ordered the couple to leave immediately.

Water fountain walls ruled years after the signs came down.

We were high school juniors representing our states at the week-long Presidential Classroom for Young Americans in Washington, D.C. Sort of like Boys or Girls State except with a federal government focus. It was an intense immersion experience. Friendships germinated and blossomed rapidly.

Her father was an Atlanta preacher. We’d become good friends. The dance celebrated our completion of the program. Of course, I wanted to enjoy it with her.

Later, I told myself I hesitated because I was unaccustomed to girls asking boys to dance. That wasn’t how I was brought up. But that wasn’t true.

Her outstretched hands invited me to breach water fountain walls. I didn’t recognize their power over me. Hundreds of miles from home, they ruled. I wasn’t free.

But she was. She looked me in the eye without fear or deference. Just friendship.

Wanted to be free. Like her.

We danced.

Grandma predicted I would burn in Hell. She was the first.

Can't recall the presenting cause that led her to opine on my eternal destiny, but she seemed pretty sure of it.

Dad had one brother. Uncle Glen always made me laugh. He taught me yo-yo and card tricks. We did everything with our three cousins. Until we didn't.

Never understood what happened. After Grandpa retired, Dad became CEO of the family business. We stopped seeing our cousins and my grandparents after that. Mom said they didn't like us anymore. She'd be crying when I got home from school because of the latest missile Grandma had launched at Dad.

Before Mom said, 'Enough is enough,' the adults tried to protect us kids from their feud. Things got awkward because, when things were good, Dad and Uncle Glen bought river homes next door to each other.

Things got awkward for the adults, but not for us kids initially. We adored our cousins. They were girls, but they were fun.

Grandma likely saw me as a target of opportunity. I wandered over to Uncle Glen's river place, looking for my cousins. Found her sipping coffee, enjoying the morning sun on their patio. My life was always a question mark for Grandma.

My older brothers tell me I precociously developed 'provoking Dad' into an art form. But Dad was always safe because he couldn't help loving me. I was like him, just different.

Provoking Grandma was more complicated.

She stabbed the air, her pointer in my face, breathing fire as she expressed wrath on God's behalf. Grandma said I would burn in Hell because I couldn't recite the Ten Commandments and didn't even know the catechism.

Don't recall what I said before or after. My brain recorded a permanent video but only caught Grandma's lines. And a closeup of her angry face. She used to give me extra whipped cream on my pumpkin pie. But that was before the family feud.

Still recall what I didn't say. Prudence inspired me not to clarify that Methodists don't do catechisms. Pride inspired me not to prove her wrong by reciting the Ten Commandments. I could only remember seven.

Even then, I intuited she wasn't saying what she was saying. The correct translation: Ken and Grace hurt me; I'm going to strike back at them by terrorizing their 15-year-old son.

She succeeded.

It was her hatred that hurt. Grandma's prediction of my residence in Hell didn't faze me.

Escaping Hell never has been a concern for me. My reasons have evolved, but not my unconcern.

At fifteen, my reasoning was straightforward.

First, Grandma and I worshipped different gods. Her God was mean and authoritarian, always ready to zap you if you broke the rules. Only those who knew the secret Missouri Synod Lutheran handshake could eat at her God’s table.

My God was less well-defined.

Once they bought their river house, Mom and Dad stopped attending church except for Christmas and Easter. Mom seldom talked about God. Dad taught by example. He prayed all the time. Long, misty prayers of gratitude before family feasts. Quiet petitions for all of us at the river's edge as crickets chirped and owls hooted.

Watching Dad, I inferred that God was like a jolly grownup Santa Claus who provided all you needed as long as you were good.

My Scoutmaster, whom all of us Scouts called Uncle Wally, led the only regular worship services I attended once Mom and Dad bought their river place. Our troop camped every month. Every Sunday morning, before we'd pack up to go home, Uncle Wally would gather us at some beautiful spot near our campsite for worship. Through his simple reflections, he taught me to notice the symphony of creation. To respond with reverence.

My God was always outdoors.

So Grandma and I worshipped different gods. Hers was like her. Mine was like Dad—a loving Creator. The one thing we agreed on was that God was majestic and distant. Wholly other.

My parents never mentioned Hell. Apart from the refrain "Go to Hell Ole Miss" that every Louisiana boy knew, it wasn't part of our vocabulary. Beyond that, I assumed Hell was like the threat of coal in your Christmas stocking. It didn't apply to me because I always tried to be good.

The second reason I never worried about Hell was that I learned from friends what makes you go there. Baptists went to Hell if they danced. I loved to dance, but I wasn't Baptist. I knew Methodists go to Hell for drinking. But I didn't drink. Yet. Despite Grandma's prophecy, I figured I was safe.

Grandma taught me a lot. Like how to play marbles. How to dunk for apples. How to love pumpkin pie. Most importantly, Grandma gave me a permanent allergy to accounts that depict humans as sinners in the hands of an angry god.

My parents modeled a different view. Despite my mastery of provocations, Mom and Dad always preserved a place for me. Their instinct was to love, to welcome, to instruct. I figured God must be much more like that.

But, at fifteen, I was too busy having fun to think about God. That came later.

After Karen, I paid attention. Somewhat. I still didn't think of God much but thought of Karen a lot. Perhaps if I aligned my beliefs with hers and did all the Christian stuff, I could win her back. And if that wasn't possible, at least I could hang out with her. I hung out with God because Karen did.

By accident, all that hanging out made a difference. Learned religious language. Learned Bible stories. Worshipped something other than myself.

By the time I headed off to Annapolis, my new Christian persona fit like a well-tailored suit. I could embrace that new identity whenever the situation warranted it.

Reverend Williams always answered my questions with questions. If she weren’t so kind, it would have been annoying.

After Karen, I hung out with her a lot. She seemed to know how I felt. She was nice to me in the way people are when a grandparent dies. That part felt good.

I wanted to become a Christian like the others. 

Technically, I was already Christian because I belonged to the church, and my family never missed Christmas or Easter services. The adults bristled if anyone else sat in our pew. I played point guard on the church basketball team for three years. There was never a time when I wasn't Christian.

And I knew how to be reverent. Scouting taught me that. Dad's hands and Mom's eyes taught me all the essential things when I was five. Like not looking back at the choir, not talking once the ministers started, when to stand, reciting stuff from memory, when to sing, and how to sit still. My scoutmaster, Uncle Wally, led me to experience awe when touched by the splendor of creation.

But after Karen, I knew I wasn't a real Christian. Not like Mrs. Roberts or Karen's mom. Not like my friends. Not like Karen. 

They seemed to get it. Church stuff made them who they were—something - a contagious joy - made you want to be around them. 

Their Christianity was a life changer. Mine was a membership.

Time was of the essence. Had to master the real Christian thing before departing for college. Had to pack their joy in my suitcase. Then things would be OK.

Reverend Williams' office was at the church gym entrance. It had a huge glass window, so all a kid had to do was make eye contact. She'd smile back, and before you knew it, she was answering your questions with questions.

The questions started when she realized I had no plans to attend LSU. By then, I had narrowed my choices to West Point, Annapolis, Michigan, and Georgetown. 

She asked why I wanted to be a military officer. The military was not popular then because of Vietnam.

When I responded that I felt it was my duty to defend our country, she asked why. When I said it was essential to protect our freedom, she asked me what I meant.

Freedom was the correct answer. The year before, we'd had Bicentennial Minutes on TV every night celebrating the birth of our nation. We were the leaders of the free world. To be American is to be free. The military fights to make sure we stay free. Everyone knew that. 

No one had ever asked me what freedom was. It was a given. Never had to explain what it was. Or why I was willing to die for it.

There was a popular song, Born Free. There's the answer. We are born free. It's our right. As the Declaration says, no one can take freedom from us. We are "As free as the wind blows." 

She asked me what it meant for the Holy Spirit to make us free. I thought she had changed the topic at the time because the song didn't mention the Holy Spirit. 

The ministers mentioned it a lot. 

I rolled my eyes whenever people spoke of the Holy Spirit for much of my life. Perhaps because the creed we recited weekly called it the Holy Ghost. Since childhood, the Spirit was this mysterious thing that was good but invisible.

Like Casper the Friendly Ghost. Whenever anyone mentioned the Holy Spirit, I imagined Casper. Truth.

When Reverend Williams spoke of the Holy Spirit, I had no idea what she meant. Certainly could not comprehend what it had to do with freedom. 

It was frustrating because the Holy Spirit stuff came easy for real Christians, just not for me.

Perhaps she sensed my confusion. She took a different tack. Shifted my attention to the third verse of Born Free. Why does the song say that freedom is a space where no walls divide you?

I was too ignorant of the Bible to follow her point.

It's embarrassing to remember how clueless I was at seventeen. I would love to report that I picked up on Reverend Williams' cue and immediately connected baptism and a commitment to Jesus's emancipatory politics. I'd love to recall that, henceforth, I understood my calling to defend freedom by knocking down walls rather than fortifying them. Life would have been so much easier had I grasped then that freedom was not what I thought, that the joy I wanted to harness could not abide in a heart that divided the world into friends and foes.

Instead, I parroted the politicians who led my local culture. Freedom was the opposite of a space with no dividing walls. It meant having a walled-off space where you could always make unimpeded choices.

I learned that from the nightly news.

Numerous White Baton Rougeans have pridefully pointed to the 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott. Lasting six days, it preceded the more famous Birmingham boycott by two years. Martin Luther King consulted with Baton Rouge boycott leaders in organizing the Birmingham ride-share program.

It is ironic that White Baton Rougeans celebrate the 1953 boycott, given that they resisted the 1954 Supreme Court order to desegregate public schools longer than any city in the United States. Moreover, even in 2023, White Baton Rougeans continued to resist the spirit of that court order by seceding from Baton Rouge to form an affluent, predominantly White city with its own school system.

SCOTUS ordered desegregation long before my birth. Thurgood Marshall, then an attorney for NAACP, filed the Baton Rouge lawsuit in 1956. The litigation was settled 47 years later. 

Whites made up roughly two-thirds of the public school population when I was born. When the desegregation lawsuit ended, Whites made up only 11%, with Hispanics exceeding White participation in a primarily Black public school system. Today, most Whites attend private schools created to avoid court-ordered integration.

In 1970, a federal judge ordered the school board to end school districts based on race. They resisted. After they shut down the most dilapidated separate-but-equal buildings, the school board created 102 "neighborhood school" districts. I went to one of the 19 schools that remained all-white or all-black because our neighborhoods had been segregated for so long. 

When I was in junior high, Judge Parker said public school faculties had to reflect our population's 2:1 White/Black ratio. Before that, I had never met a Black teacher. Mrs. Gillette, an English teacher I loved, transferred to Broadmoor as part of that court-mandated third. As I recall, the first Black students showed up senior year. There were eight in our 1,500-student population. Desegregation, for me, meant exposure to Black teachers, not students.

But it was also a significant way adults taught us about freedom. The nightly news was filled with ongoing school board battles between politicians and federal judges. The message was clear. The federal government was interfering with our God-given right to determine who counts as neighbors and how we want to run our neighborhoods. The court order was the beginning of communism that would destroy our country. It was un-American. We had to fight to protect our freedom. Etc.

Reverend Williams pressed about the lyric that urges us to "Stay free, where no walls divide you." But, at seventeen, I couldn't see walls as divisive. The politicians on the news said walls are protective. Who was I to trust?

Looked through her window at our basketball court. That was a place I felt at home. A place where the rules made sense. 

Told her freedom is like having your own private basketball court. You can dribble wherever you want with the ball. If anybody pushes you around, it's a foul. It's against the rules for anyone to mess with you there. Freedom is a private space that only you control.

She didn't say anything. She got that look on her face that adults get when they know you're both wrong and too proud to learn anything more in that moment. It was the same look my sister-in-law - a decade older than me - got when I insisted I would never get married. A wait-and-see smiling presence.

As for me, I wanted to become a real Christian. But based on her questions, I still didn't get it.

Her name was Karen.

As King Herod, she smiled at me as she danced on an elevated stage.

That smile felled me. Life bifurcated. Before Karen. After Karen. All that remained was to learn something more than her name.

I was baptized in a tent. The Methodists planted a church in the direction of the city's growth. They cleared forested land seven miles east of the Mississippi River to create a baby boom subdivision called Broadmoor. By the time I was confirmed, it was one of the largest Methodist churches in Louisiana.

Karen lived north of the railroad tracks in a subdivision cleared decades later to handle Baton Rouge's continued boom. The parish built a state-of-the-art high school that opened just in time for her to attend. So we belonged to the same church but rival high schools.

Even decades later, I remember how time passed differently after we met. Karen took me to her prom and went with me to mine. I'd "shop" at Winn-Dixie when she cashiered and stopped by to see her after my work at The Fox and Glove Restaurant. I adored her mom, befriended her brothers, and met her Dad.

She beat me at Battleship, an embarrassing admission given my future naval career. We served as camp counselors together. Led youth worship together. She got me to join a clown ministry that brought moments of joy to folks at assisted living facilities.

Time passed differently because it was infused with something new and glorious.

All of that happened in just five months.

Kissed her goodbye on a Friday night and left for a week-long leadership camp in Mississippi. That was our last date. Never learned why.

We can only see the ultimate meanings of our first loves from distant perspectives. The lovesickness seemed important then. But it was merely the setting for the drama just beginning.

Before Karen, I didn't do youth group. After Karen, youth group became my oxygen. She was there, so I was there. Pining.

She understood.

I was cringe-worthily pathetic.

She was gentle, kind, loving. Let me heal. Stayed close enough for me, distant enough for her.

She was a means of grace. Just as I couldn't give up on her, God never gave up on me.

Youth group dominated my senior year social life. Bowling, volleyballing, caroling, retreating, and worshiping. Most importantly, seminar-like reflections led by our pastors, John and Marie Williams. They got me while my guard was down. After Karen.

Asked Mom, "What makes Methodists Methodist?" She struggled to answer. Then, one word: tolerance. Didn't know what to do with that.

Our pastor couple did. Every Sunday evening, we'd tackle teenage questions, followed by some fun spiced with pizza or spaghetti.

Reverend Marie and Reverend John didn't invest time in terms like "saved," "hell," or "heaven." They took our relationship with God for granted and focused instead on what's next. How should we live? How should we discern our way forward when faced with young adult challenges?

Can't remember the questions, but two John Wesley quotes stuck with me.

Because we're all God's dysfunctional children seeking the path to flourishing, Wesley counseled tolerance. "Think and let think." Sounds like tolerance! Mom was right.

More importantly, something crucial as I sought my purpose in life: "Shed love abroad." Wesley said there is no need to search far and wide for life's purpose because God's already given us that holy mission.

Shedding love abroad demands resilience.

My first love taught me how and why God heals broken hearts. Love is a gift. It turns out that God gives us the gift so that we might become the gift. Love frees, and freedom is the capacity to love.

Didn't know that at seventeen. I was blind while I pined.

About one year after getting hooked on Herod, Karen and I joined our pastors and other youth on a balcony at Shreveport's Centenary College. Watched the bishop ordain that year's crop of ministers.

The hymn was a Methodist chestnut based on Isaiah's call to prophecy. God asks, "Whom shall I send?" The chorus answers, "Here I am, Lord."

Second time with Karen I felt my heart strangely warmed. Not by the girl. By something in the air.

This time, I let the moment pass.

One look at King Herod and I felt my heart strangely warmed. 

She was seventeen, a blond in blue shorts cast in the role because she could dance. When my friend Greg told me Herod and Jesus shared a scene requiring lots of post-rehearsal practice, I auditioned. 

Turns out the part entailed more than enchanted time with the angel. Andrew Lloyd Weber put Jesus in almost every scene of Jesus Christ Superstar. I should have looked before I leaped. A rookie mistake. It was my first play.

Our Methodist ministers said Jesus was the name we give to the one who saves us. Adults seemed to know why we need saving and what that looks like. Made no sense to me.  

Reverend Marie talked a lot about the “means of grace.” Had no idea what grace was, but I adopted the phrase. For me, at seventeen, Jesus was a means of gracing my life with a goddess. Or so I planned.

Mrs. Roberts said I had to get inside his head. How might he have felt as he suffered the events of Easter week? 

The librarian showed me the whip the Romans used to scourge people before crucifixion. Three leather thongs with bone and metal. The weapon from which we get the word “filet.” Brutal.

Much later in life, I learned my ancestors used a similar technology to terrorize those they enslaved.

We rehearsed the scourging. In the play, the Romans flayed Jesus 39 times. Mrs. Roberts taught me to kneel and to writhe in increasing agony as the lashes landed.

The inhumanity of it all bothered me. Made me curious. What did Jesus do that others would hate him so?

His prayers at the garden called Gethsemane confounded me. He knew he was about to be arrested and executed as a political prisoner. Asked his best friends to stay awake with him as he awaited that reckoning. Instead, they slept. 

Strange that he didn’t pray for deliverance. He didn’t pray to be rescued from torture and a horrific death. Instead, he prayed for the courage and clarity to obey his Father despite uncertainty that his death would matter. A suffering servant. What kind of man prays such prayers?

My costume included blue jeans and a white T-shirt with a Superman logo on my chest. But this was no Superman. He had no superhero powers. He bled like me. He doubted like me. He feared like me. An ordinary man with extraordinary unity with his Father. A mystery to be explored.

How great it would be to report that playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar was a great conversion moment - my Road to Damascus bolt of light that radically changed the course of my life! How different things might have been had my heart been strangely warmed by Jesus rather than a 17-year-old blonde performing Herod’s song and dance! How I’d prefer to relay the tale of how the stage lights illuminating the Cross miraculously illuminated my mind so that from that moment on I could do no other than follow Jesus the rest of my life.

But none of that happened.

After opening night, I got the girl. I also decided to learn more about this man, Jesus. Neither of those commitments lasted. But that’s another story.