Yet, we do not dismiss feelings. They are important. They are at least data points about how we are relating to ourselves and the world. But it is important to remember they ARE NOT EVERYTHING.

I say all of that to you today, because I am reminded of a lovely insight offered by Jesuit spiritual writer Anthony de Mello. In the book Awareness, he says,

“We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.”

Feelings are important. They are powerful things. But instead of assuming our feelings are descriptors about how things are in the world, de Mello reminds us that they shape the way we interpret the world and others. And that matters. (Sometimes we need to work on ourselves so that we can better understand others and the world!)

But even knowing that, it is still possible to feel blue, disconnected, and disenchanted with the world and our place in it. It is still possible to despair. What this teaching reminds us is that we should not make hasty judgments about others or the world due to our feelings. Feelings are data points, don’t forget. It is much more useful to become curious about the way we feel. Before making assumptions or conclusions about the world around you, ask:

-Why do I feel that way?

-Is there some fear that is at the root of this feeling?

-What if my feelings are incorrect?

-What does my feeling tell me about what is important to me?

Questions like those are helpful because they can help you learn more about the sources of your feelings. They are also helpful because they can change your relationship with your feelings.

What does it mean to change your relationship with your feelings?

Well, you no longer have to believe that your feelings are the measure of truth. You can separate yourself from your feelings too. Your feelings no longer need to be associated with your total identity—they are just interesting data points. They are clues to our interior world. They are important, but they can and need to be managed.

Perhaps all of this is in some measure a meditation on St. Paul’s teaching from 2 Corinthians 10:5, “…and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Certainly, taking thoughts captive also means we take feelings captive too.

Not long ago, my thirteen-year-old daughter heard a speaker. When I asked about her impressions, she admitted she was put off by the message—precisely because the male speaker cast himself as the hero. Worse still, the story climaxed with his good deed “saving a woman’s soul.” My daughter couldn’t articulate all her feelings, but she was clearly alienated at that moment. Her instinct was right: stories framed around the preacher’s heroism rarely edify.

Another valuable maxim I’ve carried with me concerns storytelling itself: “Don’t just re-tell the story—re-live it. Let me see what you see.” I can still hear a mentor’s voice saying this. Stories should never serve as throwaway anecdotes. If you use one, let it be more than a point. Let it offer an experience. That principle has shaped me profoundly.

But are these “rules,” or are they simply pointers? I’m not sure what exactly qualifies something as a rule. Still, whatever we call this genre of codes, maxims, and guidelines, I am drawn to it. Significant ideas, expressed with economy of words, carry clarity and weight. Their apparent simplicity does not cheapen their depth; it sharpens it.

What follows, then, is a series of “rules” I would commend to preachers, homilists, and teachers in our time—a time marked by church decline and secularity’s endless buffet of meaning-making options.

1. Listen, Listen, Listen. Listening is the greatest tool in communication. As a communicator of sacred truths, one must first listen to God and the sacred texts. One must also listen to the needs of the community and the world. All this listening must happen long before the pen touches paper. Even during delivery, the speaker benefits from listening—attending to the Spirit’s leading and the congregation’s responses, making sensitive adjustments in real time. Listening is the superpower of communicators of all kinds. For me, listening is so important, I will often refrain from scrolling on my phone while alone at a restaurant or in a waiting room. By listening and observing, I find myself picking up bits of conversation, and interesting behavior—all of it is ripe for storytelling and illustration material.

2. Allow Space. Breathe. Practice the Sacred Pause. Reflection is rarely built into our schedules, even in church. Messages are often delivered and immediately followed by the net item on the agenda. Congregants rarely sit in silence afterward, pondering the message; more often, they are discussing dinner plans or sports schedules. Creating reflective pauses in worship gives the congregation time to let the message sink in. Such moments also support mental health—a rare gift in today’s fast-paced culture.

A colleague in contemporary evangelical circles once dismissed silence in worship as a “death-nail,” insisting that services must be scripted to the minute. I suggested that planned, intentional silence differs from accidental silence—and in my experience, it does. Before preaching, I often invite the congregation to take a few cleansing breaths, grounding both mind and body. This prepares them to receive the message—and helps me inhabit the space to deliver it.

3. Summarize Each Message with an Aphorism. Your aphorism might serve as your message’s “big idea,” a guiding principle, or even your closing line. Its placement is flexible; what matters is the clarity it brings. Crafting an aphorism forces the speaker to understand the core meaning of their message. For the listener, it provides a memorable takeaway. Aphorisms function like poetry, riddles, or songs—windows of meaning through which light can enter.

4. Avoid Third-Person Plural Where Possible. Using “they” to refer to groups risks demonization and othering. This is especially dangerous when the groups exist in the present—political, racial, ethnic, or religious. Respectfully naming people, rather than reducing them to a collective “they,” preserves dignity and avoids diminishing entire communities.

5. Let Your Scholarship Fade into the Background. Public speaking carries the temptation to prove intelligence through extensive research. Intellectual honesty demands acknowledgment of sources, but the preacher should avoid letting scholarship overshadow clarity. Mentioning Greek word origins or etymology without purpose becomes a gimmick. Instead, let your deep study inform your teaching quietly. Scholarship is the foundation, not the centerpiece; it should support understanding, not obscure it.

6. Let the Text Be the Text; Don’t Demythologize. Historical-critical methods and Bultmannian demythologizing have value, but biblical texts have purposes beyond the historian’s lens. Allow them to speak in the ways they were written. Let the text live, breathe, and convey its own power. That is where the magic happens. I never told my children a fable or parable and then spent the whole time applying the historical-critical method or “literalistically” explained metaphors—the whole purpose is lost. I avoid explaining jokes too, for that matter. Let the text be the text, its purpose is self-evident.

7. Avoid Ideological Preaching. Ideology presumes assumptions no longer debated but simply accepted. Preachers risk framing the Gospel as inherently “conservative” or “progressive,” reinforcing polarized thinking. Sacred speech should transcend such constraints, cutting through ideological silos and offering the congregation a vision beyond narrow, partisan lenses.

8. Let Your Message Flow Like Music. I rarely use notes or manuscripts. Instead, I know the beats I want to hit, the stories to tell, and the big idea. The way I move from beat to beat is extemporaneous, guided by the congregation, the space, and, I hope, the Spirit. Consider your sermon like music, with moments of legato, staccato, crescendo, and decrescendo. The message should be felt as much as it is heard.

9. Move with the Audience in Mind. Gestures, posture, and stage movement can reinforce meaning. Symbolic movement—walking from one side of the chancel to the other as the story of scripture unfolds—can subtly illustrate narrative progression without overt explanation. Audience-centered movement enhances comprehension and connection.

10. Use Silence Wisely. Silence is sacred space. It allows the point to land, invites reflection, and can heighten drama. But misuse it as manipulation undermines trust and holiness. Avoid coercive pauses that shame or intimidate; instead, let silence serve as a vessel for contemplation and presence.

11. Everything Is Study. Sacred communication demands constant engagement with texts, theology, culture, human development, and daily life. Stories, jokes, historical references, statistics, or anecdotes may all serve as illustration. Sources of inspiration are everywhere: literature, films, conversations, sports, media—life itself is a classroom for sermon material.

12. Exegete the Human Condition. Knowledge of scripture or tradition alone is insufficient. Understanding the human experience—what motivates, troubles, and excites people today—makes preaching relevant and meaningful. Study contemporary life as deeply as the text itself.

13. Study with the Saints of Old. The ancients were brilliant and creative. Beyond presentism, we can discover insight and wisdom from past thinkers, leaders, and exegetes. Their perspectives illuminate human nature and provide a lens for understanding today’s challenges.

14. Be Positive Whenever Possible. The Gospel is easier to describe negatively—what it is not—but strive to offer positive examples. Avoid saccharine cheerfulness or toxic positivity; instead, provide generative ideas, hope-filled examples, and illustrations that inspire transformation.

15. Acknowledge the Sacredness of Your Audience. I learned from Fred Rogers the power of recognizing the sacredness of those who listen. Bowing at the beginning of a talk or sermon sets a tone of care and responsibility. Honor the dignity of your listeners—they are entrusted to you for that time.

16. Major in Proleptic Speech and Imagery. Christian faith anticipates the hope of the future by bringing its reality into the present. Preachers must use language and imagery that embodies this proleptic vision, showing how the Gospel transforms here and now.

17. Do not dichotomize the body and soul. Preach an integrated life. Honor the inner life of people, but always connect it to their outer and public world. Honor the body. We do not merely have souls—we are souls. We do not merely have bodies—we are bodies. Resist the temptation to oversimplify through dualism or reductionism. When we do, we end up prioritizing the soul or inner life at the expense of the body, other bodies, and ultimately the created order itself. There is profound richness in exploring spirituality through the lens of the body—through somatic expression, physicality, and embodiment. Don’t miss that richness.

Nolan does some fascinating things with the story that make it feel fresh for contemporary audiences. The acting was superb—Anne Hathaway and John Leguizamo, in particular, stood out to me. The cinematography is breathtaking, the set pieces are magnificent, and I even thought the visual effects were restrained and effective.

But you know me—I can’t simply enjoy a film. I have to have a theological hot take.

Before I offer it, let me say this: I have no interest in a one-to-one cinematic retelling of Homer’s epic. That would never work. Every adaptation must make interpretive decisions. Every filmmaker has to decide what themes to emphasize, what characters to deepen, and what moral vision will drive the story.

Nolan makes some very interesting choices.

Those choices substantially alter the theological and ethical center of Homer’s poem.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus is defined by his cunning and cleverness. Those are admirable qualities, but they also feed his greatest vice: hubris. His pride repeatedly prevents him from getting home. That is a simplified reading, of course, but it captures one of the poem’s major themes.

Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the encounter with Polyphemus.

Odysseus enters the Cyclops’ cave as a poor guest, violating the ancient expectations of hospitality (xenia), one of the highest moral obligations in Homer’s world. In some respects, Odysseus and his men begin to resemble the monsters, while the Cyclops appears—at least initially—to be the wronged party. The episode is morally complicated.

After blinding Polyphemus and escaping, Odysseus cannot resist revealing his true name. It is an act of pure pride, almost like a scene from a mafia film where one crime boss dominates another and says, “Look at me. I did this to you.”

It is insult added to injury.

That single moment changes everything.

Polyphemus calls upon his father, Poseidon, to avenge him, and from that point forward the sea itself becomes Odysseus’ enemy. His long journey home is not merely bad luck; it is, in large part, the consequence of his own pride.

Nolan tells a different story.

His Cyclops is no misunderstood victim, and while the confrontation unfolds in broadly familiar ways, Odysseus never boasts or reveals his identity in a moment of arrogance. Hubris is no longer the central problem.

Instead, Nolan’s Odysseus seems to suffer from something much closer to moral injury or PTSD.

He is a haunted hero.

He is burdened by memory.

He repents of leading his men into destruction.

The monsters he encounters are terrifying, but the deepest monster is the one he carries within himself.

One of Nolan’s most intriguing decisions is his blending of Homer’s mythology with the historical memory of the Bronze Age collapse. Throughout the film people whisper about the coming “Sea Peoples,” mysterious invaders who destroy kingdoms and leave civilizations in ruins.

Whether in Ithaca, Sparta, or elsewhere, the rumor is always the same: destruction is coming from the sea.

Penelope understands this better than anyone. She repeatedly tells Telemachus that Ithaca needs its king—not simply because she longs for her husband, but because a kingdom without a ruler becomes vulnerable.

By the end of the film, however, Odysseus reaches a startling realization.

The Sea Peoples were not someone else.

They were him.

They were his soldiers.

They had become the destructive force haunting the Mediterranean world.

That is a remarkable reinterpretation.

If Homer’s Odysseus is delayed by hubris, Nolan’s Odysseus is nearly destroyed by what violence has done to his soul. In his desperate attempt to accomplish a good end—to win the war and return home—he gradually becomes the very monster he fears.

Christians should find this moral insight familiar.

Augustine called it the libido dominandi—the lust to dominate. Aquinas reminds us that vice slowly deforms the soul. The Reformers likewise understood humanity’s frightening capacity for self-deception. We justify ourselves. We demonize our enemies. We convince ourselves that evil is necessary because our cause is righteous.

How easily the will bends.

How quickly the conscience becomes malformed.

There are other contemporary reinterpretations throughout the film. Circe is portrayed less as Homer’s mysterious divine enchantress and more as the kind of witch familiar from modern fantasy literature. Her story is shaped by concerns about exploitation and male violence. Penelope likewise reflects on how few choices women possess in her world, observing that, had she been born a man, her life would have unfolded very differently.

These are unmistakably contemporary concerns, and Nolan intentionally allows them to shape the ancient narrative.

Whether one agrees with every interpretive decision is almost beside the point.

What I found most fascinating was the shift at the heart of the story.

Homer’s Odysseus is ultimately undone by pride.

Nolan’s Odysseus is haunted by trauma.

In Homer’s telling, the great danger is hubris.

In Nolan’s, the great danger is becoming the monster yourself.

That shift says as much about our moral imagination as Homer’s poem said about his.

Did you enjoy scoffing at the ticket prices? Did you relish watching some of the game’s greats near the end of their careers? Were you surprised by a particular team—and, if so, wasn’t that part of the delight?

For me, the best part was what so many others seemed to love: watching people from around the world encounter one another.

I enjoyed the videos and testimonies of visitors falling in love with America and its people. I laughed at the Scottish presence in Boston—and at all the beer drinking that came with it. I felt a small pang of jealousy that I am not Norwegian when I watched their supporters perform the Viking Row.

More than anything, I enjoyed the gathering itself: people from different nations, languages, and cultures inhabiting the same cities, singing in the same streets, and giving themselves to the same game. As a resident of Atlanta, my family ran into visiting families at restaurants, parks, and stores. It was very cool.

Did you know that something like this was part of the World Cup’s original vision?

The tournament emerged, at least in part, from a Catholic imagination and from a distinctly Christian concern for human dignity, meaningful work, social solidarity, and peace. I recently learned this from an excellent episode of NPR’s Throughline, which I commend to you.

Here are a few of the details that stayed with me.

1. The World Cup was influenced by Catholic social thought

One of the lesser-known influences behind the tournament was Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. (Our current Pope Leo took his name because of shared values with this Leo, the values of labor rights, etc).

Jules Rimet, the French lawyer who became president of FIFA and is often called the father of the World Cup, was a devout Catholic. He was deeply influenced by the encyclical’s concern for workers, human dignity, and the bonds that hold society together.

Rimet did not regard sport as mere entertainment. He believed football could cross social divisions, build character, and create solidarity among people who might otherwise remain separated by class, nationality, or politics.

2. Rimet imagined football as an instrument of peace

Rimet’s vision deepened after his experience of the First World War.

Having witnessed the horrors of war, he became convinced that friendship between nations had to be cultivated before the next catastrophe arrived. He believed international sport might provide a peaceful alternative to conflict.

Nations could compete on the field rather than the battlefield.

Ordinary people could encounter one another across national boundaries.

Former enemies could gather around a shared game.

Rimet’s goal was not simply to determine which nation played the best football. He hoped the World Cup might become an institution of peace and reconciliation.

That is an astonishingly ambitious vision for a sporting event.

Maybe you think that the Olympics already achieved these aims. But for Rimet, the Olympic attitude toward amateurism ensured that only wealthy people could compete. He wanted World Cup players to be paid—like the rest of the Rerum Novarum, he was interested in workers’ rights!

3. The tournament was entangled in controversy almost immediately

The idealism did not remain pure for long.

The first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930. Only a small number of European nations participated, largely because of the cost and difficulty of the long sea voyage. From the beginning, national interests, money, and politics shaped the tournament.

The deeper controversy arrived four years later.

In 1934, Benito Mussolini’s Italy hosted the World Cup. Rimet continued to insist that football could rise above politics, but Mussolini understood perfectly well how sport could be used for political purposes.

The tournament became a propaganda triumph for the Fascist regime. Allegations of intimidation, political pressure, and favorable refereeing surrounded the competition. What had been imagined as a celebration of international friendship became a stage for authoritarian nationalism.

The World Cup had scarcely begun before its founding ideals were being compromised.

4. The World Cup has always carried this contradiction

The World Cup has always possessed two competing identities.

On the one hand, it bears Rimet’s hopeful conviction that shared play can bring human beings together. On the other, it has repeatedly been shaped by nationalism, dictatorship, corruption, commercial excess, and geopolitical conflict.

Its history is not one of innocence.

And yet, for all its contradictions, the World Cup remains one of the few events in which much of the world turns its attention toward the same thing at the same time.

People travel. Strangers sing together. Cities become meeting places. National pride becomes playful, at least for a while. We are reminded that competition does not always require hatred and that difference does not always require distance.

The World Cup has never fulfilled Rimet’s dream of world peace. No tournament could bear such a burden.

But perhaps the togetherness we witnessed this year offered a glimpse of its original grace.

For a few weeks, people from across the world gathered in our streets, our stadiums, our restaurants, and our neighborhoods. They remained different. They cheered for different teams. They wanted different outcomes.

And still, they gathered.

Perhaps that is not peace.

But it may be one of the places peace begins.

A few months ago I realized that my “solitude” wasn’t very spiritual.

Yes, I spent time alone. I got away from the crowds. I even built quiet into my mornings. But I wasn’t really practicing solitude.

The problem was that I was never actually alone.

Every quiet moment was filled with inputs. Music. Podcasts. Audiobooks. Even my exercise became another distraction. I was constantly consuming something. I was never quite bored enough to hear the gentle whispers of God—or honest enough to look deeply at myself.

So I began a new practice.

For the first ten minutes of every morning, I simply try to turn my attention toward God.

Almost immediately, my mind wanders. We call this MONKEY MIND

What do I need to accomplish today?

Did I answer that email?

Did I lock the door?

How am I going to solve that problem?

At first I was incredibly self-critical. I assumed I was bad at prayer. Then I realized something freeing:

A wandering mind is simply part of being human. It's a feature, not a bug, perhaps.

The point isn’t to keep your mind from wandering. The point is to keep returning it to God.

Every return is itself a small act of prayer.

Here are three simple practices that have helped me.

1. Choose a mantra or a sacred image.

I often repeat the opening words of Psalm 121:

“I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord.”

Sometimes I simply repeat the words.

Sometimes I imagine the hills.

Sometimes I picture myself standing before them, quietly waiting on God.

The goal isn’t to think harder. It’s to give your attention somewhere holy to rest.

2. Don’t fight the monkey mind.

When my thoughts drift, I don’t scold myself anymore.

I simply notice.

“There’s the monkey mind again.”

Then, with gratitude, I return to the Psalm.

Returning is the practice.

Returning is the prayer.

Returning is the gift.

3. If all else fails, breathe.

Sometimes words won’t come.

Sometimes Scripture won’t settle my thoughts.

When that happens, I simply pay attention to my breathing.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Be present.

Prayer begins with attention. If I can do nothing else, I can simply become aware that God is present, and I can be present too.

Prayer has become much gentler for me since I stopped trying to master it.

Years ago, I noticed something similar in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Even black belts will tell you that jiu-jitsu is hard. They’ll often say they’re still not very good at it. Mastery always seems to remain just over the horizon.

Prayer is much the same.

We never really master it.

Nor are we meant to.

The point isn’t perfection.

The point is practice.

So don’t be discouraged if your mind wanders.

Just come back.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Every return is another step toward God.

So, it seems that Stoicism is attractive once more, because humans still suffer. And as Tillich observed in a declining religious milieu, Stoicism is the only religious sensibility our society will have left. For those who have everything one could ever want, Stoicism addresses the unfillable existential needs we humans have. This leads me to my particular interest: what does the growth and climbing influence of Stoicism today suggest for religious speech in this day and time?

First, the growing interest in Stoicism suggests that there is still an openness to sacred ideas within our culture. By its focus on wisdom, virtue, the inner life, and placing one’s existence within a cosmic framework, Stoicism reveals that humans have a need that perhaps only spirituality can answer. The growing interest in it – like the young men joining my book club (see above) – shows that people are seeking spiritual answers to life’s questions and that existential needs are not being met by late modern life. Perhaps that is why so much of modern religious speech is styled in an advice-like manner. But this is not enough. I think popular Stoicism hits deeper than mere advice; it addresses the hard issues of human finitude without resorting to simple, saccharine shortcuts.

Speakers of the sacred would do well to pay attention to Stoicism and make use of its more perennial elements, those that overlap with other traditions, such as the Judeo-Christian tradition. Three specific elements found in Stoicism are helpful jumping-off points for further religious communication in today’s age: Memento Mori, Primacy of Virtue, and Amor Fati.

As mentioned above, memento mori is the remembrance that one will die. Rather than a morbid fascination with one’s own death, memento mori uses contemplation of one’s death to take the brevity of life seriously, and induce a healthy awareness of mortality to push one into taking life more seriously. Ecclesiastes 7:2 even commends attending funerals to prompt reflection on one’s own mortality. We all know that we are going to die, but life has a way of lulling us into complacency through mundane living. What I find most useful about memento mori, from a personal perspective, is that it supports healthy detachment, so that more important things can be focused on.

Memento mori is baked into so much of the traditional liturgical life and calendar of the Christian faith. There are All Saints and All Souls, days when we are supposed to honor and remember the dead—and if you are so bold, be inspired by their lives of witness. Any reflection upon those who have gone before us in life and in death ought, no doubt, to bring our own finitude to mind. Yes, these traditions are still very much alive in many communities and denominations. But amongst the fastest-growing movements of the faith, there is not much reflection on grief, death, the dead, mourning/lament, or memento mori in corporate worship. The reason is simple: those practices are replaced by more attractive elements of faith and practice to avoid alienating new worshippers. Yet, it cannot be denied that the practices in question are faithful ways to engage spirituality with the whole of human experience. They, like actual biblical material, engage the entire human person; thus they can assist in human development and healing. To the church leaders that forgo such practices, I repeat the charge of British historian Tom Holland (who recently has been seen lauding Christianity, though he remains an agnostic, yet wishes to be Christian) to “keep Christianity weird.” Its weirdness, he suggests, lies in how it is life-changing and how it can really speak to society's needs.

The other practice that is quite well known to arouse the memento mori is Ash Wednesday. Each year on Ash Wednesday, the church, to put it bluntly, reminds the faithful that they will die one day. It is a somber reflection of the mind, met with the physical reality of ash imposed on one’s forehead—a sign to wear, feel, and accidentally smear throughout the day. This is a more than cognitive assent to an idea that we will all die one day. It is fully embodied and ritualized. As a somatic experience, the lesson is seared into one’s experience. Through it, we carry the truth of our finitude in our minds and on our foreheads, perpetually beckoning us to ask whether the way we live is worthy of our brief time in this world.

And then there is the primacy of virtue. Stoicism’s conviction that the primacy of virtue is the key to a flourishing life gives Christian preachers fertile ground for bridge-building. For the Stoics, virtue is the highest good—it is better to be just, wise, and courageous than to be rich, healthy, or powerful, because only virtue endures when circumstances change. A Christian preacher can readily affirm this, for the Sermon on the Mount itself suggests that blessedness does not arise from external advantage but from purity of heart, hunger for righteousness, and peacemaking. In both traditions, the measure of a life is not comfort but character. By beginning here, the preacher can establish common ground with Stoic moral seriousness and then extend the conversation toward the deeper Christian claim: that the virtues are not merely human achievements but are animated and perfected by the Spirit of Christ.

Additionally, in our own day—when values are fiercely contested, and a sense of meaning often feels elusive—there seems to be a growing hunger for lives shaped by virtue. The popularity of movements such as wokeness or MAGA suggests that people are searching for moral frameworks, for codes to live by. The pressing question, then, is not whether we seek virtues, but which virtues are worthy of our allegiance. In this cultural moment, when so many are yearning for guidance that places a moral claim upon human action, the language of virtue is not one to be avoided by those who speak the sacred word. Stoicism and Christianity both suggest that a virtue tradition might not only be necessary but appealing for today’s hungry audiences.

Yet it is at the point of amor fati—the Stoic call to “love one’s fate”—that the paths of Christianity and Stoicism diverge. For the Stoic, the highest wisdom is to affirm all that happens, even tragedy, as the necessary unfolding of Nature. Christianity, by contrast, does not baptize fate as good in itself but acknowledges the fragility of life, the horror of death, and the reality of sin. Here the Christian vision both meets and challenges Stoicism. Like the Stoic, the Christian is called to courage and acceptance, but not because the universe is fated and immutable. Rather, the Christian trusts that God redeems suffering and fragility in Christ, transforming them into the site of resurrection hope. Thus, where Stoicism counsels resignation, Christianity proclaims restoration: the fragility of life is not merely to be endured but is taken up into God’s promise of new creation. Communicators of Christianity’s sacred vision can speak to the usefulness of amor fati, but they can also go beyond it to a more hopeful vision of life. This final point is important. Amongst the reasons for its importance is that if one is too focused on amor fati, they might be held complacent towards many of the world’s injustices. Christianity, on the other hand, can meet Stoicism in offering a useful way to navigate life’s challenges, but its more hopeful vision demands that the present state of the world (with its pains, injustices, etc.) is not the end; a better life of flourishing for all must be worked toward.

Conclusion

In the end, what emerges from comparing Stoicism and Christianity is not a matter of choosing between two equal options, but of discerning how each tradition answers the deepest human questions. Stoicism’s call to virtue, resilience, and tranquility resonates across time, offering wisdom that continues to shape lives. Its modern resurgence is therefore significant: in an age of anxiety, secularism, and fragmented meaning, Stoicism provides a language of strength and stability that many find compelling. Christians should not dismiss this appeal but take it seriously, for it reveals deep longings in our culture. Yet Christianity presses further. It does not simply invite us to accept our fate, but proclaims a God who enters history, suffers, and redeems. Where Stoicism steels the will, Christianity transforms the heart. While Stoicism teaches us to endure what must be, Christianity reveals that even amid fragility and death, there is hope of resurrection. For the Christian preacher, this dialogue is fertile ground—Stoicism can open the door to reflection on human limits and courage, but only the gospel can carry us beyond resignation into the fullness of grace.

I agree with Tillich, much of what people find interesting about Stoicism is the courage that it can grant you. In the 21^st century, so much of what draws people to read Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and others, and more what compels them to create newsletters around their content is their practical strategies for coping with life’s ubiquitous struggles. Seneca famously wrote concerning the universal reality of life’s shortness:

I have no time for such nonsense; a mighty undertaking is on my hands. What am I to do? Death is on my trail, and life is fleeting away; teach me something with which to face these troubles. Bring it to pass that I shall cease trying to escape from death, and that life may cease to escape from me. Give me the courage to meet hardships; make me calm in the face of the unavoidable. Relax the straitened limits of the time which is allotted me. Show me that the good in life does not depend upon life’s length, but upon the use we make of it; also, that it is possible or rather usual, for a man who has lived long to have lived too little....You are mistaken if you think that only on an ocean voyage there is a very slight space between life and death. No, the distance between is just as narrow everywhere. It is not everywhere that death shows himself so near at hand; yet everywhere he is near at hand.

Seneca’s words are illustrative of how the Stoics look honestly at life’s fragility and uncertainty so that one may live life more wisely or virtuously. A Stoic tradition shared by other traditions such as Christianity is memento mori—remembering death as an exercise. It was a tradition born in ancient Greece but spread throughout history and over Europe. “On the face of it,” writes L.S. Dugdale, “the idea of memento mori might strike us as morbid. But in medieval Europe it was considered a vital tool for orienting life’s priorities. Life was lived with a view toward death.” Stoic philosopher Epictetus instructs this contemplation in his Enchiridion, “Let death and exile, and all other terrible things appear before your eyes daily, but most importantly death; and you will never again entertain a hopeless thought, or too early desire anything.” The idea is not unlike something one might learn in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy through exposing a patient to something so fearful that over time and exposure the fear subsides and aids the patient in developing a mastery of old fears. Or to be terribly practical about it, Marcus Aurelius wrote in his meditations, “Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.” One must certainly appreciate the clarity in this practical bit of motivational wisdom—philosopher and tech entrepreneurs alike.

Human existence is not only difficult because we are finite and will all suffer and die. It is also challenging because of the psychological suffering we experience. We suffer from our heightened attachment to the opinions of others, are people pleasing, and experience other forms of social stress. So, in a world where someone could suffer injury from public opinion, Epictetus’ words are useful: “If a person had handed over your body to a stranger, you would certainly be angry. So why do you not feel any shame in handing over your own mind to any criticiser, to be unsettled and annoyed.”¹⁶¹

Marcus Aurelius too chides himself in a philosophical way that reminds one of a parent teaching their child on the playground, “honey, you just worry about yourself, don’t worry about what others do!” Aurelius says, “Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. For thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such thoughts as these. What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away form the observation of our own ruling power.”¹⁶² Aurelius‘ Stoic outlook is very practical about human nature. His advice becomes simple to say, harder to accomplish, but the reason for it is very practical. You have better things to commit your time and energy to; he constantly reminds himself in Meditations.

My favorite portion of Meditations comes at the beginning of section II. I can imagine this as a daily meditation for leaders of all types, rehearsed like a mantra or morning prayer. I can even see it hanging up on walls as a framed poster, next to another framed poster of Rudyard Kipling’s If, “Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil,” says Aurelius. Yes, he is saying, you will meet jerks today, people will no doubt irritate you. He continues,

But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not [only] of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in [the same] intelligence and [the same] portion of divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away.

These examples show how Stoicism is uniquely poised to help those who suffer greatly navigate the suffering. I dare say, in our world of great excess, the kinds of things that money and success have yet to be able to “fix” have to do with our mortality, and the fact that we will find things to worry about socially—indeed, people are wonderful and challenging. Stoicism is practical and helpful, and I must say when I read it I find much in common with other strains of thought, like the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but also with Buddhist philosophy, and aspects of Christian thought.

In the introduction to Charles Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age, he sees similarities between Buddhism, Christianity, and Stoicism in that they all have ways of dealing with the suffering of life that is connected to renunciation. “In both Buddhism and Christianity,” he writes, “there is something similar in spite of the great difference in doctrine. This is that the believer or devout person is called on to make a profound inner break with the goals of flourishing, to the point of the extinction of self in one case, or to the renunciation of human fulfillment to serve God in the other. The respective patterns are clearly visible in the exemplary figures. The Buddha achieves Enlightenment; Christ to a degrading death to follow his father’s will.” Stoicism too involves a great deal of renunciation, or a realignment of life’s expectations such that one is detached from the expectation to flourish, because, “in the Christian case, the very point of renunciation requires that the ordinary flourishing forgone be confirmed as valid.” Christianity does not deny the goal of flourishing, for its ultimate goal consists of restoration of a just cosmos beyond the travails of this age. Stoicism has no view of such hope.

There are overlapping concepts that can mislead readers into thinking Stoicism is fully compatible with religions such as Christianity. For instance, both traditions use terms like God and Logos. Yet as C. Kavin Rowe demonstrates in his insightful One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, these words are not used in translatable ways. Stoicism, Buddhism, and Christianity may share some surface content, but when it comes to metaphysical substance they differ sharply and must be contrasted. Rowe’s subtitle proves instructive: Stoicism and Christianity are best understood as “rival traditions.” His central insight is that each offers not just ideas but a distinct way of life, rooted in its own practices, narratives, and moral grammar. For the Stoics (Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius), philosophy is a therapeutic discipline—shaping existence through inner fortitude, alignment with Nature, and mastery of the passions. In contrast, early Christians formed identity through story and community: St. Paul by building the church, St. Luke by narrating the continuation of Jesus’s redemptive work, and Justin Martyr by presenting Christ as the incarnate Logos, true wisdom by which life is ordered. Crucially, Stoicism lacks a theological account of sin and redemption—the Fall—while Christianity never fully reckons with Fortuna (chance, fate). Their aspirations may overlap, but the stories they tell and the lives they form diverge at the deepest levels.

But it is the overlaps between Stoicism and Christianity (and to a lesser extent Buddhism and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) that interests me the most in this 21^st century moment. Partly this is due to Tillich’s notion that for the West, in religions decline all we are left with for religious sensibility is Stoicism and partly because of the popularity of its usefulness in today’s society, when what is found so useful are the elements one might find in traditional Christianity, Judaism, and other views of life. Besides the decline in traditional religion, what is missing in contemporary society that makes Stoicism so appealing?

Coping at the End of the Road

Perhaps, nothing is really missing at all. Perhaps, it is that at this point in history, when we have gotten everything we could ever need materially, and when we have pursued libertarian freedoms to their end, and when we have been able to assert ourselves authentically that we have finally discovered that we still suffer truths of our finitude. Each one of us will experience pain, death, and each one of us will no doubt worry about our place in this world. To prove my point, all you must do is read the fascinating interview between NY Times columnist Ross Douthat and tech venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Thiel’s whole point was that we have been in technological stagnation and society must put an end to it, or we will suffer:

Douthat: To keep us in the concrete, I want to stay with that example for a minute and ask: OK, what does it mean to say we need to take more risks in anti-aging research? Does it mean that the F.D.A. has to step back and say: Anyone who has a new treatment for Alzheimer’s can go ahead and sell it on the open market? What does risk in the medical space look like?

Thiel: Yeah, you would take a lot more risk. If you have some fatal disease, there probably are a lot more risks you can take. There are a lot more risks the researchers can take.

Culturally, what I imagine it looks like is early modernity, where people thought we would cure diseases. They thought we would have radical life extension. Immortality was part of the project of early modernity. It was Francis Bacon, Condorcet. Maybe it was anti-Christian, maybe it was downstream of Christianity. It was competitive. If Christianity promised you a physical resurrection, science was not going to succeed unless it promised you the exact same thing.

I remember 1999 or 2000, when we were running PayPal, one of my co-founders, Luke Nosek — he was into Alcor and cryonics and that people should freeze themselves. And we had one day where we took the whole company to a freezing party. You know a Tupperware party? People sell Tupperware policies. At a freezing party, they sell ——

Douthat: Was it just your heads? What was going to be frozen?

Thiel: You could get a full body or just a head.

Douthat: The “just the head” option was cheaper.

Thiel: It was disturbing when the dot matrix printer didn’t quite work, and so the freezing policies couldn’t be printed out.

Douthat: Technological stagnation once again, right?

Thiel: But in retrospect, it’s also a symptom of the decline, because in 1999 this was not a mainstream view, but there was still a fringe boomer view where they still believed they could live forever. And that was the last generation. So I’m always anti-boomer, but maybe there’s something we’ve lost even in this fringe boomer narcissism, where there were at least a few boomers who still believed science would cure all their diseases. No one who’s a millennial believes that anymore.

This is an astounding section of an astounding interview, and it reminds me of the recent satire film Mountainhead about a group of billionaires on a retreat trying to outdo, outlive, and outshine one another’s prestige in every aspect of life: love, material wealth, power, and even be the first to enter into a transhumanistic consciousness. Douthat and Thiel’s real-life conversation goes on to discuss theology, transhumanism, the antichrist, and private conversations about how Elon Musk is afraid that woke ideology will follow him to Mars. But what floors me when I read it, is that it represents yet another cultural artefact: denying finitude. Our culture is in denial. Our technocentric hopes and dreams diagnose that we as a culture are still “kicking against the goads” of what philosophy reveals about human existence. Stoicism’s appeal in this late time in history might be the sobering alarm and early waking up of many who realize that no matter how much we advance as a society, we must still contend with the fundamental nature of our lives as a species in this universe, again, suffering is part of what it means to live.

Finitude is not for wimps. If ever we are able to amass more wealth than ever before managed, we might find ourselves still wishing to escape our planet for another one where the presence of an ideology we do not like is left far behind. Or as in Mountainhead we might have more than we could ever want, yet when we compare ourselves to others, we find that it is still not enough. The most existentially impactful storyline in that film has to do with the senior most billionaire, the mentor of the group, if you will. He has an incurable cancer. The entire drama of the film is set off by his calculating desire to turn the tide of companies, governments, and culture just so he can extend his consciousness in a post-human state. No matter our Net worth, we will all die—this is the truth of biological life.

I promise, I do not mean to pile on. As I said, finitude is not for wimps. But speaking in the language of toughness, who can forget the spat between Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk? These two men are amongst the wealthiest our planet has ever seen. They are successful by so many metrics. Both, presumably, have great health care, and many friends (at least on Facebook and X). Yet, they suffered at the hands of social scrutiny, by one another. Yes, they started a public spat. This, of course, led to them challenging one another to a cage match fight. Social shame, the pain of our standing and issues of respect can be so pronounced that it can even lead intelligent, and well-educated men to an embarrassing display of toughness. Then, of course, they suffer from the humiliation of that display which is more embarrassing than the original sleight. No one thought it was tough, so then they have to deal with the mockery associated with the whole affair. In the end, at this late stage of our advanced society, it seems that its many discontents have to do with existential pains that simply concur with being a finite, biological, and social creatures.

I do not need to focus on the plight of others when it comes to suffering in the modern life, and how Stoicism might proves helpful. Several years ago, I found myself in my own unexpected state of suffering. Rather abruptly, I discovered that I was in late-stage liver failure and I was dying. Through medical intervention and time, my body was stabilized, but I still needed a liver transplant. I was in a sort of liminal space. I was healthy enough to take walks, visit the doctor, and read books. But I was too sick to be at work—I had a lot of time on my hands to contemplate my ever-closeness to death; without a new liver my day to day existence was very unreliable. Over the course of that year I read many books, all in an attempt to help me cope with my fragile existence. I read theology and philosophy. Sincerely, I found help in Stoicism and Buddhism. I even listened to The Subtle Art by Mark Manson as I took my midday walks trying to rebuild my strength and stamina. If I was not painfully aware of my condition, all these texts made me confront my death and imagine the fragility and shortness of life.

I recall, after living this experience for some time, speaking to a therapist about my present condition. “I feel like I have a superpower,” I told him. “What do you mean,” he asked. I went on to explain that all the things that typically led me to fits of anxiety had gone away. “I do not care anymore,” I told him. Indeed, all the stuff that aroused anxiety, worry, mind-wandering, and “the monkey mind” had faded away. I no longer gave inappropriate levels of care to those items. I held them much more loosely. No, it was not the simple reading of Stoic thought or other traditions that practice memento mori. Rather, it was because I was forced into memento mori with every moment of my uncertain life. Even though I hoped to live and worked for my health, I felt a freedom to care about things that matter more than at any other point in my life.

A few months went by, and my health began to improve. I was healthy enough to go back to work, though still destined for a liver transplant. During that time I was under the care of a Spiritual Director trained the Jesuit tradition. He asked me, “how have you been experiencing God in this time?” After 2-3 minutes of silent reflection, I spoke. “I have felt God all the way through this season. But over the past few months, I do not think I have felt God in a personal way.” I told him I still believed that the divine was present, ever near. But I did not necessarily have any deeper feeling or sense of the presence. Frankly, I wondered if that would be the “wrong response.” I was unsure of how he would take this news. After a few moments of listening and processing, he spoke. “You need to learn the lesson of detachment.” “Detachment,” I repeated curiously. I mean, Christianity teaches about detaching from stuff of this world, Buddhism teaches detachment from desire, but how is detaching from God a healthy thing. John, my director, said “yes, you need to detach from your need to feel God to know God is there, to follow God, to be secure in God’s love.” He suggested that our feelings come and go, that the sense of God is revealed and hidden in this world, so “it is natural that you will sometimes feel God and it is natural that sometimes you won’t.” He taught me that by learning to detach from the need to feel God, and to accept this reality I would be even more free.

Time marched on, mercifully. Eventually, I underwent the lifesaving transplant surgery—my life was spared after another person’s life was cut short, abruptly. I recovered from surgery, went back to work, and over time I allowed all the day-to-day concerns to fill my imagination. The superpower I once had when I was closer to death was starting to fade. I began to care too much about things that had been re-evaluated when I was closer to death. I sensed this was a problem, and I wished to get back to the clarity I had when I was so sick, months before. And I devoted much time to exploring this in my personal therapy as well as my spiritual direction sessions. That is when I double backed to a lesson I knew from before (found in Stoicism and Christianity), but realized that I needed to surround with practices and disciplines so its truths would penetrate my mind, heart, and being: memento mori. I must remind myself often that I am going to die, to realign my mental priorities. And I have some practices that are particular to me.

Over time, I learned that I have three natural reflections based upon my illness that take me right to the edge of life reflection. In my post–liver transplant life, I often turn my body itself into a site of memento mori. The scar that runs across my abdomen is a daily reminder that I have walked close to death. The jar that holds my old liver sits as a strange relic—an artifact of both my frailty and the medical grace that carried me through. And every morning when I line up my pills, I am reminded that my life is contingent, dependent, and borrowed. These embodied practices are not morbid rehearsals but contemplations that orient me toward gratitude and humility: each scar, relic, and pill is a teacher whispering, “Your time is finite—live awake, live wisely, live well.”

CHECK IN TOMORROW FOR PART III On What We Can Learn Form The Stoics as We try to Speak the Sacred today

Stoicism has been what all the “cool kids” have been into lately. For the last decade or so, Stoic philosophy has been quoted, referenced, and even peddled by thought leaders associated with business and the tech industry.

The first time I noticed this was during a walk around my neighborhood. I was surveying podcasts, looking for something to queue up that would prove life-giving. I occasionally listened to Tim Ferriss of The Four-Hour Work Week fame. His show has a clever hook—talk with top performers and ask them about their habits, hacks, tricks, etc. I associated Ferriss with a certain “tech-bro” aesthetic. He was a professional investor, was associated with Silicon Valley types, and has developed his brand of being an expert at reverse engineering, so learning can take place faster, not to mention his penchant for biohacking. Personally, he lauded the impact of meditation on his life and often quoted Stoicism and other “tech-bro” influencers who wrote blogs on Stoic philosophy for life and business.

Through Ferriss, I learned of Ryan Holiday, marketer and author.

Not only is he an author writing about marketing secrets, but he also developed a following offering a popular version of Stoicism. His most prominent offering is The Daily Stoic, a series of meditations stylized like a Christian daily devotional.

Not many years after this encounter, and through Ferriss-Holiday related circles I learned about Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. Manson’s offering was a clever-titled blog post that went viral. A book deal followed. The Subtle Art shares a common trait with The Daily Stoic in that the authors trade in self-aggrandizing rhetoric either through their romantic prowess or celebrity name-dropping. All that was a bit much to read, if I am honest. Another similarity is that The Subtle Art also introduces Stoic practical philosophy to mass audiences. Where it is different is the approach—Holliday’s offers more reflective of Stoic texts and thinkers, while Manson’s Stoic ideas are blended with all sorts of pragmatic philosophies, psychological teachings, data, and wisdom literature.

Again, there is an aesthetic that surrounds much of the recent interest in Stoicism; it is something I have at least observed. It is not uncommon to see a successful businessperson quoting from the Daily Stoic email. In addition, you might find them trying out Keto or Paleo diets—maybe they are simply interested in their “macros” for optimal gym performance. They might be attracted to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. They found their way into it by reading to their kid Jocko Willink’s self-help/self-reliance children’s books about “Uncle Jake,” the super cool and tough Navy SEAL who toughens up Marc in Way of the Warrior Kid. They sign up to help coach their kids’ travel sports team, and they grace the field in Vuori shorts, Lululemon pants, and On Cloud shoes. They drink out of tumblers and Stanleys, and they probably have a few podcasts queued up for their afternoon ruck. I am describing an upwardly mobile, educated person of relative comfort and an “instagrammable” life worthy of envy.

Some years after I discovered the likes of Ferriss, Holiday, and Manson, I offered a book club on wisdom. The club was open to all but was generally populated by Baby Boomer men and women, that is, until the day I offered Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. After I promoted that book, the group doubled almost immediately. Who joined? Mostly Millennials and Gen Z—not the donors of expensive athleisure wear I described a moment ago. And most of them were young men. What is going on?

It is not enough to find out what this growing cohort finds helpful in Stoicism; we must also ask why they are seeking a new philosophy from the ancient world in the 21^st century. Why is Stoicism making such an impact on culture today? Stoicism, it seems, is what remains in a world of declining religious sensibility for those who wish to maintain a pseudo-religious or spiritual sensibility. Furthermore, Stoicism is a helpful tool for mitigating the suffering of modern existence. These are indicators of the spiritual need and hunger present in today’s culture that need to be considered in sacred speech.

For Tillich Tells Me So

Paul Tillich wrote the book The Courage to Be in 1952, and even though it was an “ontology of courage,” the book broke through to draw wide appeal. He touched on anxieties so basic and so universal that people flocked to its pages even if they were not accustomed to religious and philosophical discourse.

Tillich’s examination of courage includes reflections upon historic Stoicism:

The larger concept of courage which includes an ethical and ontological element becomes immensely effective at the end of the ancient and the beginning of the modern world, in Stoicism and Neo-Stoicism. Both are philosophical schools alongside others, but both are at the same time more than philosophical schools. They are the way in which some of the noblest figures in later antiquity and their followers in modern times have answered the problem of existence and conquered the anxieties of fate and death. Stoicism in this sense is a basic religious attitude, whether it appears in theistic, atheistic, or transtheistic forms.

Therefore it is the only real alternative to Christianity in the Western World.

Tillich knows that this was a controversial claim to make. There are other religio-philosophical forms that were present in our world, some even sharing a portion of the syncretic whole that makes up Christianity, such as Neo-Platonism. Tillich famously argues that Christianity was able to outflank what it shared with schools such as Neo-Platonism, and while it shares much in common with Stoicism (such as Logos, or reason, undergirding the world), it cannot genuinely escape Stoicism as an alternative altogether. This is because, as he says, Christianity “could not assimilate the genuine Stoic attitude.” This is because Christianity’s ultimate outcome was eternal salvation and hope beyond death. Stoicism, however, is “the acceptance of cosmic resignation,” and thus offers a genuine alternative to Christianity’s more optimistic outlook.

According to Tillich, Christianity’s historic victory led Stoicism to the sidelines, but it was there waiting to emerge as a real alternative to Christian belief:

It emerged only in the beginning of the modern period. Neither was the Roman Empire an alternative to Christianity. Here again it is remarkable that among the emperors it was not the willful tyrant of the Nero type or the fanatical reactionaries of the Julian type that were a serious danger to Christianity but the righteous Stoics of the type of Marcus Aurelius. The reason for this is that the Stoic has a social and personal courage which is a real alternative to Christian courage.¹⁵⁵

This Stoic form of courage, Tillich argues, is a genuine alternative to Christian courage. Yet it is a courage powered by resignation, and as Tillich observed, it still carries a fundamentally religious sensibility. In our time—marked by increasing secular attitudes and a decline in traditional religious observance—Tillich’s claim that Stoicism is the only real alternative to Christianity may help explain the renewed interest in its modern expressions.

This makes enormous sense to me, given that we are living in a sort of “meaning vacuum” in much of modern culture. In this era that we all inhabit, many have commented on the loss of meaning. Some suggest that it hails from the decline of religious or spiritual belief due to commitments to modernism. Others call attention to capitalism and its side effects—material gain and excess have not solved the basic suffering of human living. Whatever the case, it is hard to argue that at this point in Western history, individuals are more untethered to prior meaning-making systems and institutions than ever before. Of course, I am referring to things like religion, cultural tradition, family and tribe, and even the nation-state. Meaning has been handed over to the individual’s attempt to define it for herself and seek it without interference from anyone else—this is freedom as many understand it.

I Don’t Want Much, I Just Want it All

Many in our culture hold to an unstated script for their lives that is supposed to produce happiness or the good life. That script is really more of a checklist. Ambition varies among individuals, but the goal seems to be some version of success. The plan to follow is some version of 1) get into a good college, 2) make your best and lifelong friends, 3) get a job/career, 4) couple off, 5) have kids, should you want them, 6) amass large amounts of wealth, climb the ladder of success, etc. This is a modest version of the script. Dare I say this is the version of it that has some values baked in, but you could just as well have a version of this where you end up a trillionaire playboy who has so much real estate that you feel you must colonize Mars next.

Yet, no matter how much we follow the script, or how much you exceed its stated goal, meaning, purpose, or whatever you want to call it, it may still elude you. We all know that too—we write books and movies about that. So, the encouragement is for us to find things to give our lives meaning. This is where religion, an engrossing hobby, or social service fits in. There is no cookie-cutter fix; the point is that an individual seeks this out for themselves and makes a choice and action to follow it. But here is the thing: one can do all of these things; one can find success by the script's standards. They can discover meaning in this “something more,” but life is still what it is, challenges will persist. Life is full of suffering.

To live is to suffer. One response is to detach from desire. But isn’t that Buddhism? Yes—but not only Buddhism. It is also profoundly Jewish, Christian, and even Stoic.

The Scriptures are filled with reminders that suffering is part of life. “The rain falls on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). Paul writes that “all creation groans” (Rom. 8:22). Famine, exile, and despots are not treated as strange intrusions into an otherwise perfect world. And, of course, there is Job: “A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1). Scripture does not flatter us with illusions of ease; it prepares us for the inevitability of pain.

Then there is Jesus himself. He tells his disciples that if you want a life worth having, you must first lose it (Mark 8:35). This is a call to detachment—not from love, but from the illusion of control, from clinging to possessions, status, or even life itself. In that sense, Jesus’ words resonate with both Stoic endurance and Buddhist non-attachment, though uniquely framed in the hope of resurrection.

Even in our modern world, with its comforts and technologies, suffering persists. The most “successful” among us still battle depression, anxiety, and profound loss. Stoicism, with its frank realism and disciplined detachment, has found renewed relevance in this meaning-hungry age.

Let’s paint a picture. Suppose you had the good fortune – straight up luck – of being born into a family with very wealthy and successful parents. You did well in school, and with your connections you were able to matriculate into an Ivy League institution. There, you made the contacts you needed to get the resources you could only have dreamed of to bring your big idea to fruition. Your big idea is funded, and you are capable of employing the best young minds in your cohort to help it “change the world.” No it is not good enough to produce a great product that people want to buy. No, you sense that there is a meaning vacuum, or that the world is incomplete in some way that what you are making might make an existential impact. So, you become one of the many who will produce something that will change the world—the vision is just as exciting as it is ludicrous to onlookers. But there is enough buy in, because your big idea is possible with all the resources at your disposal. Besides, it might just be a good idea too.

Your big idea is now a big company. It is off to the races; people are excited about it; you are printing money. Your company goes public, and you are on the cover of every magazine, and are on every talk show. People want to know the secret to your success. You have everything money could buy. You have high value in the world of mating and coupling, and presidents want to know what you think. But no matter how good things look, the anxiety disorder you have been working through since you were thirteen still persists. In fact, it is sometimes harder to manage now than it used to be, when life was simpler. Eventually, your company will be called before congress for one or another reason. Perhaps you are being accused of being a monopoly, or maybe your big idea is proving harmful to society. You/your company fades in and out of fashion over the decades. You will still be wealthier than small countries, and you will be able to pivot any time you wish. Eventually too, you will begin to lose loved ones to disease and death—we all do, and you are still a mortal, so no matter how hard you try, your body will decline. Maybe even you will visit the doctor and find out there is something you are facing that has no medical answer. Maybe not. But you are still a human animal, thus you will still die. Death stands at the end of your road too. You need to do what everyone needs to do in life. You must ask, am I happy with how I spent my finitude.¹⁵⁶

Clearly, I am describing a number of scenarios around the lives of several big tech leaders. It is for such lives that Stoicism is becoming so very popular. This is rather ironic, because in antiquity, Stoicism was a religio-philosophical attitude mostly associated with slaves. Frankly, its teachings helped people navigate life's suffering and pain. The wealthy might have been able to enjoy the spirit of Epicureanism, but it was those on the bottom who needed Stoicism. So why is Stoicism so popular amongst the very privileged in our very wealthy and powerful society? Because when you have it all and think you've met and exceeded every dream you might have, you learn that life is ultimately something you’ll never master. Life is filled with suffering, it is not something we perfect. Life is much more like a pilgrimage one is on. And as my football coach aways told us, “wherever YOU go, there YOU are.”

When you have it all, and an eat, drink, and be merry philosophy does not seem to get you through the natural and psychological torments of the living what will you do? Many have reached out to religion for help in coping. This is what Freud, quite famously, found suspicious about religious belief. But in our increasingly secular milieu, it makes tremendous sense that Stoicism would gain traction, for, as Tillich has reminded us, it is one of the few alternatives to Christianity that offer something unique in the realm of religio-philosophical attitudes.

IN PART II We Will EXPLORE: Happiness and Coping with Challenges

That wasn’t important only for my own flourishing. I have a wife and children who needed me—not to have all the answers, but to have a way of moving forward with purpose.

I have far more to say about finding meaning in the midst of suffering than can fit into one article, but here are ten practical ideas that have helped me navigate hardship. I hope they’ll help you too.

1. Tell Yourself a Useful Story

We all live by a story, so you might as well choose one that helps you live well.

For my money, the best stories are those that are beautiful, good, and true.

The story I chose is that life is a pilgrimage—a journey of transformation and discovery. If you see your hardship as part of a pilgrimage rather than an interruption to life, setbacks become part of the path instead of evidence that you’ve lost your way.

Purpose has an incredible ability to carry us through pain.

2. Find a Few Mantras Worth Carrying

Mantras aren’t magical. They’re not wishful thinking or empty affirmations.

They’re compressed convictions.

They’re brief statements that remind us what we believe when our emotions are trying to tell us otherwise.

One of mine comes from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road:

Carry the fire.

Simple. Memorable. Powerful.

I also say that fear is the mind-killer. This comes from Frank Herbert’s Dune, and it brings an entire litany to mind as I gird myself for the challenge!

The Stoics are full of these distilled insights. Marcus Aurelius wrote:

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

And:

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

One of my favorites is:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it.”

When philosophy isn’t enough, borrow from poets. Mary Oliver and Joy Harjo often have many lines running in the background operating system of my mind.

3. Stop Comparing Your Journey

Comparison is one of the quickest paths to unhappiness.

Your pilgrimage is yours alone.

Limit your exposure to the endless stream of curated lives on social media. Detach when you need to. The less time you spend comparing your behind-the-scenes life to someone else’s highlight reel, the freer you’ll become.

4. Move Your Body

Nothing reminds you that you’re alive like using your body.

Walk.

Hike.

Lift weights.

Train for something difficult.

I started training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu—and boy, oh boy, talk about mind-body alignment!

Embodied practices reinforce your inner story. They remind you that transformation isn’t merely an idea—it’s something lived, step by step, mile by mile.

5. Feed Your Mind

Don’t consume only entertainment.

Nourish your imagination.

Read Kate Bowler’s reflections on cancer. Read Mishka Shubaly’s story of recovery and endurance. Read Kierkegaard on love. Read Scripture. Read philosophy. Read poetry.

The mind needs good food just as much as the body does.

6. Watch for Bad Stories

Your mind is constantly trying to replace your pilgrimage with lesser narratives.

“If only...”

“When I finally...”

“Then I’ll be happy.”

These are stories built on scarcity and postponement. These stories imply that we lack agency over our happiness, too!

Pilgrimage is different.

It assumes that even setbacks can become part of your transformation. It teaches gratitude, hope, and abundance rather than resentment and fear.

7. Learn Something New

Learning is an act of hope.

Start a hobby.

Take a class.

Become a beginner again.

When life feels like it’s falling apart, choosing to learn something new quietly declares that you believe there is still a future worth preparing for.

Remember:

Mood often follows action. I am not sure who said that, but I quote it often!

8. Choose Good Traveling Companions

No one walks a pilgrimage alone. If they begin alone, they no doubt encounter others along the way (see the film The Way).

Find people who simultaneously comfort you and challenge you.

They remind you that you are loved as you are while refusing to let you settle for less than who you can become.

9. Keep a Record of Kindness

Record acts of generosity, not grievances.

Remember encouraging words.

Notice unexpected kindnesses.

Express gratitude lavishly.

You’ve never accomplished anything entirely on your own. Every meaningful life is built upon the generosity of others.

Life is too short to keep a ledger of insults.

10. Slow Down

In suffering, we naturally want to skip ahead to the end.

But if we could somehow leap over the hardship, we would also leap over the transformation.

Growth rarely happens under easy conditions.

These days I notice how quickly life moves. I used to wish winter away. Now I try not to, because every season seems to disappear almost as soon as it arrives.

The invitation is to become present.

To inhabit this moment.

To receive the gift of being alive today.

Rushing will not heal you. More often than not, it simply causes you to surrender your life before you’ve actually lived it.

Do Not Forget, I am on your team. I will be cheering you on as you go along your pilgrimage.

But nothing could be further from the truth. For me, nothing quite pierces the critical distance between myself and the sacred—a distance often created by the cynicism of disenchantment—like whimsy’s playful, imaginative, and yes, even magical way of relating to the world. Whimsy is powerful precisely because it is unexpected. What could be more surprising than Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:27), a geriatric pregnancy provoking laughter (Gen. 18:12–15), or Jesus’ outrageous image of splinters and logs floating around in people’s eyeballs (Matt. 7:3–5)? The unexpected has always been part of divine communication. Whimsy breaks through the armor of moralism and doctrinaire thinking; it loosens the tight grip of seriousness that often suffocates sacred imagination.

Perhaps this is one reason folksy storytelling feels so delightful in sermons. Stories are elemental to human experience—we think, dream, and remember in narrative form. A story well told not only captures attention but also carries truth in a way that propositional statements rarely can. Facts may inform, but stories transform. They give flesh and blood to abstractions so that truth can breathe in the world.

When a story is told—unique, particular, perhaps even uncanny—there is always something universal beneath it. This fusion of the particular and the universal is what enchants. The universal allows us to recognize ourselves; the particular invites us into the wonder of another’s experience. It is this interplay that awakens our curiosity, that deeply human instinct to peer into another life and find ourselves there.

This is why I think of the stand-up comedy of Nate Bargatze. His style is self-deprecating—he casts himself as the most average man in America, though his comedic brilliance is far from ordinary. He tells stories from his life: simple tales about being a middle-aged man from Tennessee, with a peculiar background (his father was a professional magician, after all). Yet audiences from New York to Los Angeles find themselves in his stories. That’s his magic—his whimsy.

Bargatze’s humor is light and unassuming, seemingly devoid of grand seriousness. But like Seinfeld or Jean Shepherd, he finds the absurd in the ordinary, the profound in the mundane. He can sell dimwittedness through profound astuteness. He can poke fun at his culture, draw laughter from banality, and in doing so, quietly brush against deeply existential truths. His whimsy disarms—and in that disarmament, something sacred becomes possible.

Through delightful, novel, and hilarious anecdotes, Bargatze reflects upon common human feelings and experiences. There is relatability even if you have never gone through the exact same thing Bargatze has. Here is a Bargatze bit about married life. It is personal, yet relatable. It is charmingly approachable, yet it touches on deeper things:

Toothpaste. I will use it to what I think the average person uses it to. I don’t think I should feel muscles trying to get it out. I’m not going to have an iron on top of it. But she’ll do it more. So I know when I’m done with it, I give it to the hobo I married. She cuts it, gets it all out. I married an old man from the Depression, is who I married. She would have thrived during the Depression. I don’t think she would’ve known there was a Depression. A pizza party is my nightmare. I’ll have friends over for pizza. So I’ll be like, “All right, we gotta order pizza.” And she goes, “How much?” I go, “Order the most.” “I don’t want to run out of pizza in front of my friends.” She goes, “Just call and ask them.” I go, “I can’t call these 40-year-old dudes and just be like, ‘How much pizza do you think you’re gonna eat tonight?’” They have a real… They have a family. They work in a building, right now. You want me to call and be like, “You have a big lunch today?” “No, we’re trying to save money, so I need to know exactly how much pizza you’re going to eat in eight hours.

Partner dynamics—like how you squeeze the toothpaste or order pizza for friends—are simple, mundane experiences. A non-comedic mind might never notice the humor in them. Yet Bargatze, with his Middle Tennessee drawl and laid-back delivery, turns these ordinary anecdotes into universal observations: every person has a unique way of navigating life, and when those differences meet, the result is sometimes charming and sometimes frustrating. Meanwhile, the crowd laughs. They nod along. Husbands and wives point playfully at one another, each recognizing a familiar pattern of their own domestic bliss.

Using whimsy—and seeking its enchantment through storytelling—invites narrative styles far beyond mere anecdotes. Personally, I am drawn to folk tales, cultural parables, local legends, and traditional music. I am intrigued by the smaller, distinctive communities with strong traditions and mysteries: hobo culture, traveling carnivals, professional wrestling, Indigenous storytelling, improv troupes, and fishing lore. These worlds often make their way into my sermons as unexpected vehicles for grace. When stories from these unique corners of life are woven into sacred reflection, the listener stays alert—because the sacred message arrives from an unexpected direction. What is really happening here, I think, is that when the particular and the universal meet within such stories, we discover that grace permeates every ordinary sphere of existence.

It is delightfully whimsical when a speaker weaves together daily human experience, sacred teaching, and a “Jack Tale” from Appalachia—or a Hasidic parable, a moment from hip-hop history, a European fairy tale, or an Indigenous creation story. Each of these narrative forms conveys a basic human truth, and so they are relatable. Yet their strangeness and specificity charm the listener’s imagination. By drawing from diverse storytelling traditions, we reawaken wonder. Novelty tickles attention, yes—but more deeply, these stories reveal that something of the transcendent touches every corner of the world. The sacred is not confined to altars or pulpits; it hums within the particularities of all creation.

Sacred speech, however, often falls into repetitive and imitative patterns. Many sermons and testimonies lean heavily on moralistic formulas: someone strays down “the boulevard of broken dreams,” hits bottom, and then experiences redemption. These stories have their place—they are familiar, even serviceable—but they can become so predictable and extreme that they cease to touch the ordinary sins, small failures, and subtle graces that shape most of our lives.

This has been my experience with what I call “testimony culture.” In churches where personal testimonies are regularly shared, it is not uncommon to hear stories of shocking behavior followed by dramatic conversion. For those who have not battled addiction, rage, or despair, such accounts can alienate rather than inspire. They can even become performative—designed more for shock and spectacle than for genuine reflection. I once heard someone remark, “I don’t have a good testimony like that,” as though God’s grace were graded on a scale of scandal. When stories exist only to astonish, they risk becoming commodities rather than conduits of transformation.

Whimsical stories from unexpected places, however, have a way of bypassing that moralistic distance. A folk tale, a fable, or a story from an eccentric subculture can sneak up on you. Instead of allowing listeners to say, “That’s not me,” these stories quietly show that grace has something to say about every corner of the world—even your own corner. They charm, surprise, and disarm. In their whimsy lies a holy cunning: they awaken the imagination, shake us out of our moral complacency, and help us glimpse the world as it truly is—alive with sacred possibility.

I suppose it is that such a thing exists and is so popular. Here we have a fake competition, a scripted, athletic event that is bathed in melodrama and the audience is in on it, but cheers like it’s a sporting competition, nonetheless. It is the fandom that is remarkable to me. Fans are committed. They are immersed. They give themselves wholly to the drama unfolding in front of them. When I investigate wrestling’s history and better understand its methods, I see that wrestling’s appeal is twofold: spectacle and story. And in the case of wrestling, story is the spectacle! Wrestling has tapped into the same human interest of drama and spectacle that religious observance has tapped into, but it seems to me that wrestling is taking itself more seriously than the church in its effort to offer a spectacular story that touches lives.

When I was growing up, wrestling made sense. It was the 1980’s, and giant, muscular men doing over the top feats of strength was part of the cultural aesthetic. See any number of blockbuster action stars and their many cinematic franchises, such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme. And, at least as a child, people still argued about whether wrestling was real or fake. The whole spectacle was still shrouded by a secretive showman’s culture. “Babyfaces” were the good guys, “Heels,” the villains. They all had gimmicks to shape their character’s personality and story. They were committed to the storyline above all else. The term for this is “kayfabe.” Kayfabe might be concerned about the storyline’s insistence that one babyface is a sworn enemy of a particular heel, or that another babyface has a neck injury. Since those are elements of the storyline, and kayfabe means committing to the storyline at all cost, the wrestlers who are sworn enemies would never be seen fraternizing after the show at a restaurant, and the wrestler with the phony neck injury would never be caught alive without a neck brace on, even when they are off the clock. The wrestler’s sole commitment is to the storyline.

All these traditions and customs arose out of wrestling history with carnival sideshows and circuses. In an era when showmanship was everything, wrestlers learned to put on elaborate spectacles of strength and drama. Even the tradition of “selling” or acting like you are in intense pain by your opponent’s outlandish hold on your arm developed because early wrestlers tried to make their moves look real and dramatic to audience members sitting far away in some traveling circus tent. Being good at “selling” for another wrestler is a way you can help “put over” others, thus increasing their acclaim and popularity. All of these traditions arose out of devotion to the story being told in and around the ring.

Over time and evolution of the artform, new developments have taken place. In the old days, wrestling was dominated by regional fiefdoms, and stars represented those region’s sensibilities. But in the 1980’s a consolidation took place, and the top characters became known nationally. With WrestleMania, a spectacle meant to be the “sport’s” very own Superbowl, professional wrestling took on the character of having an annual season where stories can be shaped and told in a rhythm of annual high-water marks. Through the 1990’s the stories and characters reflected the darker and more cynical nature of the wider culture. And the stories told were added to with more pyrotechnics and technology. And throughout the decades, kayfabe has been declining. Wrestling being a rigged event used to be denied. Then it was ignored. At some point it was sold as real with a wink and a smile. By now, no one calls it a sport any longer. It has been rebranded as “sports entertainment.” And now the fans are in on the spectacle.

Recently, a docuseries has aired on Netflix called Unreal. It is the first ever behind the scenes, look at how the “sausage is made” production of its kind for professional wrestling. Now fans get to see how the “company,” as it is now referred, does all that they already knew it did: create the stories, promote the wrestlers, play on emotion, develop characters, honor legacies, and so much more. The thing that interests me is how many people it takes to put on the spectacle. The wrestlers are in the ring. They perform a pre-scripted and at times improvised match with the aid of producers. Then there are those producing the live show and the camera workers. To add to the spectacle and drama are the music, lighting, pyro-technic folks. The ring side announcers are there to act as narrators for the audience, and sometimes they are there to reflect the moods of the audience.

That is the most compelling fact I learned from the documentary. Those whose job it is to plan the drama feel it is necessary to take the audience’s feelings into account. If the crowd does not accept a character or storyline, the whole company can tell from the in-arena response. Yes, the producers will try to tell a story by manipulating emotions over time and story. But if such plans do not take, they will pivot in a new direction. Audience reaction is part of the storied spectacle. It is as if the mimetic desire that reverberates through the crowd is a character all unto itself. This makes the whole affair a living, breathing reality larger than those of the bookers and storytellers of the show.

As the documentary shows the wrestlers in their homes and in their training, and the bookers in the writer’s room, it even shows the pre-match gatherings of producers, you notice that the one thing that their shared efforts are in the service of is: story. It is the story being told that draws in the viewer. Even now, after realizing that the whole game is rigged, the crowds do not care. They appreciate the athleticism, and the showmanship, indeed. But what they turn up for in the whole affair is the spectacle of story. Like an outlandish daytime soap opera, viewers tune in and show up for living events en masse and freely give themselves over to the story. The stories, no matter how elaborate, far-fetched, or new, connect with audiences through their emotions, and doing so in the bespectacled fashion that it does grants a grandeur that surpasses the doldrums of the ordinary. In wrestling the characters and story-arcs are larger than life, everything is “more,” and vicariously fans feel a sense of their own lives being augmented for having taken the ride!

As a preacher I am enamored by the commitment to a story that shapes wrestling’s greatest gift. And as a curious person who has always been drawn to unique communities and identity formations – such as carnivals and its “carnies,” sideshows and the “barkers,” Hobos with their symbol systems, traveler communities and the like – the fact that professional wrestling is now a multi-billion-dollar industry built upon a spectacle makes me want to learn what we in the world of religion can replicate for our own ends. What is more, I think that the dual commitments to story and spectacle have everything to do with adding a little enchantment to another wise disenchanted world.

Part of our disenchantment is the loss of a story. When the world is seen as a space of brute fact, or to think of nature only as a set of stuff with no purpose, and there is no overarching story or purpose, then the sense of personal purpose, destiny, or higher end wanes. Into a world where our basic stories of good overcoming evil, or progress to the divine call have been eclipsed by materialistic and accidental causes and effects, having a story to live by can only come by the force of will—however one is discovered through family, culture, or religion, is simply made up to make us feel existentially meaningful. And in that story-less world wrestling offers stories that tend to fit into a grand overarching and somehow psychologically compelling story—good overcoming evil.

Spectacle too, rebuts the trends toward disenchantment. Spectacle, as its name suggests, is at least a visual display, or it is an eye-catching event, for public consumption. Spectacles can and do enchant the human mind through drawing the imagination away from mundane expectations, and they can overwhelm the senses as well as emotions to a feeling of sublime—too much to take in at any one moment. This evokes the further sense of “something more” in the world, which is just one step in charming us toward the delights of the world. It can also stir the heart toward connecting with world, and anything that humans want to connect with in personal ways is best spoken on of in the words of poetry much more so than reductive/materialist language. What could give us a more enchanted view than the words of poetry.

Of course, story-formed spectacles occur outside of professional wrestling. They have been successful in community harvest festivals, highly anticipated film releases (such as Hitchcock’s suspenseful marketing campaign prior to Psycho), mass gatherings for sport, etc. And a genealogy of such cultural expressions will no doubt discover that at the root of such phenomena one will, no doubt, discover humanity’s religious impulses, for example the ancient festivals of Dionysus, Jewish Passover, Carnivale, and Halloween.

My point is simple, and I suppose it’s rather obvious now. People who wish to share a sacred message in today’s milieu of disenchantment would do well to add storied spectacle to their communication to aid in proper re-enchantment. The good news is that the entirety of religious faith is built upon a story of profound purpose. And it is supported by many aspects of spectacle through its ritual, liturgy, and communal practice. The question for contemporary priests, pastors, liturgists, spiritual directors, retreat leaders, and so on is: are we telling the story well and are we honoring the “spectacles” at our disposal or are we cheapening them.

A clergy colleague of mine and I were at a denominational conference together. During a time of corporate worship, we participated as the liturgists over explained that as individuals we carry heaven burdens, and it is useful to have friends who can help us through all that weighs us down. Then, during corporate singing, we were instructed to an activity (I still do not know what we were to do, in actuality) where we all took knotted thread and tried to help the worshippers to our right and left in untying the knots. The whole point was to prove that we are capable of helping one another navigate problems. The congregation was a gathering of adult ministers, not children, I’d like to add.

Later in the same worship service, we were to receive the Eucharist. To add drama to the moment, we were led to communion stations around the sanctuary. In so doing, we ignored the central altarpiece of the sanctuary, and we favored make-shift stations around the sanctuary, where we were to gather as groups around tables – to mimic being at dinner tables with others – where we each got a loaf of bread and a personalized bottle of Welch’s grape juice. The stated intent was to decrease a sense of individualism in communion while evoking community and abundance. If that was the goal, I think the individual bottles of juice missed the mark, but I could see and understand the intent. Bottles were more ample and befitting of abundance than mini-shot glasses of juice, I suppose.

Toward the end of our worship together, I looked to my colleague, and I asked him, “why do you think we have to add to the liturgy of communion, don’t you think it is already dramatic, if we just take the liturgy seriously?” He agreed, “yeah it all feels a bit hokey. Like we are trying too hard.” “What did you think about the whole yarn thing,” he asked me. I did not respond with words; I just gave him a look of disinterest. Then he said, “I am not even sure I understand what that exercise was trying to communicate.” There was a lull in our conversation for a moment. He then broke the silence, “I don’t like arts and crafts worship.”

Arts and Crafts worship, now that is a funny!

I appreciate creativity. But here is an important question, will our creative additions improve the story we are telling? Will they add to or detract from the spectacle? This brings me back to professional wrestling. As much as the business has changed through time in terms of technology, humane working conditions, the addition of women to the roster, and so on, in the end nothing that is added will be accepted if it does not serve the story, and does not elevate its spectacle. Religious communicators will do well to take seriously the given story, stories, and spectacled liturgies/rituals given and received from of old for they have their own power to re-enchant the mind to God’s ever in-breaking into our midst. And then, think of other ways to add holy spectacles to communal expression such as festivals, expressions of art and performance, prophetic demonstrations, and so much more. But only if they elevate the spectacular story already being told.

People often lament that our world has become disenchanted. With the rise of modernity came a new map of reality—an enlightenment grid laid over the terrain of life, instructing us how to walk it. Where once people discerned gods in groves, fairies in fields, and holy places alive with presence, now there stretches only a mechanistic nature. The magic has drained away. The divinities have retreated. Holy places no longer thrum with transcendent spirit but are reduced, at best, to markers of history and memory.

The map we now use is guided by science and technology, with scientists and technologists serving as its new priests. As powerful and even thrilling as these tools can be, many quietly confess that the age of disenchantment has left them with a void—longing for meaning, weary of life’s monotony, and searching for some other form of enchantment. In truth, these modern maps have not only displaced but rivaled the church’s ancient vocation as the keeper of a sacred map of the world. And yet human yearning remains. Which is why the most compelling preaching in our day must be preaching that re-enchants—offering a vision of the world lit up with God’s presence, a sacred cartography that gives meaning to pilgrims on the journey.

New Models of enchantment

No matter how disenchanted our modern world has become, it appears that the yearning of most people is for some version of enchantment—a vision of something more than the material, mundane, and mechanistic. In what follows I offer an incomplete list of some examples (that have interested me) of modern attempts (knowingly and unknowingly) to reenchant the world or at least moments within the world to imbue existence with a sense of something—ietsism. I will break them apart into three categories: technological/digital, performative, and land based.

Techno/Digital:

-Pokemon GO- augmented reality game one could map onto the landscape of their daily lives.

-V.R. Headsets-immersive technology.

-Techno-Futurism

-Digital Avatars with Digital Identities/Crypto-currency.

Performative:

-Professional Wrestling

-Immersive Worlds and Theme Parks

-Dungeons and Dragons and other RPG’s

-Geocaching

Land-Based:

-Neo-Pagan and other Earth based Spiritualities

-Agrarianism and other alternative, place-based political visions.

-Culinary and food culture.

-Modern Day treasure hunting.

As I said, this is an incomplete list. The criteria for making the list were simple. First, I had to notice it, and two I found it compelling at one time or another. The main point that I would like to make is equally simple: the fact that we have so many means of re-enchanting everyday existence, or imbuing it with a sense of “something more” tells me those who are given to speaking sacred things need to restate and reframe the world in order to show that it is always, already enchanted. In what remains of this short essay, I will reflect on one way that religious speech, preaching, and spiritual leadership can extend sacred focus into mundane life to demonstrate the inseparability of the sacred from the so-called profane: liturgy in daily life.

Liturgy Everywhere

Over the last few decades, it has become vogue for some Christians to pattern their everyday lives more liturgically. Or at least the desire has been popular. And for good reason, this is one way to immerse oneself into the sacred narrative. Resources such as Every Moment Holy which is a collection of liturgies meant for each moment you can imagine: cooking dinner, decorating the Christmas tree, taking a walk, etc., and Salt of the Earth: A Christian Seasons Calendar which is a calendar not marked by months, but rather by liturgical seasons, marked with reflections, art, and seasonal colors are both designed to help communities mark time according to sacred rhythms as opposed to the mundane rhythms of our market culture. As challenging as it is to honestly pattern one’s life by a sacred calendar when all the world around you marks time differently, it is one way to show that one’s daily life intersects with the most holy and sacred truths.

By patterning one’s life-rhythms according to a sacred calendar, the holy is engaged through storytelling and ritual. It is a concrete way to allow one’s identity to be taken up into a story and shaped by its meaning. This is not merely done by placing a new calendar on your wall with different dates highlighted—it is rehearsing various stories each season as they are paired with personal and communal rituals, liturgies, and remembrances. This is what researcher Paul J. Zak would call immersion, which for him is the best way to cultivate happiness and has direct links to education, sales, and getting others to buy into your message.

In Zak’s book Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Sources of Happiness,⁴⁸ the author engages neuroscience to study what makes a message more memorable and meaningful. His team studied everything from commercials, films, superfans, churches, classrooms and board rooms. While noting that story, emotion, and a delicate balance of the novel with the comfortable or expected increase one’s chance of feeling “immersed” in a piece of communication, Zak points to the experience at a theme park as a high-water mark. At places like Disneyland, people line up for a ride. The story begins there. The line is never merely a line. Rather, it is a carefully curated experience of storytelling—it is atmospheric, and it helps to build the anticipation. There is also something added to the experience when you stand in line waiting with other people to share the same experience with. The total immersion of this experience raises its quality and its lasting impact on people’s memories.

Isn’t this exactly what religious communities aim do? We curate and tell stories as people enter a religious space. If we were as effective and technologically skilled as the theme parks, we would narrate and tell people what to expect on their way in, so as to prepare them and build their anticipation. The question for us always concerns the quality of how we use our tools for the sake of immersing our communities in the story.

The tools at hand include architecture, orders of worship, art, screens, incense, bells, and bands. Then, with a gathered community of souls, we participate in a story rehearsed together. At its best, worship becomes a multi-sensory experience—and that helps. The goal, of course, is that believers might experience a portion of the sacred story within the context of a larger season, one in which the same story is still being rehearsed but through a widening lens. Over the course of the year, these believers follow a narrative that weaves the seasons together into one great tapestry of meaning. All of it is designed to be so immersive that it becomes formational—helping believers live the sacred story not just on Sunday, but on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and beyond.

Corporate liturgical reflection can deepen the daily devotion of individuals. Likewise, when individuals and families shape their lives around the liturgical calendar, it can enrich their participation in corporate worship and help re-enchant the world around them. The priest-theologian Sergius Bulgakov reflected on the interplay of liturgy, the seasons, and daily living with remarkable insight. In his personal journal, he once wrote:

Holy Week and Christ’s Pascha are marvelous and manifest miracles of God that appear every year, like the stirring of waters at the pool of Siloam [John 9:7]. These are the highest mountains to which the long ascent of Great Lent leads, and their heights are not even felt once a person scales them. The soul is aflame and burns everything with a blazing fire in the marvelous days of Holy week, and in dying it experiences bliss, and in bliss the soul dies. And afterwards this flame suddenly and immediately transforms and turns into the paradisiacal, luminous, and gladdening white Paschal fire, neither scorching or burning. If people alien to the Church knew this, how they would be ignited, how their souls would begin to shine. And this manifest miracle of God’s grace is both salvific and merciful. Everything is transfigured, and this already just is the dawn of transfiguration; everything appears in a different light, full of grace and sanctified from within.⁴⁹

I suppose such an experience is there for the taking. The message has been shared. The table has been set. The priests and pastors have been praying, teaching, leading the hymns. Maybe everyone has bought their new calendars—alternatives to the workaday world. But are the people ready to receive the enchanting of our world by holy bursts of illumination? My guess is, sometimes. Just being liturgically sensitive is not enough.

Perhaps what stands in the way of sensing the enchantments that exist, even when we let liturgical life shape the mundane one, is preparation. Do preachers get up into the pulpit only having studied books, but having never prayed? Do lay people get out of bed and think about Christ only prior to the Eucharist, so busy are they with getting their kids out of the door, dressed, and to childcare? Training each of us to see and to expect an experience is paramount for moments of celebratory gathering, but it is also just as important for preparing oneself to begin the day. This is immersing oneself in grace. Bulgakov’s faith was intentional. Few had his life of piety. But hear from his own reflection on the way to church, found in his Spiritual Diary,

Today on my way to the liturgy, in the early morning, I walked through the streets of the city made fresh after the night. I thought: God provides this morning in His world. Everything within it lives in boundless breadth and depth. Innumerable creations: people and birds, fish in the deep and leeches on Everest, all creatures clean and unclean [cf. Lev. 11] -- everything sings praise to God this morning, and He fills everything and everywhere He is near... And He is near also to you, and you were created in this world as part of it, no less than the others were you counted worthy of existence; you are a citizen both of this earth and of these stars, and of all endless things, both great and small. And you can and therefore must attend to the song of the world bone to you from all sides, you must attend to the glory of God that fills heaven and earth [Isa. 6.3]. For here there is no other then or there; there is only the immovable here and now.⁵⁰

What preparatory contemplations! He is preparing his mind for the liturgy with the gifts of his theological mind. And preparation is part of an immersive experience. Recall waiting in line for a roller-coaster!

Bulgakov’s theological mind was shaped by his liturgical history/practice, and his practice was shaped by his theology. And these crosswinds worked on one another to help him experience the world as enchanted, sacred, and sacramental—where even a morning walk draws him into a divine experience.

All too often, our theologies are abstracted from our lived experience. And our liturgical reflections are cordoned off to the time set aside for corporate worship in the church sanctuary. It is easily forgotten that liturgy is a school for life and that theology touches everything. Through robust teaching on developing a contemplative practice that grants one the eyes to see a world teeming with sacred witness will the faithful notice once more that their day to day lives are not lived devoid of the sacred, but rather that their lives are made intelligible by the sacred. This is just one benefit of reframing liturgical drama within daily living. Once more, I am moved by the witness of Sergei Bulgakov

The Lord has given us a spiritual sword—prayer; yet how difficult it is for us to wield it when our hearts grow lazy and cold. Man hurries to quickly bypass prayer and to undertake the day’s work, he hurries away from prayer. And only when he overcomes this laziness of his heart, when his heart is ignited by prayer, does he see that he is hurrying to nowhere and for nothing, that there is nothing on earth more needful and sweet than prayer.⁵¹

Conclusion

If immersion in sacred story is indeed the key to re-enchantment, then the church must become a community that practices attention. Attention to time, to space, to story, and to one another. The sacred calendar, the Eucharistic table, and the gathered people are not static symbols but living tools of divine pedagogy—they train us to see differently. Yet to make this vision concrete, churches must teach, model, and structure communal life around these rhythms.

While this is typically practiced through holy days, seasons, liturgies, and lectionary readings, the church must act in ways that help individuals take these practices home with them. The church’s task, then, is not merely to preserve sacred stories but to help people inhabit them—to become living icons of the story they rehearse each week. In doing so, both church and world are re-enchanted, and the faithful learn to live, move, and breathe within the sacred drama that never ends. Allow me to conclude with three “off the wall” suggestions that will help advance the cause of immersion into the churches sacred practices:

1.) Like amusement park rides, perhaps the church should prepare material (digital, print, or audio) that narrates the journey from entering the church doors to the sanctuary, preparing people for what they are about to experience. Perhaps this video is sent out via email prior to worship, or it is playing on loop in gathering spaces outside of the sanctuary. How often are we prepared for worship? Most people contend with the busyness of life all the way through until the start of worship. Immersive preparation can pave the way for the liturgy to do its work.

2.) Churches could give liturgies and prayers to families to participate in before they leave their homes and go about their day. These can be patterned to the liturgical calendar and be one more way of establishing an alternative way of experiencing time.

Chapter 4 of this text is lovingly called “Barefoot,” and it begins with some rather fundamental theological notions, yet they are ones that everyone needs (constant) reminding about. “God is mystery—that should be the first and last sentence of any theology,” writes Halík. Whoever God is, God is the one that is always beyond the grasp of human thinking and possession—this is true by definition according to the likes of no less a figure than St. Anselm.

Halík goes on “take care not to think for even a moment that you have gained sufficient insight into His mystery; the most you can hope for is to touch Him lightly from behind, like the hemorrhaging woman touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak.” Indeed, Halík speaks of God as the psalmists do — “cloud and darkness surround him”— therefore, “faith and atheism are two views of that reality—the hiddenness of God, His transcendence, and His impenetrable mystery; they are two possible interpretations of the same reality, seen from two opposite sides.” For him, faith and unbelief share a close proximity—and that is one reason his approach to sharing Christian faith with those unbelievers who are curious, interested, open, and “on the margins” is so promising. To be plain, Halík’s approach is promising because, like Christ, it enters the world of people with grace, and through inhabiting the shared space it holds the possibility of transformation.

Again, Halík thinks of many who profess atheism, doubt, skepticism, and other affiliated words on the spectrum between the two opposing poles, disciple and “master of suspicion,” as Zacchaeus-types. Like Zacchaeus, many of us moderns who doubt are still curious, or maybe more, maybe we have a yearning or even a unexplainable attraction to the subject of belief. Modern Zacchaeus types are like their biblical namesake, they remain a bit distant and out of the fray. But make no mistake, they are watching and listening. The real question that Halík is asking of preachers, priests, theologians, and all people of belief is do we know how to call up to them and do we know how to walk with them in light of their searching hearts?

In this chapter, “Barefoot,” Halík reminds us that Christianity is in fact a religion of paradoxes, in part because the “the Bible is a book of paradoxes.” He writes, “the Bible’s paradoxes consists of two assertions that need to be treated with enormous caution, so that one gently counterbalances the other: ‘God is an impenetrable mystery’ (He dwells in un-approachable light)—but also: God and man are alike (God created man in his own image).”

The second assertion reminds us that any pilgrim searching for God can see something of God in another person, be they saint, sinner, believer, or atheist, etc. And it also reminds us that it is faithful to move toward others, to share space with them, and to walk humbly along their path. Doing so may be said to be “incarnational” or even merely graceful. But it is more than that, because it also deeply affirms the fact that human uncertainty is one way that we express our divine image. Here is how Halík puts it, “And so the question naturally arises: isn’t Zacchaeus (and I’m sure we’ve realized that he is our image, and if not of all of us, at least many of us)—that hidden, yet watchful human being—also in some way a mirror, a likeness, a picture of God—i.e., a hidden, yet watchful God?” What a fascinating observation to make! What is so helpful about all of this is that it reminds us of the truth we often do not share with the world: our belief is not so simple and constant, rather it waxes and wanes, grows and weakens, for we never and in no way can fully grasp God. And by being reminded of this, we can better speak to, and thus walk with those who appear far away from the comfort of the pews.

Halík’s first assertion, to remind us, is that God is mysterious and hidden, and though God makes Himself known to us in certain ways and means, we never have full access to God. He adds that we often tend to privatize God (albeit accidently) with the genitive case: our God! Over time I believe that such language reaches verbal satiation, and we no longer parse out the meaning—or maybe what happens is that we slip into the unstated (though felt) delusion that God belongs to us, rather than it being us who belongs to God. Halík suggests thinking along with a theologian Joseph Moingt who “urges us to let God go! That is to say: Let Him go to others! Let us discover that he is not simply ‘the God of our fathers,’ our inherited property, but also the ‘God of others.' Only then will we discover that he is the on universal God, and not a particular deity among the deities of the Chaldean Empire; precisely because He is the one universal God, He is not a God on which we could have a monopoly.”

Too much of Christian faith, according to Halík is an inherited “faith of our fathers” sort of thing, and sometimes it gets stuffed into a box of tradition, nation, and creed. Thus it becomes one object among other objects. He calls this “inherited property.” When faith is inherited it becomes something to safeguard to the ever unchanging dictates of traditionalism (we have always done it that way). Rather, Halík like Moingt see a NT faith that was never tied to a nation or even a family, rather it was a pilgrim faith. Ever on the move. learning new languages, devoid of arrogant certainty, Christian faith traditionally (not traditionalism) professed that “God is always greater, semper maior…God is also the God of others—including seekers and those who don’t know Him. Yes, Go dis above all the God of seekers, of people on the journey.” One of my favorite paragraphs from Halík reads as follows:

If we profess the God of Abraham—and not some abstract philosophical concept of a vague ‘supreme being’ who might appeal to everybody—we prove our faithfulness, not by clinging to a specific tradition of the past, but, like Abraham, by entering new territory. ‘Our’ God is a pilgrim God, the God of the eternal exodus, who leads us out of the homes and homelands even though we would prefer to settle in them and fortify them—and also enclose Him in our borders, in the confines of our notions, concepts, traditions, and creeds.

Given all that Halík has said theologically about God, and humanity, he offers a few poignant spiritual comments. He declares that God is watchful, and that He is open to our openness—in fact, God is in our openness. Therefore, Halík challenges us all to be in the attitude of watchful seeking, for in that openness we may not only find God, we might learn that we are becoming like God in the very act. Further:

our openness toward others is our openness toward God, because through Christ, God shows solidarity with others—and our openness toward God and our neighbor is God’s openness toward us and the world, because through Christ (through the mystery of the Incarnation) God shows solidarity with us and seeks to be present in the world through our testimony of love.

All of this means we as believers are required to sit down with unbelievers, and to truly enter their world. We need to have patience and care as we listen. We need to be bold not to have all the answers ready and at hand—if for no other reason than we do not have all the answers. In a world where God is not fully on display, we must learn solidarity with those who are still seeking God. This is not a place of weakness, but rather one of strength. How are we to walk with these Zacchaeus types, and in what matter will we share solidarity with them on their path of questing, seeking, and looking? For Halík the answer is simple, yet profound: Barefoot. We walk barefooted, because we walk humbly with them. For a world of seeking—there is nothing more traumatizing to the faith than a triumphalist, know it all, win at all cost gospel!

This substack is interested in how to speak the sacred in a seemingly secular milieu (tips, ideas, theories, strategies, inspirations, musings, etc.). I think much of what Rabbi Berg says addresses the contemporary world’s need for something more. When you listen, think of his language of “life curriculum,” “getting unstuck,” values, and meaning.

Enjoy:

Documentaries:

-Taylor Swift V. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood- These two documentaries made and presented side by side as companion pieces are meant to show two sides of an argument. Each argument is presented in a clear and compelling way. In fact, it is easy to take the perspective of each documentary thinking you agree with its conclusions completely, only to flip flop opinions when you watch its twin. This new artefact of the Taylor Swift Industrial Complex is a helpful exercise in thinking through how we engage arguments and points of view and just how easily swayed we may be. It is also an interesting insight into the current state of the music industry and the tip top reaches of global fame!

-Remembering Gene Wilder- This guy was as good a person as he was an entertainer. I was heartened by his journey and by his deep friendships.

-Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story- Tears. So many tears. This film moved me, challenged me, and forced me into news paradigms of thinking about disability. Plus there is so much there about his friendship with Robin Williams (his death actually got to me in a way I could not have anticipated), and it is all so brilliant.

-Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy- This and other such pieces are much needed for our contemporary conversation about faith, politics, and public witness. Pair this with another really great read from my 2024 reading, Baptizing America: How Mainline Christianity Helped Build Nationalism by Beau Underwood and Brian Kaylor. No, Christian Nationalism does not only belong to Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, or any other version of center-right Christianity!

-Greatest Night in Pop- We are the World, remember that one? Quincy Jones was a champ for wrangling all those egos! #Leadership! #Checkyouregoatthedoor

-Will and Harper- I cannot explain this one well enough to justify words. It strengthened my empathy muscle, and made me simply bear witness to another’s journey.

-Martha- Martha Stewart behind the scenes, behind the icon, behind it all! So interesting.

-Call Me Ted- I did not know I needed this docu series on Ted Turner, but I did. I needed to see an icon who I always imagine as “On TOP” going through his life and betting, losing, and risking everything along the way!

-Limitless- Chris Hemsworth focusing on how to age well—hmmm, well maybe. Chris Hemsworth working with doctors, “experts” on aging/vitality, and pop-science information to help us thinking about vitality—yea, maybe tomorrow. Chris Hemsworth putting these ideas together in extreme challenges that inspire, and oh yes, it is filmed by the great Darren Aronofsky (The Whale, Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain to name a few…)—YES PLEASE! When I was recovering from my liver transplant, this docu series inspired me and pushed me to push harder and in better ways for overall health. Yes, Peter Attia is involved and that means there is some possible critique with health/longevity claims and cost for care….but there’s some really great stuff in there too!

**There are more, no doubt. But as I sit in my study on the final nights of Christmastide, these are the ones that rise to the top—watch at your discretion, but in all things be open to letting stories broaden your ability to understand humanity, tell better stories, and expand your world.

Books:

-The End of Theological Education by Ted Smith- This book is a must read for theological educators, clergy, and scholars. Ted’s work pairs well next to Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and Andy Root’s application of Taylor in his incredible trilogy: Ministry in a Secular Age. Smith’s work is more data driven and less philosophical in tone than Taylor’s. His uses sociological reflection to think through the altering landscape of religiosity. It helps us to see what was, is, and where theological education is going; and broad church observance is focused upon as well.

-Camping With Kierkegaard: Faithfulness as a Way of Life by J. Aaron Simmons- This book takes a plain spoken approach to existential philosophy and shows that great ideas should be lived….especially given your finitude (surprise, you are going to die, so are you ok with how you are living?). It is moving especially after we all languished during a global pandemic, Simmons himself, used this book to exorcise some “get ahead,” workaday demons out of his philosophical life coming out of the pandemic….it is a refreshing read.

-The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride- Place-based storytelling at its best! Thinking through cultural dynamics, social conditions, compassion, and the mystery of humanity’s inner life. This is a book where I can hear the characters speak in my head as I read it!

-A Course Called Scotland: Searching the Home of Golf for the Secrets to Its Game by Tom Coyne- Golf, pilgrimage, memoir…good stuff for me!

-The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt- Think through data and Haidt’s ideas on technology, screen time, and phone usage for kids. There is good stuff here, but there is also a lot to ask deeper questions about.

-The Dark Night of the Soul by Gerald May- Spiritual Direction and Psychology meet ancient spirituality!

-The Lives We Actually Have by Kate Bowler- 100 honest blessings and prayers!

-The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by: Jeffery Rosen- Self Government requires Self Mastery…need I say more?

-Enchiridion by Epictetus

-A Thousand Mornings: Poems by Mary Oliver

-The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom by L.S. Dugdale- Thinking with a hospice care chaplain about dying, acceptance, memento mori, and ancient wisdom.

-The Prophet by Khalil Gibran- the bits about sorrow and joy being held together are exceptionally poignant, true, and profound.

-The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism by Ben Myers

-The Apostles’ Creed: For Today by Justo Gonzalez

-Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

-Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness by Paul Zak- This will make you want to tell better stories, and think more about the experiences you curate for others!

-Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living by Krista Tippett- This book makes me want to ask, “what kind of world do we want to build together?” It also makes me ask how spirituality can be a tool for the common good…and actually, I have tried to follow that question into creating a podcast of my own: Complex Creatures.

-Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to Women of the Torah and the Throne by Wilda C. Gafney- This text explodes open well known texts with deeper meaning. Simply put, it woke me up from many a familiar and dogmatic slumber!

-The Conquest of Cool: Business, Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism by: Thomas Frank- This is a practical look at the development of coolness and youth culture as it was exploited by advertising giants. Pairs well with the “age of authenticity” sections in Charles Taylor’s work on Secularity!

-Being the Body of Christ in the Age of Management by Lyndon Shakespeare- If you need deep theology and philosophy to expose you to the why the “church is a business” language and practice is itself bad theology, then read this.

-Having Nothing and Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places by Mike Mather

-The Way of Zen by Alan Watts

-Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan

-Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World by Serene Jones- I am currently obsessed with theological memoir and other examples of lived theology…as another theological memoirist, Stanley Hauerwas says, “we are story formed creatures” thus it makes sense to do theology within the bounds of a story, narrative, memory and experience.

…Check back later for other best of 24’ artefacts that have shaped my thinking, communicating, and ideas!

Halík’s central story for reading the ministry of Jesus is the story of Zacchaeus half-hidden away up a tree, apart from the crowds, and timid to step into the circle of attention. It is in the center of attention where “hangers on” and eager disciples (perhaps another way of calling them is: Johnny Come Lately, or something funnier) try to chum up next to Jesus. This is the shape of typically religiosity—people impressed by Jesus yet who are all too eager to simplify, codify, legalize, and institutionalize through exclusion the ways one is permitted to love and follow Jesus. But as Halík reminds us, “Jesus’s entire ministry. His teachings and His actions, could be characterized using Nietzsche’s expression ‘reevaluating values (15).” Thus the ENTRE sermon of the Mount, for which Halík puts one of its phrases in his own words, Blessed are you on the fringes, for you shall be at the center, at the heart! And according to Halík this is what Jesus did in summary! Another way of saying this is to simply say that Jesus included marginalized and unpredictable types at His table and there He, as host, sat amongst all!

Part of what concerns Halík is how we think about and thus how we treat those who are on the margins of faith. While he is open to discussing those on the fringes of society due to injustice, as he does with his glosses over liberation theology, his primary interest is in those who are on the margins because of doubt, perpetual seeking, uncertainty, or simply those who find faith challenging. Halík is concerned with what many call secularity. The first approach to all such folks is patterned by Jesus and introduced above: solidarity. There is no communication, teaching, service, nor is there any ministry, or even proper being human without first being with folks who are different than you! The second approach, and one which will serve pastors, priests, teachers, spiritual directors, evangelists, and indeed, every one of faith and good will is the approach of the spirit of seeking. And this does not simply mean that we are able to “notice” the spirit of seeking where it occurs—we must be and inhabit the act of seeking in our own lives.

Halík praises “the beginner’s mind” as it has been taught in Eastern traditions, which is akin to the many post-Ted Lasso meme’s that now suggest curiosity over judgment:

Let the people say: Amen! Halík writes further, “and our closeness to the seekers ought also to teach us openness; we don’t have to solely think about having to teach and edify them—we can also learn a great deal from them (18).” Such an approach pushes back against the temptations for what he calls “baroque triumphalism” which results in arrogance and ultimately a limit to our own growth and transformation. “If we can understand,” says Halík, “or distant God—including those who have been led to reject religion because of that experience—it can help us achieve a more mature form of faith than the naive and vulgar theism that is rightly criticized by atheists (20).”

Ultimately, solidarity with seekers, as Halík describes it can be an incredibly healthy thing for the faithful, spiritually! I write this reflection in the wake of a conversation with my wife. She told me a story about an interaction my daughter had with one of the faithful in our world. My daughter said she wanted to see the new film Wicked but we have not yet taken her. My wife overheard this dear one say to our daughter, “and your mom is right not to take you. You do not need wicked things in your life,” we are at this point unsure whether or not this person knew of the musical, film, or books, “as a Christian you need to be on guard about what ideas you put into your head,” this person asserted to our daughter. “Oh no,” my daughter replied, “Wicked is about,” and then she went on to explain the narrative’s meaning and her past engagement with it and so on. But her explanation fell on deaf ears. My daughter (and my wife) thankfully find themselves following Halík’s wisdom—they are not closed off to seekers, questions, expressions of the heart, or even those who are not firmly in the center of attention…sidling up to Christ! And that openness not only offers its own pedagogy in making their faith stronger, richer, more compelling, but it is also the best chance that they will be able to call those in the margins to find a seat at heart of the table, right next to Christ, the host!

That is his term — rooted and patterned after the character from St. Luke’s Gospel who hides up in a tree until addressed by Jesus — for those souls that are on the margins, or who as he says, “keeps their distance.” Halík muses, “most of those people did not choose their place ‘on the margins’ voluntarily. It could well be that some of them are also reticent because—like Zaccheus—they are all too aware that their own house is not in order, and they realize, or at least suspect, that changes need to be made in their own lives. Maybe, unlike the unfortunate person in one of Jesus’ parables, they realize they are not properly attired for the wedding for the wedding and therefore cannot take a seat among the guests of honor at the wedding feast (Patience with God, 5-6).” And, importantly, Halík notes that they are “still on the journey.”

That is very important to remember. It is an easy temptation for people of spiritual and religious conviction to assign labels when thinking of others: sheep over there and goats over here. Importantly this sorting has little to do with faithfulness, ethics, or issues of justice; no, all to often it has to do with belief as cognitive assent or at least verbal affirmation. But there are all sorts of modern Zacchaeus’s out there. They are on the margins because they have doubt and have not come to accept doubt as faith’s bedfellow. They keep their distance, because they have yet to accept themselves as they might have heard that God accepts them, so they still live under the weight of shame—they do not feel welcome. If they can’t accept themselves, then how is it that the community can accept them? This is an enormous existential fear. Sometimes these folks are still on their journey, intellectually. They understand many points of faith, and maybe are drawn to them, but have difficulty squaring them with other affirmations of belief. These modern day Zacchaeus’s live in the age of “authenticity,” secularity, cynicism, yet they are still looking for something more!

What Halík reminds us of, and what is so important to remember is that these souls are STILL ON A JOURNEY, and perhaps they are, like Zacchaeus, quietly watching and are waiting to be addressed. If it is your sense that you are called to preach, proclaim, teach, instruct, speak the sacred, direct spiritually, or what have you, then how will you go about addressing those who remain half in the shadows, on the margins, or who “stay back” while the faithful crowd around? There are a few ways to go about it:

1.) You must know those who need to be addressed. Hence, you must spend time with people, learning their stories, and sharing their life. Without this, you run the risk of addressing these modern Zacchaeus’s in overly confident ways that do damage. You can come off as arrogant. You can be dismissive of their questions. You might present answers to questions that NO ONE is asking—too much contemporary preaching does this, if I am frank. You can create new questions without ever having learned of the first ones. You could fumble over the emotional world’s of these soul’s inner lives and cause damage in the long run.

So, it is important to be patient with their doubt. It is important to address them on the journey as Jesus did. It is paramount to listen, engage, and share in the journey together. The point, after all, is transformation not verbal agreement.

2.) Embrace, do not eschew mystery. Halík writes, “truth happens in the course of dialogue. There is always a temptation to allow our answers to bring to an end the process of searching, as if the topic of the conversation was a problem that has now been solved. But when a fresh question arrives, the unexhausted depths of mystery who through once more. Let is be said over and over again: faith is not a question of problems but of mystery, so we must never abandon the ath of seeking and asking. Yes, in seeking Zacchaeus we must often shift from problems to mystery, from apparently final answers back to infinite questions (Patience with God, 7).” Doubt is not an enemy of faith, certainty is! Being a seeker is not something Jesus discourages, it is overly dogmatic and severe conviction. We must lean into mystery so we can learn into a message and life of perpetual seeking: for that is where the divine is encountered.

3.) Find new ways of sharing the message. The days of over-confident, triumphalist, authoritarian, and entertainment driven religious speech SHOULD be over. Let us not get into all of the abuses that have come about because of these sorts of approaches to the holy. But let’s remember that we are increasing in an age of secularity, and skepticism not to mention cynicism over religious institutions. Our speaking must be more creative as it invites people into an experience rather than merely transacts knowledge.

Be patient friends. Walk humbly and gently with others. And be a seeker for the seekers!

I agree with atheists on many things, often on almost everything— except for their belief that God doesn’t exist.

…With certain kinds of atheists I share a sense of God’s absence from the world. However, I regard their interpretation of this feeling as too hasty as an expression of impatience. I am also often oppress by God’s silence and sense of remoteness (From the Introduction of Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us).

How can you not be interested in that? I mean, Halík admits that he “gets” or understands, agrees even, with much that atheism asserts or at least feels. Simultaneously however, is his full-throated diagnosis that what separates people of un-belief from believers is an issue of patience. That, to me, sounds simple enough to be right, yet it calls us to read further to find out more fully what he means. And I intend to do that reflecting here. Over the next weeks, I will quote from, reflect on, and otherwise do my best to engage Halík’s ideas on faith, belief, doubt, atheism, and patience through the above quoted book, in particular. My purpose will be to exercise thinking in a Halík-ian sense, but more so to challenge my own thinking and better my own seeking as I too attempt to maintain faith in a world that appears to grow less believing all the time.

To begin this journey, I will quote Halík again from the introduction:

Hardly anything points toward God and calls as urgently for God as the experience of His absence. This experience is capable of leading some to “indict God” and eventually reject faith. There exist, however, particularly in the mystical tradition, many other interpretations of that absence, and other ways of coming to terms with it. Without the painful experience of a “world without God,” it is hard for us to grasp the meaning of religious seeking, as well as everything we want to say about “patience with God” and its three aspects—faith, hope, and love.

I’m convinced that a mature faith must incorporate those experiences that some call the “death of God” or —less dramatically—God’s silence, although it is necessary to subject such experiences to inner reflection, and also undergo and overcome them honestly, not in a superficial manner. I am not saying to atheists that they are wrong, but that they lack patience. I am saying to them that their truth is an incomplete truth.

Sometimes we forget that we are all seekers. Even for those who have been baptized, catechized, raised in the church, or those who have had dramatic conversion experiences, each in their own way is ever seeking God. For Halík, there is another assumption that many might overlook: everyone at one time or another will sense or feel or imagine that God is absent. While this is a painful experience, as evidence by how many reject God after such periods, they are also times that accelerate growth, for they produce in the seeker urgency, interest, sensitivity, and an ever watchfulness always on the lookout for God (James 4:8; Jer. 29:13; Matthew 6:33; Is 55:6).

What is the difference between a person who senses God’s absence and responds by leaving faith behind and another sensing the same absence yet responds by more ardent searching or perhaps more deeply become friends with the sense of absence through acceptance and embrace? For Halík it is patience. Perhaps it is as simple as that. Like most simple things, there is a complexity and subtlety that make the simplicity truthful or explanatory. Patience is nothing if not profound.

And in the mystical tradition that Halík briefly mentions there has been much ink spilled over the notions of divine absence (John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux) and the very raw experiences of saints in search for God who appears far off, quiet, and even the notion of abandonment. There’s also much work done on spiritual seeking and not knowing (The Cloud of Unknowing, De Docta Ignorantia “On Learned Ignorance,” and the examples of apophatic theology, etc.) or at least not knowing as though we can possess knowledge and fully explain things of God—indeed, there is much to be learned to accepting that God is beyond knowing, reason, experience, and so on. And as prevalent as these mystical approaches to God are throughout the great tradition, they do seem strange to many contemporary considerations of religious belief.

Contemporary religious belief is paired closely to propositional knowledge or truth claims. Further, it is the case, at least in much of American Christianity, that faith is made out to be equal to dogmatic confession more so than about holy living, communal celebration, or ecstatic worship. This is expressed when people are “de-fellowshiped” over differences in belief on doctrine or social issues rather than in examples of sin or misdeed. Simply, in some circles, if you do not say the “right” or accepted idea surrounding gay marriage, then you run the risk of being asked to leave, though you may not be asked to leave, and indeed you might even be forgiven if you are caught and appear repentant after having an extra-marital affair, etc. In this environment, Halík reminds us all that there is also a rich tradition in Christian faith that not only welcomes feelings of doubt, but also sees them as tools in one’s own journey of seeking—if you are patient enough to stay the course.

This all reminds me of a time I shared with my own spiritual director. I felt and had reported over the previous many months, that I have been undergoing a steady state of spiritual transformation and growth. I was grateful for sensing God’s presence in my life and I was even proud of my maturation. So, it was a shock, even to me, when he asked, “where have you noticed God recently,” and my answer to him was, “nowhere really.” I sat quietly. We sat quietly, together. And we made room for God to speak, or at least for my thoughts to flow. “I don’t know. I mean, I do not doubt God. I know God is around,” I said. “Maybe I even see a glimpse of God far away at times,” I imagined out loud. But then I continued, “I just don’t sense God with or even speaking to me.” I wondered if that sentiment was going to get me a scolding! Ah, you can take the boy out of the midwest but not the midwest out of the boy—we are always trying to be “good boys!” My director said, “that is ok, maybe the lesson is that you need to detach, or rather, maybe God is helping you to detach.”

I understood detaching from things like money, possessions, needing to be liked, and all that. But I could not quite square my mind with detaching from God. Isn’t God the one thing (person) you are to never let go of? But my soul friend continued, “you do not need to let go of God, you just need to learn to let go of your NEED to feel God at every moment. Do not let your feelings take the place of the ultimate in your mind…even your devotion can become an idol.”

The feeling of God’s absence can be a gift, if you are patient to stick with it. If you have that, it will lead you to deeper relationship with God. One way to be a person or remain a person of faith in an age of secularity, church decline, and many other options vying for your adoration is to remember that your feelings do not account for all of reality—at best they are data points. The best thing that data points do is help us make better and more informed choices. The choice I am trying to make whether I feel God’s radiance around me or not, is patience—and it in patience, even when touched by doubt, that I will develop a greater relationship with the divine! At least that is the lesson I am learning from my friend and the work of Tomáš Halík.

That is not the way I had hoped to wake up and begin the day. My first thought was a grumpy one. Don’t Trump supporters — who are supposed to be conservative — know that one of the most expensive costs in the world of reinsurance (insurers who insure the major insurance companies) is climate change related disasters: extreme draught, flooding, tornadic activity, hurricanes—all caused (as is accepted by the industry) by climate change. I doubled down in my pre-dawn shadow boxing, “don’t these people know that even the military considers climate change to be one of the leading national security risks?” I mean, the state department thinks along these lines, and as a result our armed forces have plans or deep thinking about climate change implications, national security, a porous border, mass migration, and so on. In my tired, barely waking brain, I thought, “are not conservatives supposed to be mindful and supportive of the military?” And perhaps among my less discerning questions—shouldn’t a conservative leadership wish to conserve things like natural resources…and life?

After my grumpy fog was lifted by the help of much needed caffeine and a few well timed hugs from my kids, I remembered that this Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent. This all means that Thanksgiving is this week, which is a welcome and joyful distraction from what seems like a topsy-turvy world. It also means that Christmas is coming. Cue the bells, yay! I love to celebrate, so that is something I welcome too. Yet, I know all to well, that it is never good to skip over Advent. And Advent marks a time where we are collectively called to lean into the strangeness of our times. We are challenged to live amidst memory and expectation, as we wade in waters that don’t make sense with our highest ideals, dreams, wishes, and better—our hopes.

So, I looked at the Advent readings for this week. And there it was, looking back at me like red ink on a pop-quiz: Luke 21: 25-36. In the reading, there is no prophecy from the first testament. There is no angelic visitation. And there is certainly no pastoral image of expectation and longing. No, this week’s Gospel reading has a grown up Jesus telling his people to be on the lookout for a topsy-turvy, nay a violent and destructive world. This is hardly good news. Astute readers of the text will no doubt remind you that Jesus is speaking about things that will politically, and imperialistically take place in their lifetimes. Thus, his warning is a bit of grace or mercy extended to those whom Jesus loves. Yet, observers also note the context that there are bits and notes here about Jesus’ second coming, or the “second advent;” this is when Jesus will come in and finalize the ending of an old age, mark a new one, and usher in the finished product of the work of his ministry in Galilee. Some call this a Kingdom, others call it heaven, still some may just call it restoration. Whatever you call it, it is a time of hope.

It is hard to be hopeful when you wake up to the news everyday. And I really do not care who is in charge or what ideology has taken its sway over our culture. The world is topsy-turvy, it is violent and strange, and it is hard to imagine a second advent. It is tempting to simply memorialize and sentimentalize the first one. In light of this, I am thankful for the strange nature of Luke’s report in chapter 21—because it helps to make sense of these strange days that seem to make claim over my life’s narrative. Indeed, I like you, am a creature of these times, of this age! The message is hopeful, though. No matter how strange or incomprehensible, or even maddening the world appears, be on the lookout, for the object of our hope is still to come. The object of our hope is not in all of our legislating, voting, planning, coups, undermining, outflanking, saving, spending, branding, or bombing, it is in God’s ever in breaking into our midst. It is a light on the horizon. Hope comes at the unraveling of one age and the birth of the next.

We live in strange times, and Advent is a strange time. I guess we are right where we are supposed to be. Now what do you do with the times you have been given to live in?