This past Sunday, Maddie preached about practicing the way of love when we mess up by looking at the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

She talked about how challenging it can be to show love to others when we mess up because we're filled with shame.

She then took a look at Henri Nouwen's best-selling book, "The Return of the Prodigal Son" and explored how Nouwen's journey with the Parable of the Prodigal Son might help us navigate situations where we mess up. Nouwen, over the course of his journey, realizes that he is both the younger son in the parable as well as the older son, but discovers that he is called to try, as best he can, to be the father. Similarly, when we mess up, it can help to remember that we are both the younger son in the parable, who God will always welcome home, as well as the older son, who needs to examine his own shame and resentment. Once we are secure in the knowledge of God's love and are able to take an honest inventory of what we might do better in the better, we can then try, like Nouwen, to be like the father in the story and extend God's grace to others who need it too.

This week's resource of the week is the sequel to Nouwen's "Return of the Prodigal Son."

In Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen revisits this beloved story through the lens of his own struggles with loneliness, resentment, depression, and belonging. Drawn from workshops and unpublished reflections written near the end of his life, the book is more personal and autobiographical than its predecessor. Rather than focusing primarily on Rembrandt's famous painting, Nouwen reflects on his own journey from the prestige of academia to life in the L'Arche community, and the painful realization that many of the elder brother's resentments lived within him as well.
One of the book's central insights is that gratitude is the antidote to resentment. The elder brother becomes trapped in a world of comparison, fairness, and earning, while the father invites him into a world shaped by grace. Nouwen argues that true homecoming requires not only accepting God's unconditional love for ourselves, but also learning to celebrate that same love when it is extended to others.

If Sunday's sermon resonated with you, Home Tonight offers a thoughtful companion for anyone learning how to move beyond shame, receive grace, and practice love after they've made a mistake.

Also, the quotes and resources included below may be helpful you as you explore truth-telling as a spiritual practice. Give them a look!

Cole Arthur Riley:

• "Truth telling is a liberation practice." (@BlackLiturgies)
• “If we have any interest in representing a liberating spirituality, we must adopt a spiritual psyche whose deepest concern is not enlightenment or education but doing our best at telling the truth.” (This Here Flesh)
• "I’ve accepted that the whole of my life will be a pilgrimage toward the sound of the genuine in me. This may sound troubling to those who’ve been conditioned to believe that our journey is to God and God alone, but I say the two paths are one. My journey to the truth of God cannot be parsed from my journey to the truth of who I am. A fidelity to the true self is a fidelity to truth. I won’t apologize for this." (This Here Flesh)

James Baldwin

• “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”
• “We know, in the case of the person, that whoever cannot tell himself the truth about his past is trapped in it, is immobilized in the prison of his undiscovered self. This is also true of nations. We know how a person, in such a paralysis, is unable to assess either his weaknesses or his strengths, and how frequently indeed he mistakes one for the other.”
• “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”

bell hooks

• “Commitment to truth telling lays the groundwork for the openness and honesty that is the heartbeat of love. When we see ourselves as we truly are and accept ourselves, we build the necessary foundation for self-love.”
• “To be loving we willingly hear each other's truth and, most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.” (All About Love: New Visions)
• “The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want to be.” (All About Love: New Visions)
  

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"Truth and Reconciliation" by Desmond Tutu

"Love Speaks the Truth" by Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis for the Center for Action and Contemplation

"Why the Faithful Might Need a Complaints Department" by Kate Bowler

"On Living with Regret" by Kate Bowler

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
About the book:
Like millions of her millennial peers, Rachel Held Evans didn't want to go to church anymore. The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals—to her, it was beginning to feel like church culture was too far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing Evans back to church. Evans found herself wanting to better understand the church and find her place within it, so she set out on a new adventure. Within the pages of Searching for Sunday, Evans catalogs her journey as she loves, leaves, and finds the church once again. Evans tells the story of her faith through the lens of seven sacraments of the Catholic church—baptism, confession, holy orders, communion, confirmation, the anointing of the sick, and marriage—to teach us the essential truths about what she's learned along the way, including:

• Faith isn't just meant to be believed, it's meant to be lived and shared in community
• Christianity isn't a kingdom for the worthy—it's a kingdom for the hungry, the broken, and the imperfect
• The countless and beautiful ways that God shows up in the ordinary parts of our daily lives

Searching for Sunday will help you unpack the messiness of community, teaching us that by overcoming our cynicism, we can all find hope, grace, love, and, somewhere in between, church.

About the author:
Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) was the New York Times bestselling author of Inspired, Searching for Sunday, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and Faith Unraveled. Rachel’s words about faith, doubt, and life were featured not only on her own blog but also in numerous publications, including the Washington Post, The Guardian, and the Huffington Post. She appeared on NPR, BBC, the Today show, and The View. She served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She lived with her husband and two children in Dayton, Tennessee.

In her sermon on Sunday, Pastor Alison spoke about "the ache of being human." Aching for something more seems to be hardwired into us as human beings. As a result, one way that we can understand spirituality is as the journey of learning how to direct, or to rightly orient, that ache. Two thinkers who have thought deeply about this topic are Father Ron Rolheiser and Kate Bowler, PhD.

Father Ron Rolheiser is a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He is a lecturer and writer with a weekly column that is carried in more than 50 newspapers worldwide. He is the author of numerous books as well. He has been a priest for 28 years. 

Kate Bowler is an author and professor at Duke Divinity School. One of Bowler’s research topics was the American prosperity gospel — the belief that God guarantees health, wealth, and happiness. After writing a book on this topic, in a sort of tragic, ironic twist, Bowler was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. While she was in treatment and not expected to survive, Bowler wrote two memoirs about how her perspectives on life and faith had been fundamentally changed as a result of her diagnosis. Bowler discovered that “life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone.”

On an episode of Bowler's podcast "Everything Happens," Rolheiser and Bowler discuss their perspectives on the ache of being human. Here's a description of the episode:
​
"There’s an ache at the center of being human. The kind that doesn’t go away with a fresh to-do list or a good night’s sleep. It’s the longing for more. The grief of what wasn’t. The quiet ache of ordinary life—school pickups, grocery runs, scan results, and the slow accumulation of things we didn’t choose. In this tender and deeply wise conversation, Kate Bowler speaks with Father Ron Rolheiser—beloved Roman Catholic priest, theologian, and bestselling author—about the ache that lives in all of us... and why it might be the most holy part of who we are. This episode is for anyone who feels a little restless, a little disappointed, or just plain tired—and is looking for a spirituality big enough to hold the beautiful, unfinished life they’re living. In this conversation, Kate and Ron discuss:

• Why we all have an ache inside of us (and why that’s okay)
• The convalescence you may need from church communities that have hurt you
• How living in six-month intervals can teach us what really matters"

If, after listening to their conversation, you want to read more of their thoughts on this subject, you are invited to explore the links below:

Father Ron Rolheiser

• "Longing Is Our Spiritual Lot"
• ​"St. Augustine's one sentence that explains our restlessness"

Kate Bowler, PhD

• "Living with the ache"
• "The ache is not going away"
• "Naming the ache"

Alison ended her sermon by sharing the same prompt that Bowler offered to her readers: “What is one ache you’ve been minimizing or ignoring? How might it feel to name it without trying to fix it?”

Alison encouraged us to start by naming the ache for ourselves. And, then, if we are feeling a little bit brave, to share it with someone else. That could be a member of the River staff or community, a friend, a therapist, or a trusted family member. As you share, try to remember that to ache is to be human.

​In her sermon this past Sunday, Pastor Alison spoke about the difference between knowing God (experientially and relationally) and knowing about God (intellectually, in the abstract). 

She said this:
"As I’ve been reflecting, it has occurred to me that having just one word for 'know' in the American context both reflects and shapes how we understand faith, spiritual practice, and the Christian tradition. With just one word available to us, we sometimes flatten the concept of knowing, falling into the trap of emphasizing just one type, or certain types, of knowing over others. One way I see this play out is the tendency to equate knowing things about God with knowing God experientially. Both ways of knowing are important — and they help to reinforce each other — but we benefit from being clear about the difference between the two. Now, let me be clear, learning about God — say through studying the Bible, or discussing theology, or listening to sermons like this one, — is wonderful! But it’s often not the same thing as interacting with God relationally."

Alison shared two frameworks that have helped her to know God more deeply:
1) Attention as Prayer
​2) Recognizing the Voice of God

Recognizing the Voice of God
The second framework Alison spoke about was learning how to recognize the voice of God. Alison shared a personal story about how her life has been changed by learning to recognize God's voice. She also said this:
"I’ve found that a key aspect of cultivating friendship with God has been both sharing my thoughts and feelings with God and, also, growing in my ability to perceive the ways that God is guiding me and speaking to me. Before I say more, I want to acknowledge that the practice of hearing God’s voice can be fraught for many — especially if you have had negative experiences in pentecostal or charismatic spaces. Please know that like with anything else at the River our approach to hearing God’s voice does not involve pressure or manipulation of any kind. And that we don’t think there is one 'right' way to hear from God that is more valuable than others. There are countless ways to hear from God — through journaling, prayer, reflection, meditation, and conversation; through words, images, stories, memories, songs, and scripture passages; by noticing our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and bodily sensations; by seeking God on our own and, also, in collaboration with others. And that’s by no means an exhaustive list! The method we use matters less than our end goal itself — the goal of knowing God more deeply."

A key question that arises for many is: "How do we know something is the voice of God?" Alison shared a helpful essay from Richard Rohr on this topic. You can read it in full here. Some of Rohr's key points were that the voice of God: 

• Comes toward us with grace and passes through us with grace;
• Is supportive, encouraging, urging, and alive;
• Is the positive flow that helps us connect to our best, largest, kindest, and most inclusive selves;
• Sounds simultaneously “like the voice of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of common sense, of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self”;
• Is not shaming, accusing, blaming, too harsh, or diminishing of ourselves or others.

If you are looking for support around learning how to recognize the voice of God, please do not hesitate to reach out to Alison to schedule pastoral counseling meeting. She would love to work with you! 

Additionally, some resources and practices you may want to explore on your own include:

• Seeing Is Believing by Greg Boyd
• Ignatian Contemplation
• The Examen
• Lectio Divina
• Praying in Color​

​We hope these resources are helpful to you and we pray that in the year ahead, each of us, in our own unique ways, would grow in our ability to know and connect with God.