Sermons

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Proper 21B

Fire-and-brimstone Christians rarely talk about THIS part of Jesus’ preaching. Worms and unquenchable fire – that’s vivid! This should be right up their alley! But this teaching of Jesus never seems to play into their theology.

I’m going to make an educated guess as to why: it’s because Jesus is telling us to work on our OWN stuff, rather than pointing out someone else’s stuff. Jesus is not telling us to amputate others – though throughout history Christians in power have cut down other people spiritually and physically – but Jesus is giving us a powerful image of cutting off our own hand, our own foot, taking out our own eye so that we can enter into life.

It’s our own stuff we have to work out. How are we standing in the way of our own life in Christ? What do we cling to that we must let go of? What path are we walking that we must leave? What is it that stands in the way of life in Christ?

Notice that it the Gospel reading today didn’t say “eternal life”. It just says “life.” It’s not so we maim ourselves so that we may get eternal life as a reward or an eternity in hell as a punishment. No, it’s about Christ’s life now working in you. We cut off what does not bring us to abide in the life of Christ now. Following Christ isn’t about getting to some paradise after you die – it’s about abiding in the life of Christ now and forever. Now.

And the upheaval it creates: in Jesus’ imagery, the people who are most alive are the ones who would be seen for what’s “wrong” with their bodies. The people entering life without a hand, a foot, an eye – from a limited human perspective, we only see what is “lacking”, what’s “missing.” But God’s life is more. Is there room in the Kingdom of God for a prosthetic foot, a cane, an eyepatch? Or would we be aghast at such perceived imperfections in the perfect kingdom?

But, then again, we also focus so much – too much – on the individual. We look at the individual, whether it’s ourselves or someone else, and we find all the flaws. Things that simply couldn’t be allowed in the perfect life of Christ, in the perfection of the Kingdom of God. When I look in the mirror, I can see all sorts of things “wrong.” I see the evidence of some of my Scandinavian ancestry in the skin tags that show up in the perpetually dark circles around my eyes. In the mirror I see the eyebrows and beard hairs that point in every which-way. Does the Kingdom of God take this mushy face and mold it into something else that appears to be better? Why would the Kingdom of God, why would the life of Christ get rid of a perfectly fine instance of a human face to replace it with something else? This face of mine – contrary to what some might say – is very alive. It is lively. It is expressive. It is human.

In our humanness, we see a glimpse of the whole of humanity. In our humanness here at All Saints, we see a glimpse of the whole community. Christ’s life flowing in one part enlivens other parts. The life of Christ is not just about an individual – it is about the community, the society, the whole human family, the whole creation. Christ, our way, our truth, our life – in him we move and have our being. His life flows in us, in all of us, in all of us together.

So we return to that fire-and-brimstone image. If we’re not cutting off a hand or plucking out an eye, what are we doing, then?

It’s much harder than that. We have to go inward – into our minds and hearts. Into the values we proclaim and the values we actually live out day-to-day. We have to go inward into those practices as people and parishes and communities and nations that are pulling us away from the life of Christ.

That’s much harder. That takes discernment. That takes listening. That takes courage to actually make a change. And when we’ve relied on that behavior for so long, it’s going to be hard to re-learn how to do things.

When we cut off a foot, we’re going to have to re-learn to walk.

When we cut off thoughts and attitudes that keep us stuck in cycles of anger or self-loathing or fear, we’re going to have to re-learn how to have joy.

When we cut off an attitude that keeps us from seeing other groups of human beings as fully human, just like us, we’re going to have to re-learn how to relate to them. We’re going to have to cut off our prejudice and re-learn how to listen. We’re going to have to cut off our callousness and re-learn empathy. When we cut off what is not bringing us to Christ’s life, we will re-learn how to walk, and we walk WITH fullness of life INTO the fullness of life. Amen.

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Proper 20B

I did not grow up Episcopalian. I grew up in a different tradition, though my family was not particularly committed to it for a good part of my childhood. We started going to church as I got older, and I tried my best to connect to it, but I couldn’t. The way the Bible was interpreted, the way that the role of women was all about being a stay-at-home mom, as a teenager I distanced myself early.

At the same time, I was in honor society at my junior high. Part of being in honor society was doing so much volunteer work per semester. I wasn’t super-connected – I lived out in the country, and, to be honest, I didn’t know how to do volunteer work if it wasn’t associated with my particular church – who do you call? And remember, this was before the internet really made all that information available.

A friend of mine was going to do volunteer work at the soup kitchen, and he gave me the phone number of the Episcopal priest whose parish ran the kitchen. I was nervous and gave the priest a call.

So my first interaction with someone I knew was an Episcopalian, and a priest to boot, was about volunteering at the soup kitchen. The priest answered the phone, I introduced myself, and said I was interested in serving at the soup kitchen.

And his response? In a gruff, annoyed tone: “You better show up.”

My young heart panicked. I reassured him repeatedly that I would, I would absolutely be there. Thanked him and hung up. I did go, of course. I helped set the tables – I knew that I was not welcome to come into the kitchen at all. I worked quietly to set out placemats, set out silverware, take the pitchers of water out to the tables, and take the food out to the guests. After bussing the dishes, I picked up the landline phone and called my parents to pick me up since I was done. I got the signature on the volunteer slip and left.

Did I go back? No, of course I didn’t go back to volunteer there ever again. I found other avenues for volunteer work.

The message that the priest and other volunteers had communicated to young me was that I was not welcome – and the priest had communicated to me that he suspected I was an incompetent flake like other volunteers he’d dealt with. All of that stood out to me in just a few short words, a tone of voice, and the behavior of the kitchen volunteers.

Imagine if the opposite had happened – if the young student volunteering for the first time had been made to feel welcome, if I had felt part of the team, if the frustrations of the adults in the room hadn’t been projected upon me. Yes, I know it’s frustrating when volunteers don’t show. Or when volunteers have to be helped because they don’t know where things are. Or when volunteers don’t do it exactly how you’d want it to be done. Or when volunteers are doing it because they have volunteer hours they need to fulfill. But all the adults working in the soup kitchen only cared about getting the meal done. I was made to feel like a hindrance to their ministry.

So yes, that was my first exposure to the Episcopal Church: a kid in a room of adults who communicated that I did not belong in their ministry. I bet the folks at that parish would have described themselves as warm and welcoming, of course.

          Years later, in college, I was coming back to Christ after wandering spiritually. I was finally accepting myself as a gay man, and finding a church that would accept me was important to me. I was home from college, and I needed to find a church for the summer. There was no United Church of Christ congregation in Idaho Falls, and I hadn’t had much luck with other churches. But St Luke’s Episcopal in Idaho Falls actually responded kindly to my email.

          I worked up the courage. I was 18 going on 19, and I went to the 8 am Rite I service. Now, worship in the Episcopal Church is very, very different from the United Church of Christ. I looked at the outline of the service in a mild panic. I opened the prayer book. I popped open the hymnal. Why is there an S in front of this hymn number? I wanted to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. I turned to the older woman behind me and asked – “Where do I find this in the hymnal?”

          And with a gruff, abrupt tone, I got my response: “We don’t use the hymnal at 8.”

So the young adult, clearly a newbie and an oddity at a Rite 1, 8 am Eucharist, turned around, faced forward, and prayed I could get through the service. No help to use the prayer book, no guidance on the standing and sitting and kneeling parts. She didn’t even have to do the awkward, “Are you new?” – I definitely was new. I had asked for help. And now I just felt like a fool.

I got through it, sat after the service, and the priest came up to me during the procession out. He shook my hand, introduced himself, and said that if I had questions about the Episcopal Church, he’d be glad to set up time to chat, and that it was also great to just come to worship and experience what it was like. The first person to make me feel welcome in the Episcopal Church was Fr. Bruce Henne, whom some of you may remember here at All Saints.

It didn’t take much to make me feel welcome. I wanted to be seen as a human being. It took just a little gentleness. A little recognition of my humanity.

          A little gentleness was all that it took.

          By all reckoning, I shouldn’t have become Episcopalian. The priest and soup kitchen volunteers had made me feel so small and unwelcome as a teenager. My first attendance at worship made me feel like a fool. It says so much about the gentleness of one person in that one moment after the power of our Eucharistic liturgy that I kept coming back. They may not have welcomed me – either as a young teenager or a young adult – but that little expression of gentleness gave me permission to stick around instead of running away. It was the closest thing I could get for a welcome, and it bore fruit.

Gentleness as the Epistle of James talks about today is such an unrecognized virtue. Gentleness is not weakness, though people make that mistake all the time. Gentleness is keeping the human being at the center – not the annoying kid who has no idea where the placemats and forks are kept, not the frustrating young adult asking a question about the hymnal at 8 am, heaven forbid. Gentleness keeps us in check – we have to check what our tone of voice, our facial expression, our behaviors are communicating. Gentleness makes room for mistakes and also for kindness.

In the harshness of the world around us, we need this virtue of gentleness. It is not weakness, it not passivity, it is not indulgence. It says, “I see this human being in front of me.”

Even if they had not welcomed me as a child, a young volunteer at the soup kitchen, a little gentleness might have opened the door to coming back. But six or so years later, one person showed me a little gentleness, a little kindness that at least said I was not unwelcome. And here I am, almost twenty years later, still Episcopalian, against all odds, in the face of such unwelcome. All thanks to just a tiny bit of kindness.

What might a little more gentleness do for us, and for the world?

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Proper 19B

This past week showed the power of words and images. In just a few short days, a neo-Nazi claim about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio went mainstream. All it took was people loudly repeating it – no evidence, of course, just saying “I totally saw them stealing geese” and “Cats and dogs go missing here!”. And then people point to that, saying that “well, look, that person said it, it must be true!” A baseless, hateful claim about our neighbor becomes a powerful lie that leads to bomb threats. It may not be true, but enough people want it to be true because it feels true to hate their neighbor from another country. They know it in their gut.

And then people kept sharing it to make fun of that first group. Sharing memes that repeated the lies, but with a little wink – “Isn’t it hilarious what people will believe?” But guess what – the lie is still being spread. On the internet, the line between, “I don’t believe this” with a wink and “I do believe this” with a wink is razor thin.

And who paid the price? Not the people spreading the lie, whether to foster hate or to mock the haters. Who paid the price? It was the Haitian children who went to school to be mocked by their peers. It was the Haitian parents who had to pick up their kids after bomb threats closed schools in Springfield. It was the Haitians who had fled violence to try to make a new start.

And for us Episcopalians, Haiti should be particularly close to our hearts. The Diocese of Haiti is part of the Episcopal Church, and numerically the largest diocese. St James Theodore Holly was the first Black man consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal Church, and when he first arrived in Haiti as a missionary priest, his wife, his mother, and two of his children died from yellow fever and typhus. James Theodore Holly believed in the people of Haiti and its future so much that he persevered even in the midst of unimaginable grief both as a priest and as bishop; Haitians deserve much more than what they’ve gotten.

This past week has so strongly proved the point of the Epistle of James. The tongue, the human ability to speak and communicate, is a fire and sets mountains and forests ablaze. Lies and jokes spread rapidly and can burn up truth, can burn up people, can burn up whole communities.

And grumbling and sniping slowly burns away the connections in communities. The human tongue can create futures of hope and truth, or it can burn away and poison the ground to destroy the future.

And it’s not all explained by intention. I didn’t intend it that way – yet, the effects can be still real. And it’s not just the effects – it’s the interpretation, all the stuff going on in my life that can change how the same message is received.

Communication exceeds our ability to control perfectly. We can craft an essay, an internet comment, a sermon, a video with intense precision, but once it’s out there, it’s out there. And when we hear a message, we have to decide what to do with it, how we will respond, what we will internalize. Communication is beyond our ability to control.

Communication, so foundational to the human experience, is one of the messiest, hardest, most dangerous aspects of the human experience. Like fire – it is useful and transformational, and it can destroy. And yet, how often we speak our mind, or, to be more precise, we speak our unformed opinion, and expect someone else to deal with it.

So, what do we do? How do we control our tongue?

Not silence – though we might want to practice more silence. But there are times we must speak. Like speaking up for Haitians and other immigrants. If the only thing we choose is silence, then we will not learn how to speak more effectively and Christianly.

We must practice, practice, and reflect.

Practice giving ourselves a pause between our gut reaction and our tongue.

Practice giving ourselves a pause between our gut reaction and our interpretation.

In the last week, folks have told me how someone spoke to them or to someone else. That someone was snippy, someone was abrupt, someone was unkind.

          And, now that I’m informed of it, the assumption may be that my magical priest powers will allow me to tell the person that their way of communicating was unhelpful, and that person will hear only that kind correction and not have their own reaction because I’m, you know, magic.

          I’m magical but I’m not magic.

          So, the reality is that we all have to do that work. We all have to do the work of communicating the truth in love, and that goes both for what we say and how we interpret it. We have to figure out how to speak truth in love, and hear truth in love.

          Because in community, we have to talk and communicate. We have to practice saying it right, we have to practice saying sorry, we have to practice speaking truthfully and lovingly.

          It is hard to do! It is part of how we follow Jesus. The world around us doesn’t know how to practice discipline in speaking. Reaction and rage and contempt are more palatable, more fun, require infinitely less work.

          But we’re Christians, and we’re called to follow the way of the cross, we’re called to follow the way of Jesus. We’re called to listen with care. Whether we are silent or speaking, we are called to be attentive and prayerful.

          As James says, “the tongue is a fire.” With it we can set wildfires of rumor and slander and grumbling and false witness. “The tongue is a fire.” And yet, we could also use that tongue to warm cold hearts, cook up hospitality and friendship, and create wonders of speech and thought.           How will we use the fire of communication? We choose every day, every moment what we shall do.

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Proper 18B

            It’s the first part of the Gospel reading that probably made you uncomfortable today. Even if you’ve heard it countless times, it still stings a little to hear Jesus say that to this woman. It doesn’t match up cleanly to what we say about Jesus. Sermons have contorted themselves in all sorts of ways to tidy it up. Those sermons might say that Jesus was testing her, or that it was playful sassy banter.

            I also think it’s ok to let an uncomfortable text be uncomfortable for us. That discomfort, that little bit of anxiety is an invitation to look inward. Why am I uncomfortable, why am I anxious?

            So what makes us really uncomfortable with this gospel text? Let me make a guess: perhaps this text is uncomfortable because we imagine if Jesus says this to someone else, perhaps he’d say it to us. We worry about being on the receiving end of a miffed, frustrated, annoyed Jesus.

            We want consistency, we want predictability. People can tie themselves into all sorts of impossible knots to assure themselves that they are 100% right in their religion, their politics, their culture, their identity. If they convince themselves they are 100% right, then they have that consistency they crave. They’re not 100% right, but they’ve convinced themselves they are – and that’s what they’re wanting deep down.

            But consistency is only part of the story. We also want to know whether we matter, whether we are cared for. If Jesus gets annoyed with the woman in this story, would he care about us? About me?

            It’s like our childhood experience – when a parental figure was mad at us, either because we’d misbehaved or because they were having a bad day, we as children would ask ourselves, “Am I still loved? Am I lovable?” In healthy parent/child relationships, the child can answer that with “yes.” They can see the anger in the moment, but the underlying love and lovability are clearly there.

            But in less-than-healthy relationships, that answer might not be clear. If the child isn’t getting regular, authentic assurances that they are loved as they are, they can develop an unhealthy image of themselves. They might think they are unlovable altogether, or only loved if they do the “right” thing, or better off not getting close to anyone to protect themselves. Children are incredibly smart and pay attention. Children are genius at figuring out patterns like that.

            Psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth helped describe this pattern in what is called “attachment style.” The attachment that a child develops toward certain figures in their childhood will influence how they relate to others throughout their adult life. For example, if the child figured out that they were loved only when they achieved something, they may always end up one-uping others because they have to be the best to be lovable.

            So this pattern applies to our relationship with God, too. If we had to achieve to receive love from parents, we might think we need to achieve perfection to be loved by God. If any trace of anger was a sign of imminent danger, we might feel panic at any of that language of God’s frustration.

            Let me show you how that applies: years ago I was telling the story of one time as a young intern at a church that I got a little too confident about preaching. I hadn’t gone to seminary yet, but clearly all I needed was to hear the readings and I could ad-lib a sermon on the spot. Yet at the peak of my hubris, the Holy Spirit decided to take a vacation and I was left stammering and rambling until someone’s watch beeped and I said “amen” and sat down.

            But as I wrapped up telling this story, someone was aghast – it sounded to them like I was saying that the Holy Spirit was punishing me. This wasn’t a fun story, this was a mean story! From this person’s perspective, any hint of frustration was a feeling of absolute and complete rejection. From this person’s perspective, I was saying that the Holy Spirit was vindictive and punishing. This person seemed to have experienced a childhood where love was fragile and deeply conditional, and so this person may have felt rejected all the time as a child. God being frustrated with me and letting me make a fool of myself in the context of a caring faith community was the same to them as their experience of being rejected as a child. So a Gospel passage like todays would be a huge obstacle for them, too. It would bring up all that pain again.

            I hope that we are all in our healing journey and that we know that people’s love for us is deep. If you’ve been married for any length of time, or if you’re close with your parents, children, friends, or even your pets, know that they can love you deeply and also be annoyed with you without their love diminishing. That love is a secure foundation, and God’s love infinitely moreso. We might feel anxious, but we can trust that love is still there. We might have to work on it, but we can learn to trust.

            Or to put in a little more humorous way, you may recall that my parents were visiting last weekend. I love my parents, and they love me. I am both their beloved baby boy, and also, to use the most clinically appropriate term, a butthead. I am both, and often at the same time. That’s how we managed to get through working on that rock garden in front of the rectory – all of us have strong opinions about how to get it done, and we can be frustrated yet also love one another.

            Now, you may be wondering how this relates to the Gospel. We’re surely off track, yes? Not really. I told you I don’t have a nice, tidy explanation of that uncomfortable passage. The woman was right, she was persistent, she was vindicated, and Jesus changed his response. But, perhaps this uncomfortable story is here to draw us deeper into our own reaction to the story. Maybe the Holy Spirit made sure this story was told so that we, thousands of years later, might have a story that reflects our own anxiety and fear about being loved and accepted. We have countless Biblical passages about Christ’s acceptance and love and inclusion – hence why the story sits uncomfortably with us. Maybe this uncomfortable story is here to help drive the point home, that things can be uncomfortable and yet we also can trust in this foundation of God’s love.

We read the strong language Epistle of James and are commanded by Jesus to show no partiality toward the rich, the well-off, the well-educated, the respectable, and we know that Jesus would have us include all and to take care of people’s needs. The strong language of James tells us of how serious this command is, yet we should not do so out of fear. We should do it because it is how we show love to our neighbor. This is how our neighbor knows that we truly love them, not because we feed them because otherwise Jesus will be mad at us, but because we truly love our neighbor whom God has created.

            And in this way, we and our neighbor both learn of the consistency of that foundation of God’s love working through us. We develop a sense that God’s love is predictable and safe, that bad days and misbehavior are not the end of love. We are secure in love.             So no matter the feelings that pop up for us – we can trust in God. God is consistent, God is constant. Our feelings tell us something about ourselves so that we may grow deeper in connection with God and one another. Amen.

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Proper 17B

            In the early centuries of Christianity, the Desert Fathers and Mothers were Christians who went into the deserts of Egypt to pray. They felt that once Christianity had attained social and political power that Christianity had lost its way. These ancient Christians went out into the desert, far away from hierarchy and pomp and circumstance. They wanted to do battle with their inner demons, their inner thoughts.

            The Desert Fathers and Mothers would pray all 150 psalms every day. They’d sit in their rooms, their cells, and they’d make handicrafts for sale and pray the psalms. The words of the Psalms would be almost the entirety of what they said in a given day. They didn’t live in communities like monasteries; they lived apart from one another, and came together for community prayer occasionally or to travel into town on Sundays to join the local community for Eucharist.

            The Desert Fathers and Mothers treasured their Psalms and their silence. Speaking was a quick way to endanger your spirit, and so you sat in silence or you prayed the Psalms so that the words of Scripture were sown deep into your heart. Much later monastic communities like the Benedictines would enshrine silence and psalms into their rules of life. Speaking was a risky act; what you speak not only reveals something inside of you, but it also can speak into existence something less than helpful.

            We get how speech can reveal what’s inside our hearts. That’s Jesus’ focus today in the Gospel reading. Jesus does not mince words or make them polite for us. He is very clear – it’s not what goes in the mouth that defiles us, it’s what goes out. It’s what we say. He uses earthy imagery to make his point clear. I love it so much that I made sure we did not use the shortened version of the Gospel reading today. We deserve to hear the whole thing. We’re Christians; what Jesus said and did is kind of the center of our faith.

            In our Gospel reading, Jesus gets cranky with the religious authorities. Those authorities look at Jesus and his disciples: they don’t follow the right ritual way of washing that the religious authorities think the disciples should. And so Jesus is cranky. Ah, yes, a fine way of following tradition: fixating on the externals and making sure to scrutinize someone else carefully and judgmentally. Such judgmental attitudes are more than Jesus can stomach, so Jesus redirects attention to the heart of the matter.

            Pay attention to what Jesus says: it is what we speak that defiles. The problem isn’t that there’s something impure inside our hearts. Jesus isn’t saying that we’re defiled already because of what’s in our hearts. Evil, or less-than-good intentions pop up inside us all the time. Jesus acknowledges that, and the Desert Fathers and Mothers were also quick to point that out. Stuff pops up. We have thoughts and feelings and desires all the time.

            What do we do with thoughts, feelings, and desires that pop up? That’s the crucial step.

            What thoughts do we focus our attention on? What feelings do we accept as uncomplicated truth? What desires do we work to fulfill?

            Building in room between that thought, feeling, or desire popping up and us doing something with it is a key part of the spiritual journey. I don’t know about you, but I know that the distance between my brain and my mouth is awfully short. That thought? Maybe no one needs to hear it. That feeling? Maybe it’s a little too strong for the moment to do us much good.

            Hence the Psalms and the silence. When silence, not speech, is the default, we make room to choose our speech more carefully. When we pray the Psalms and the rest of the Scriptures more, then those words might bubble up for us, to call us back to our spiritual center.

            Why might we want more silence and Scripture in our lives? Because we want that space to choose our words. If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you know that it’s very, very easy to throw out there whatever thought or feeling that you have. People do it all the time. People get enflamed by something someone says – or something that they think the person is saying – and rage and righteous indignation pours forth. And once we are sure that our feeling, our thought, our opinion is perfect and right, then we double-down on it. We said it, we must be right!

            Those snarky, hilarious words? They make us feel awfully good. It’s a good little rage, and how funny we are to boot! Those feelings of offense we nurture? It feels awfully pleasurable – now we have freedom to be mean and indignant. The internet has multiplied all the ways we can shorten that gap between our brains and our mouths, and so all those little impulses inside get amplified, and get echoed back to us. We become defiled by our own speech. Our minds speed up that brain circuit. We reward that part of our mind and heart that has those angry thoughts and feelings, and the parts of our mind and heart that might help us be reflective get shut down. After a while, someone stops reflecting on their own behavior – the rage feels right, feels justified. Everyone else is the problem, obviously! And thus we have defiled ourselves.

            Or, to use an example from St Benedict, his number one sin in the monastery is grumbling. Complaining about something is one thing – if something actually needs to be fixed. But grumbling is that angry little delight that comes with complaining. It wants to complain; it wants to draw others into its complaining for the shared joy of sheer unhappiness. It’s never satisfied. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Grumbling is like the opposite of gratitude; grumbling crowds out gratitude. We can’t be thankful for what is good because we resent what we do not have. With such grumbling, we create a world around us in which nothing is good, nothing is done right, and we resent it, and we resent the people we blame for all those problems. And thus we have defiled ourselves with ungrateful speech.

            Or to use the example given in our letter of James that we read today – we might talk about how righteous we are. How we know all the right opinions, speak all the right opinions, how we are the best, most right kind of Christian. We can talk about love in all the right ways, we can quote chapter and verse. We can proclaim how inclusive we are, how righteous we are. But is the perfect, best kind of Christian the one who talks the talk or the one who walks the way of Jesus?

            But are we doers of the word? Is what we are doing reflective of what we believe? Is it reflective of the kind of person we want to be?

            We cannot think our way into the kind of person we want to be. We cannot feel our way into the kind of person we want to be. As much as we might desire to be a certain kind of person, it’s what we do that slowly builds up that space for us to choose the way of Jesus Christ.

            Silence and prayer build up that space for us. That snarky phrase – it may feel fun and right, but is it good? That grumbling – it may give us a reason why everything is terrible, but is it helpful? Is what I am thinking, what I am feeling lining up with what I know about Christ, and what do I want to do with it? Our brains will jump to the path we choose most often. We need more space to choose. The thoughts will pop up, the feelings and desires will pop up. We cannot control them. But we can choose what we will do, and silence and prayer help build up space for us to be able to choose.             So notice: what thoughts come up, what feelings come up, what impulses come up from within. And what do you do with them? What will you choose to do with them? Will you choose to focus on what helps you to follow Jesus? Will you choose that way of speaking, or will you choose something else? Each moment is a choice that could draw you closer to Jesus’ way of thinking, feeling, speaking … if you choose to do so. Amen.