MONDAY MORNING BLOG

Chapter 29

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” (Socrates). “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives.” (Job 19:25).

Our lived experience (phenomenology) calls us to notice how things appear in the experience itself. To be at peace, we have to be present to the other as they are, not merely as our psychological projections. Cultivating a non-judgmental posture of “attentive seeing” allows us to engage the actual person rather than a caricature shaped by our own bias.

Immediate judgment in the discipline of phenomenology is what is known as “epoche”. Edmund Husserl, the “father” of modern phenomenology, spoke of suspending our presuppositions (judgments) to encounter phenomena afresh. Applied to being at peace with others, it means pausing before we assign motive or meaning to their behavior. That pause opens a space where reconciliation is still possible.

As Husserl wrote, “Religious faith is a highest form of freedom and self-determination. It is the highest ethical act, because it is an act of pure, unconditional obedience to an absolute reason.”

This week, let’s practice the “epoche” in our interactions. Let’s pause before we judge, suspend our assumptions, and make space for grace. By doing so, we can move from merely reacting to others to truly seeing them as they are, creating a pathway to authentic connection and peace.

Philemon

Chapter 28

Isaiah 55:3 – “Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live.”

We live in a time where people talk at one another more than they speak with one another. We interrupt before we understand, prepare replies before the other has finished, confuse volume with truth, and mistake winning an argument for winning a heart. In the noise, something essential slips away: the art of listening.

Roland Barthes noted, “Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act.” Hearing is mechanical; listening engages perception, attention, and interpretation. And in that space between hearing and listening, words take root. They stir the heart before the mind arranges them into thoughts. Our emotions often respond before our reasoning does.

Thus, listening is not merely cognitive but embodied, emotional, and relational. It asks us to notice our inner stirrings—the tightness of the chest, the warmth of recognition, the flare of defensiveness—before they quietly dictate how we judge another’s words.

True listening is not performance, politeness, or strategy. It is dignity. It tells another: You are worth my full attention, without conditions. And it admits: Your words touch something in me before I can even explain it.

The loss of listening costs us dearly. It erodes trust, flattens complexity, fuels suspicion, and hardens division. Yet beneath the shouting lies a universal hunger: to be heard without interruption, judgment, or reduction. Hemingway once observed, “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”

If we cannot listen, relationships fray, communities fracture, and democracies weaken. We cannot solve what we refuse to understand, and we cannot understand what we have never truly heard.

Recovering listening requires slowing down in a culture of immediacy, resisting the impulse to correct before we comprehend, and letting another’s words land within us. It also requires awareness of our own interior life, acknowledging what rises in us before thought takes shape.

As Sue Patton Thoele writes, “Deep listening is miraculous for both the listener and the speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judgmental listening, our spirits expand.” Listening opens more than ears—it opens the self to another’s presence.

Listening is not passive. It is a creative act that transforms conflict into conversation, suspicion into curiosity, strangers into neighbors. It makes mutual change possible.

If we long for a future worth inhabiting, we must do more than hear each other’s words. We must let them reach us—body, heart, and spirit—before rushing to reply. For sometimes the first act of justice is to listen until the truth emerges. Without such listening, there can be no healing.

Paraphrased from the original Article of
Mark J. Chironna, PhD, The Disappearing Art of Listening

I wish you a good start to this new week.
Philemon

Chapter 27

C’est en marchant qu’on devient voyageur.
El camino es la meta.
Becoming happens on the way

We chase results. We crave closure.
As if a finish line could make sense of the chaos.

But life rarely gives us clean endings.
More often, it gives us process — messy, slow, uncertain.

What shapes us isn’t the moment we “make it,”
but the mornings we show up tired.
The quiet decisions no one sees.
The detours we never planned.

Becoming isn’t flashy.
It’s quiet erosion and slow, steady growth.
Letting go of what no longer fits.
Building strength we didn’t know we’d need.

The path may not look like progress.
But in staying on it — in the walking —
we are being made.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Psalm 119:105

And it is not by our strength alone. God provides, guides, and walks beside us,
illuminating and giving light to our path! (what grace and what a blessing!)

Dieu merci!

Philemon

Chapter 26

“Listen and attend with the ear of your heart.” The Rule of St. Benedict

In the crumbling dusk of the Roman Empire, when noise, power, and decadence had drowned out clarity, a young man named Benedict of Nursia didn’t panic — he paused.

He walked away from the noise, not in fear, but with fierce intent.

He didn’t draft a revolution. He wrote a rhythm.

The Rule of St. Benedict wasn’t dramatic. It was wise. It didn’t demand heroic virtue. It designed for it. It gave monks a daily structure — when to rise, when to work, when to pray, when to rest — that made holiness less a matter of inspiration, and more a matter of habit.

And that, dear reader, is our invitation this Monday.

Benedict crafted what became known as The Rule – a small, astonishingly practical document that told monks exactly when to rise, when to pray, when to speak, when to keep blessed silence. It mapped the soul’s path not through slogans, but through structure.

This wasn’t moral heroism. This was holy architecture.
While kings warred and cities burned, Benedict’s monks rose at dawn. They prayed the psalms. They tilled the soil. They read by candlelight. They worked, rested, and worshipped in rhythm — not because they felt like it, but because their life was designed that way.

They didn’t rely on inspiration. They relied on formation. If today’s psychologists speak of metaregulation — the art of structuring your life to avoid moral fatigue, emotional burnout, or willpower failure — then Benedict was doing it.

He didn’t trust monks to be saints by instinct. He trusted rules, routines, and the deep, quiet strength of repetition, because holiness, he knew, is rarely spontaneous. It is scheduled.

Benedict’s world fell apart. Ours is noisy, too, but the answer might still be the same:

“Almighty God, give me wisdom to perceive You, intelligence to understand You, diligence to seek You, patience to wait for You, eyes to behold You, a heart to meditate upon You and life to proclaim You, through the power of the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Benedict of Nursia


Philemon

Chapter 25

An elderly man spent his mornings in the garden — just a few square meters of herbs, birdsong, and silence. A neighbor once asked why he didn’t rent it out for extra income.
“I like my mornings quiet,” he said, brushing dirt from his hands. “Pulling weeds. Listening to the birds.”

While others squeezed profit from every inch, he spent his time with care — quietly, intentionally, beautifully.

What is your second handful costing you?

There’s an old line in Ecclesiastes — a verse that doesn’t care about your to-do list, but about your soul and spirituality.

“Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.”

Work isn’t the enemy. Showing up, creating, pushing hard — there’s deep meaning in that. But somewhere along the way, we stopped working for peace and started working against it. We didn’t mean to trade purpose for pressure — but somewhere between the deadlines and dopamine, we stopped asking why and just asked what’s next. Vision gave way to speed. Thoughtfulness drowned in efficiency. Rest became a problem to solve. We don’t just do more now — we are what we do. And somehow, in all our momentum, we forgot how to stop.

Ecclesiastes isn’t anti-effort. It’s anti-frenzy.
It’s telling us: You can win the race and still lose yourself.

One handful doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means doing what matters — and letting the rest go.

Amid the noise of more, peace is a sacred refusal. Not the kind that shouts, but the kind that stays still while everything else runs. Peace isn’t retreat — it’s resistance, a refusal to be consumed. In a culture that worships noise, speed, and output, choosing peace isn’t giving up — it’s fighting back.

Philemon

Chapter 24

Reflections on Stillness, Soil and the Sacred in a Sweltering Season
With temperatures soaring well beyond 30 degrees Celsius, the cool of the garden this evening offers more than just relief from the heat. In moments like these, the rustle of leaves, the hum of bees and the scent of growing plants whisper of something ancient and holy. Here, The God of the Garden by Andrew Peterson feels less like a book and more like a conversation under the trees.

Trees Need to Be Still
‘Trees need to be still in order to grow. We need to be still to see that God’s work in and around us is often slow, quiet, patient and steady. It was in this stillness that I sat in the Chapter House, watching creation cycle through its changes through its windows…”

Peterson captures something we often resist: the deep spiritual work that only happens in stillness. Like trees, which remain rooted and wait through the changing seasons, we too are invited to enter the quiet places where change happens beneath the surface. His imagery reminds us that growth doesn’t always manifest as movement. Sometimes it looks like trust.

Gardening as Healing
‘I was literally on my knees with my daughter, planting a seed, because I knew that’s how new life comes. The only way for it to grow is to push it into the mud and wait for the rain…” This moment is more than poetic — it’s sacramental. Peterson’s spirituality, with its dirt under the fingernails, is both earthy and honest. The act of planting becomes a metaphor for suffering, waiting and resurrection. What begins in darkness can still bloom.

Nature & Mental Health
‘After being indoors for hours, the sun on my face and the nearness of growing things rejuvenates me like nothing else.’ There is now scientific evidence to support what our souls already know: we are meant to touch the earth. Peterson even highlights the role of soil microbes in increasing serotonin levels. But beyond that, there’s joy in simply being among growing things.

Redemption through Place and Culture
‘Seeing creation and culture working together feels to me like walking in the Lord’s way. It’s almost as if what is coming to us is not another place, but this place being made new. Made new.’ Here, Peterson echoes theologians such as N. T. Wright in reminding us that the biblical story does not end with escape, but renewal. Our neighbourhoods, our gardens, our pavements – these may one day be woven into the fabric of the new heaven and earth. This changes how we tend to them now.

Reflection on Isolation vs. Solitude:
‘Solitude is a choice. Isolation is inflicted… The pleasure of solitude is not loneliness, but the nearness of love.’ Peterson invites us to rediscover solitude as a presence, not an absence. Not as an escape, but as an encounter.

Final thoughts:
The God of the Garden is not just a book about nature. It is a meditation on what it means to be human: to be rooted in a place; to suffer and hope; to take deep root in God’s good earth. In these sweltering days, perhaps the garden is indeed the best place to encounter Him.
So go outside. Stand barefoot in the grass. Watch a tree. Wait.

He is already there.

Philemon

Chapter 23

It is Monday morning again. Coffee, inbox, plans, prayers for peace. The luxury of order. And then the question: How was your weekend? Did you rest? Recharge? Did you get back to being your optimized, regulated self?

We talk about return as if it’s just a comeback tour. As if it means slipping back into the old routines like last season’s jeans. But what if return isn’t a motion – but a moral moment?

In Rivne, Ukraine, they held a training. “Defender at Home.” It sounded practical, like a safety course or a community project. But it was neither. It was a wake-up call. A soft place to land, wrapped around a hard truth: the war doesn’t end when the soldier returns. It shapeshifts. Moves into our churches. Settles into pews. Sleeps in guest rooms where no one asks too many questions.

Return is not a location

Veterans don’t just return from a place – they return from a reality most of us have never entered. They carry it. Like a second skin. Like an accent you can’t shake. And then they’re told: adapt. Translate. Smile more. Fit in.

We hand them our “peace-time theology” like a welcome mat. We mean well, of course. But our comfort often comes with fine print:

• Tell your story, but not too loud.
• Share your pain, but spare our mood.
• Heal fast, but don’t make us watch.

This is what the training revealed: not the brokenness of the veterans, but the fragility of our frameworks. Of our communities. Of our “pastoral readiness.” We say we believe in resurrection – in bodies that return from death. But we fumble when those bodies sit beside us in church with eyes that have seen more than Sunday sermons.

Presence is not a strategy

They practiced listening – not the kind where you nod until it’s your turn to talk. Real listening. Non-violent communication. Therapeutic silence. Accompaniment without agenda. Radical presence. Just being there.

Sounds simple, right? It’s not. It’s the hardest thing to do in a culture addicted to fixing. We like solutions. Closure. Victory stories. Not ambiguity. Not contradictions. Not wounds that refuse to be packaged neatly.

But veterans aren’t problems to be solved. They’re human beings who have lived through extremes. And maybe, just maybe, they come bearing more truth than our theology has room for.

We want gratitude. They need space.

We drape them in thank-you banners. We label them heroes. We write songs. Sermons. Speeches. But what if our praise becomes another form of control? What if “thank you for your service” is our way of saying “please don’t make us uncomfortable”?

Comfort, after all, is a tricky thing. It can heal or it can silence. It can be a gift or a demand. And often, it’s both at once.

We say: “You’re safe now.”
But we mean: “Please act like it.”
We say: “You’re home.”
But we forget: home is something you build with, not something you deliver to.

The church as a front

There are two fronts: the battlefield and the body of Christ. One is marked by smoke and fire. The other by politeness and powerlessness. But both can wound. Both can kill slowly – with expectation, with silence, with theological slogans and casserole-based empathy.

So here’s the question: Are we ready to be transformed? Not just to host a veteran. But to be undone by their presence. To become a community that stops asking “How do we help them?” and starts asking “What must we become to receive them?”

That requires surrender. Not of values, but of narratives. Of the idea that we are the givers, and they the receivers. That we are the healed, and they the broken. That we are the body, and they are the trauma.

Resurrection isn’t tidy

It comes with wounds. Holes in hands. Ghosts in rooms. Mistaken identities. “Were not our hearts burning?” Yes. And still, we didn’t recognize him.

The veterans are walking among us. Not as symbols. Not as stories. As people. With names. With contradictions. With holy confusion in their eyes.

They don’t need pity. They don’t need applause. They need presence. And they need a church that doesn’t flinch.

So maybe, just maybe, return isn’t their task.
Maybe return is our test.
To be not just welcoming, but witness.
Not just loving, but listening.
Not just peaceful, but present.

Happy Monday. Welcome back.
And this time, let’s mean it.

Your Church, under reconstruction.

Adapted from a message by Taras Dyatlik, written on the 1,215th day of the ongoing full-scale Russian war against Ukraine.
Peace be with you, and keep your children away from war.

🕊️ The Trinity Isn’t a Puzzle — It’s a Dance
Paraphrased and edited from Rev. B. Swan, seeker of the sacred in the strange

Chapter 22

A pastor opens Sunday school:
“Let’s talk about three in one and one in three.”

🥚 First analogy: an egg — shell, white, yolk.
All egg. All God? ❌ Nope. All heresy.
A shell isn’t an egg.

💧 Next? Water, ice, steam. Another classic.
But that’s modalism — God showing up in 3 forms, but never at once.
Ice isn’t steam and water at the same time.

🤔 Be honest — the Trinity can feel like a dusty, inherited doctrine.
Confusing. Patriarchal.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

But hear this:
The Trinity isn’t about theological gymnastics.
It’s about 💗 love.
It’s about 🌿 relationship.
It’s about 🪞 identity.

✨ God is Holy Mystery.
Beyond knowing.
Above easy definition.
Yet in love, God seeks relationship.
From that, everything flows.

🧩 The Trinity isn’t a riddle to solve — it’s love refusing to be flattened.
We say God is One.
We say God is Three.
What we mean is:
God is love.
Wholly. Radically. Relationally.

🌀 Creator. Redeemer. Sustainer.
Source of Life. Living Word. Bond of Love.
No metaphor is enough.
But in the three, we glimpse the One.

🔦 Like a prism turning in light — each angle reveals a truth about God.
To say “God is triune” is to say:

God is not static.
Not distant.
Not locked in creeds.
God is movement. Mutuality. Dance. 💃🏽🕺🏽

And we are invited in.

👶 God creates and calls us beloved.
✝️ God redeems and walks in our woundedness.
🔥 God sustains us with courage and compassion.

God doesn’t want just survival.
God wants flourishing — for all creation.

💥 If you’ve tried to “solve” the Trinity, you’ve likely been frustrated.
One = three? Three = one?

But step back.
What if the Trinity is not a logic problem…
…but an invitation?

God has never been alone.
And you were never meant to be. 🙏

⚖️ The Trinity is unity without uniformity.
Diversity without division.
A relationship where no one is erased — and no one stands alone.

🪞 Your individuality reflects God.
Your voice. Your questions. Your contradictions.
Not flaws — holy design.

🌍 And still, the Trinity doesn’t let us settle.
This dance is a movement of justice.
Of liberation.
Of showing up in a broken world.

💔 God doesn’t just comfort the broken.
God becomes broken.
Thirsts. Weeps.
Not from weakness — but from outrageous love.

😮 The scandal of the Trinity?
That God might need us.
Because love without vulnerability… isn’t love at all.

💞 God is relationship.
And in that divine love, we find our calling.

🕊️ The Trinity isn’t a relic.
It’s the rhythm of love itself.
A pattern we’re invited to follow.

Where difference is delight.
Where justice is embodied.
Where love becomes the shape of God.

👣 If we’re bold enough to join the dance…
We may just find —
There’s room for every single one of us.

Wishing you a great day!
Philemon

Chapter 21

Walter Brueggemann was a scholar, a preacher and a poet of the prophetic imagination. He was also a restless witness to the unsettling grace of God. Like his father, he was rooted in the evangelical tradition of German Pietism that continued to be his theological habitat.

He was never content with easy answers or neat theology. His unmistakable voice, full of cadence and courage, called the Church to remember who it was: to resist the empire, to lament honestly and to hope defiantly. He taught us that Scripture is not a dead book, but a living, breathing conversation: disruptive, daring and full of possibility.

Walter died peacefully at Munson Hospice House in Traverse City, Michigan on June 5, 2025 at the age of 92.

Ten quotes of disruption and grace

One; The deep places in our lives – places of resistance and embrace – are reached only by stories, by images, metaphors and phrases that line out the world differently, apart from our fear and hurt.

Two; Hope does not need to silence the rumblings of crisis to be hope.

Three; People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress – in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness – dressed for the work that is to be done.

Four; The power of the future lies not in the hands of those who believe in scarcity but of those who trust God’s abundance.

Five; Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously

Six; The hope that must be spoken is hope rooted in the assurance that God does not quit even when the evidence warrants his quitting

Seven; We pray because our lives are too fragile for us not to pray. We lament because God is too faithful for us to be silent.

Eight; The gospel is not just good news. It is disruptive news

Nine; Jesus is the embodiment of God’s alternative to the dominant script of anxiety, fear, and violence

Ten; Grief is the dismantling of the old regime in the presence of God

Walter Brueggemann’s voice will continue to resonate long after his death. At a time when the Church and the world are struggling to speak the truth, he reminded us that authentic faith is unpolished, poetic and deeply political. He gave us more than theology; he provided us with language for resistance, grief and hope. May we carry his words forward not as relics, but as a source of inspiration and courage.

Philemon

Chapter 20

You are not your worst moment, nor your greatest success. You are held together by a grace that refuses to let you go, defined not by your scars or triumphs, but by the infinite worth bestowed upon you by the One who knows every hidden chapter of your story
Mark Chironna

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” — Ephesians 2:10

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.” — Karl Barth

This is what grace does. It rescues us from our spiritual blindness. … Grace gives us the faith to be utterly assured of what we cannot see. … And that grace is still rescuing us, because we still tend to forget what is important, real, and true.”

Even in the moments we forget, grace remembers us. And that changes everything.

Philemon