John 21: Second Chances

The postscript to the gospel of John was created with at least one clear purpose -- to redeem a leader in the early Christian movement from an embarrassing episode of disloyalty. There is some debate as to whether this final chapter of John was written by the same author as the rest of the book. At this point, there are only four or five actual complete copies of the gospel of John from the 4th century or earlier, and even among these there are apparent discrepancies. Whoever added this chapter to the end of the narrative, however, apparently felt it was necessary to address some concern in the community.

After the resurrected Jesus character prompts a miraculous catch of fish, he asks Peter to affirm his devotion three times, mirroring the three-fold denial of Peter earlier in the story. The Jesus character then foretells how Peter will die (a detail that could not have been included by the author until after this early sect leader's death), and he also mentions how the author of the preceding 20 chapters will die. The author of this postscript mentions one rumor that is being debunked here, although he does so in a way that reassures the reader that it is alright if a community leader dies.

Symbolism is prevalent here, which is one indication that this is not a report of actual incidents but a story with a metaphorical meaning. The exact number of fish caught is clearly symbolic and not actual, and many people have put forth theories about what that number might signify. There's no point in offering such a theory, however, because there is no way to prove or disprove any clever ideas about the number 153. Fishing and not catching anything until the Christ-figure shows up is also a hearkening back to previous stories, locating the tale within a larger context of Jesus stories. And of course, the three-fold redemption of Peter is highly symbolic, and some commentators have picked apart what fine distinctions might be made between "sheep" or "lambs" and "tending" or "feeding." Maybe the author had some specific nuanced differences in mind, but unless we discover some explanation written by the actual author, we shouldn't put too much stock in a "scholar" who claims to have solved a riddle that doesn't even necessarily exist.

There's no telling what sorts of rumors, myths, and doubts threatened the community for whom this epilogue was written. Obviously, if they were expecting that the leader of their community would remain alive -- at least until a mystical Christ figure returned -- it would have been something of a shock when that leader died. That could have shaken their worldview and their faith. The author of this story may have felt it necessary to remind people that they had made up this business about having a near-immortal leader, and they were simply wrong. It's a fair reason to write such a tale, if one wants to keep a community united in purpose and focused on promoting a particular set of beliefs and values.

It isn't hard to excuse first-century people for believing in supernatural beings and Christ figures that would return from Heaven and make everything wonderful for them. What's a little tougher to grasp is how twenty-first-century people still believe in something like a rapture event, and base life decisions around a delusional (and somewhat narcissistic) conviction. There are people in the United States today who make decisions about politics, finances, and who they are entitled to hate, based on an expectation that we would deem utterly insane if they were expecting Odin or Athena or aliens riding the tail of a comet instead of Jesus. None of that is really what this chapter is about though.

This chapter, should we want to make it meaningful, offers a lesson about the mutuality of second chances, and it suggests something about life that we have a hard time accepting. Regarding the primary interchange between Peter and Jesus, there is the one who has betrayed, and the one who has been betrayed. They both have to do their part in order for reconciliation to occur. The betrayed (the Jesus character) sets aside any animosity or resentment, and the betrayer humbly expresses regret and a renewed willingness to love.

Sometimes we find it very challenging to reconcile, no matter which side of this conversation we find ourselves. When we feel unloved, it feels vulnerable to reach out to someone and ask, "Do you love me?" It seems like a needy, co-dependent kind of question. Yet, in this story, we see it asked in a very straightforward manner, almost as if it is bringing things back into focus. What matters at the end of the day? Let's start there and see how we want to move forward, given everything that has happened. 

And in the story, the response is accepted, with a clear and direct way that it can be demonstrated. You do love me? Alright, here's what you can do to demonstrate that. This isn't quite the same as saying, "Prove it." We all have different things that really speak love to us. Some people appreciate receiving tokens of affection, some people find acts of care most meaningful, and some value words spoken sincerely. The Jesus character is being direct about what means love to him. This means that he knows himself well enough to clearly express what he finds meaningful.

He also gives Peter a chance to reconsider. Are you sure? I don't need platitudes. Just be honest. There doesn't seem to be any shame in the repeated question, although we might imagine feeling shame if we were on the receiving end. Before long, though, the Jesus character is done asking questions. He leaves the matter alone and the relationship moves forward. If Peter had said, "I can't (or won't) do what you want me to," we might imagine Jesus smiling gently and saying, "Alright. I understand." Can we imagine ourselves doing the same?

If we can imagine ourselves in this process, we have a clear example of how to invite reconciliation.

(1) We take the first step toward someone who has done something that we've interpreted as a betrayal or an unloving act.

(2) We bring things back into focus by asking questions foundational to the relationship. "Do you love me?" or "Is there any point to moving forward with us?"

(3) We clearly state what we want or need. "This is what means love/friendship/collaboration to me."

(4) We allow space for the other person's sincere response and trust them to speak truthfully. And we accept the outcome, whether or not reconciliation is possible at this time.

We can still have boundaries and accept people's sincere responses. We can enforce the consequences of having our boundaries trampled and still be loving people. The people who are closest to us are the ones most likely to challenge our boundaries, and sometimes this is even a way that we grow beyond our comfort zone. There is nothing about this exchange, though, that suggests we ought to be naive or willfully oblivious to someone's dangerous behavior. We care for ourselves and for the people around us when we set clear boundaries and allow there to be consequences.

Sometimes we find ourselves on the other side of this relationship -- on the side represented by Peter in the story. We discover that we have acted or spoken in a way that isn't aligned with a best possible version of ourselves. We have treated another person in a way that doesn't reflect our deepest values. Peter is patient, too. He is sad, and yet he doesn't have an angry outburst. He doesn't feel the need to defend himself when the question comes a second or third time. He answers sincerely, and (as far as we can tell) he accepts the terms offered by the Jesus character. "If this is what love means to you, I'm willing to do it."

He can say this, because what the Jesus character wants is not dissonant with what Peter wants for himself. If Jesus had asked him to do something harmful to himself or others, we would see it as manipulation or coercion -- fear-driven behavior. When we set aside our own deepest values in order to prove something to someone else, this is not healthy. When we can see reflected in someone else's request our own vision of a best possible version of ourselves, we can more confidently agree to how love or partnership can be meaningfully expressed and received.

This story is necessary because of Peter's legendary place in the hierarchy of the early Christian sect. There are a lot of traditions about Peter, including that he was the first pope. Where history has failed to leave clear evidence, people have invented traditions, and it simply would not do for the inaugural leader of the Christian movement to have a blemish on his record. The story of Peter's denial of Jesus was too much for people to accept alongside the favorable traditions and legends they had invented around this figure. He needed a redemption story to balance out a widely known story of significant failure.

In our own lives, we need stories of second chances, too. We will inevitably fail in our endeavors and in our relationships. Especially if we are committed to growing and learning how to create the relationships and lives we most want. Learning new things almost always means experiencing some failure before we get the hang of a new way of being. Strong relationships and healthy communities are not defined by a lack of conflict or painless co-existence. Strong relationships and healthy communities are places where failure is safe, because people are willing to clean up messes and seek reconciliation. Being connected to other human beings is going to painful, not all the time, but sometimes. It's important for us to have a way to reconnect when we don't live up to a best possible version of ourselves.

I also said that this chapter suggests something about life we have a hard time accepting. It's about our mortality. The Jesus character tells Peter essentially that he needs to do what's important while he has a chance. We are limited in terms of the time have. The people in our lives who are important to us aren't always going to be here. And it's alright for us to keep living after people close to us have died. We must. But while we have the opportunity, may we do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said in our relationships, and may we do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said to journey toward our own personal creative life dream. We may have a lot of time. We may have a little. The point is to use it well.

John 20: The Influence of the Enlightened

The story of the resurrection event concludes in the gospel of John with Jesus visiting the disciples in an exalted form. As we see in John 20, the post-resurrection Jesus character passes through locked doors unhindered, and a week later the Jesus character returns to convince the skeptic among the disciples that he is real. Remembering that this is a story, we know that it would be missing the point to ask where the resurrected Jesus might have gone for the week in between these visits. Instead, we can follow the rather ancient practice of interpreting the text metaphorically.

If the Jesus character is representative of us, then the resurrected Jesus character is representative of a fully alive, fully self-differentiated, best possible version of ourselves in complete alignment between our deepest values and our actions in the world. We might equate being "exalted" with a state of being unhindered by fears and anxieties, acting with complete integrity, sensitive to others without allowing ourselves to be restricted by other people's opinions and beliefs. Just as the Jesus character passes through locked doors, when we are living into a best possible version of ourselves, there are fewer obstacles that can keep us from being the people we most want to be, full incarnations of our deepest, most noble selves.

The resurrected Jesus character is not only able to be in complete alignment for himself, but he also influences the well-being of the people with whom he interacts. In the same way, we nurture others toward wholeness when we act in accord with our deepest values. Specifically, the exemplar in the story empowers others to live with integrity and purpose, particularly with regard to reactivity and shame. If we interpret sin as the reactive result of anxiety -- what people do when they allow irrational fear to be in the driver's seat -- then we recognize that we have some influence on other people's anxiety and the shame that they might feel after letting their anxiety run away with them.

When we show up as less anxious, more at peace, and in greater alignment with our deepest values, we influence the people around us. Just as anxiety is contagious, intentional calmness can be contagious, too. This means that our ability to act in alignment with our deepest, most noble selves has the potential to influence people away from reactivity. Even when people are reactive and act thoughtlessly on their anxiety, our principled intentional presence can influence people away from useless shame after the fact. We can acknowledge that being anxious is human, and reacting to our anxiety is natural. Yes, there are consequences to our actions and messes to clean up, but we are capable of facing those consequences and seeking reconciliation when things go sideways. Shame doesn't help us with these tasks. When we influence people toward greater wholeness by our own integrity and purposeful behavior, we might allow them to place limits on the influence of their anxiety and shame, and learn to cast vision in their own lives.

Now, the story about Thomas seems to be thrown in just to silence skeptics. Pronouncing blessing on people who believe things without evidence is a way of credentialing nonsense. When readers take the implications of this story at face-value, it affirms everything that is dangerous about religion. Believing something just because someone wrote it down two thousand years ago is naive at best. It lacks integrity to believing what spiritual leaders say just because they say it with conviction or wear special clothing or have authorization from a larger organization. Some things proclaimed on the basis of religious doctrine are quite simply false. Not only is there a lack of evidence to support some of the things people believe on the basis of religion, there is actual evidence to the contrary. Yet some people believe that they will be considered blessed or righteous for believing nonsense, because they read a passage like the story of Thomas and interpret it to mean, "ignore reality; believe what your preacher tells you."

Although it's probably easier just to dismiss this passage as a piece of early Christian propaganda to legitimize faith, we could also interpret this story to suggest that there are always things we do not know. We can guess with some reliability that the things we don't know will be congruent with the things that we can prove about reality, but there are still things that we don't know. In embarking on any journey of personal growth -- one might say personal transformation -- we must take some steps without knowing what lies ahead. To characterize growing into greater integrity and authenticity as vulnerable and risky is a profound understatement. When we build our lives with confident alignment to our deepest values, we may not see all that will be as a result of that intentional act. We move forward with as much clarity as we can have about our deepest values, but there are limits to our clarity. At some point, we have to trust ourselves to step forward into something we can't see clearly in order to become more fully alive -- more closely aligned with our vision of a best possible version of ourselves. If we take anything from the story of Thomas' skepticism, it should be this, rather than an admonition to believe nonsense and call it enlightenment.

The author ends the book of John with a statement of purpose. It's clear that the author has an agenda to convince people to accept his own religious position. The agenda of this commentary has hopefully been equally clear: to position the fictional character of Jesus in this ancient text as a metaphorical exemplar of what we might be if we choose to embrace our potential to radically love ourselves, the people around us, and the world we all share.

The goal of our lives is only determined by us. There is nothing outside of ourselves that compels us to outgrow our anxiety and our irrational fear. In some ways, society prompts us to remain anxious and reactive. However, if we choose to move toward being fully alive incarnations of our deepest, most noble selves, we are capable of embarking on that journey. We have within us the potential to act with integrity and intention. We have within us the ability to influence our lives and the lives of people around us toward greater wholeness. If this is not a compelling message of hope, I don't know what is.

John 20: Our Resurrection and Meaningful Hope

We blew right past a lot of the mythological details in the passion narrative. Some believers focus much more on the details of John 19, and there are legendary tales regarding the mystical powers of the spear that pierced Jesus' side. Since this is rather like spending time dwelling on the actual powers of a harp played by the Norse god Bragi, we've quickly arrived at John 20, which is a somewhat altered resurrection story than what we find in the synoptic gospels. Again, we need not worry about comparing the details of who arrived where first and who said what; these are authorial creations intended to tell a story a certain way. We can turn our attention in other directions.

Most importantly, there is a resurrection. We observed previously that the suffering of the crucifixion was a result of remaining self-differentiated and maintaining integrity in the midst of anxious people who allowed fear to drive them. Here we see that suffering was not the end of the story. The outcome of suffering for the Jesus character is that he rises and assumes an exalted status. Perhaps we too might expect that on the other side of our suffering is a sense of renewed life, not on the other side of the grave, but while we are still alive and walking around.

The persecution we might face for creating a life that aligns with our deepest, most noble selves is painful, but we also gain something greater than that suffering -- namely, the more fully alive life that we create. We gain alignment with our deepest, most noble selves, which is a way of being that allows us to be more fully alive -- as the Jesus character seems to be in the resurrection story of the gospel of John. He is barely recognizable to people who knew him well, just as our way of aligning with our deepest, most noble selves may be barely recognizable to people who knew us when we were less fully alive.

There are a few other details in the story from which we might also draw some meaning. For instance, Mary arrives at the tomb, sees something she doesn't expect, makes some assumptions (based primarily on fear), and runs off in reaction to those assumptions. She finds two other people, who hear her anxious conclusions and run off in reaction to her story. These two people make their own assumptions and -- without fully understanding what is happening -- go home, satisfied with the reliability their conclusions. At this point in the story, none of these characters know what is happening, but they all are convinced that they have a full grasp of the situation. They aren't happy about it. In some cases, they are overwhelmed with anxiety. But they believe that they understand the situation fully.

We don't ever understand a situation fully. We might understand things accurately in part, but we can't know all that there is to know about a situation. There are historical events that contribute to a situation and yet their connection might remain unnoticed. Each person in a situation brings their own perspective and baggage into it, and we can never know fully what goes on in another person's head. Before our anxiety carries us off into Autopilot Reaction Land, it's worth remembering that we don't know all that there is to know. If we can remain curious and ask questions, we might just short circuit our anxiety, even if we still fail to grasp a situation completely.

The second portion of this passage from the first half of John 20 has a lot of mystical implications, which were probably very important to the community for which the gospel was originally written. The dialogue between Mary and Jesus indicates that the community thought some very specific things about a post-resurrection Jesus. These ideas are not based on factual data, but rather on the assumptions of a community -- what made sense to those people at that time. We follow the same process too, often arriving at strange conclusions.

For the community in which this gospel was written, it made sense for Jesus to be unrecognizable and to say, "Don't touch me because I haven't yet ascended." They essentially made things up about what a resurrected person might say, based on their assumptions about the world. Some people today think it makes sense to conclude that wild conspiracy theories have merit, or that alien visitation is a viable explanation for some experience. These conclusions make sense to the people making them, even if they don't hold water under objective scrutiny. People today believe a literal interpretation of biblical stories, even though such an interpretation is incompatible with what is demonstrably true about the world.

Anxiety can make us forget things we actually do know. When we are anxious, our brains find it easier to latch onto any explanation -- even explanations that don't make a lot of sense -- because we want our anxiety to go away. When we think we understand something, we feel like we can have some control. We can put tin foil on our heads to protect our thoughts. We can amass a stockpile of resources in a fallout shelter to prepare for a societal breakdown. We can do something based on what we think we know, forgetting that there are pieces of contradictory evidence we aren't considering.

Sometimes, we hold two mutually exclusive competing ideas in our head without even realizing it. We think that our bosses hate us no matter what we do, yet we keep trying to find ways to please them. We think that our spouses love us, yet we behave as if they are our enemies. We believe that we are part of a religion founded on unconditional love, yet we pronounce hateful judgment on people who seem different from us. Somehow, these contradictions make sense in our anxious mind.

Our anxiety makes us forget what we know about people or about ourselves or about reality, and we go off on some fear-driven tangent without even realizing that we aren't acting in accord with what we believe most deeply. If we are willing to stop and think through our behavior, based on a deeper connection with our clear guiding principles, our actions might more often align with our vision of a best possible version of ourselves.

Now, there's no way to know what the characters in this story believed most deeply. One thing that is clear, however, is that there is some emotional volatility at play. Their anxiety is powerful. Yet, at the end of this particular passage, Mary's behavior is very different from the ending of the gospel of Mark, in which the women run away scared and tell no one what they've seen. Mary finds a sense of hope and runs to share that hope with others.

Obviously, hope is more uplifting than fear. Our hope can still be based on unrealistic or dishonest beliefs, though. In the story, of course, Mary accurately identifies a resurrected Jesus. This is just a story, not a historical account. In our own lives, we might be tempted to invest a lot of hope in things that we know aren't likely to happen. Hope in the impossible is not useful hope. In fact, hope in the impossible is most likely an anxious reaction in disguise. We feel powerless, so we place hope in something beyond our control.

An overwhelming majority of parents think that their high school athletes will have a career in professional sports, when it's obvious that only a minuscule percentage of high school athletes will go pro. Often, we expect that people in our lives are going to change into the people we want them to be. While we will surely influence people, we can't control how they will change as a result of our influence. We might hope for a mystical experience with something supernatural outside of ourselves, but every piece of evidence we have points to the conclusion that what we consider to be mystical experiences happen inside our own brains. We mistake internal chemical reactions that we don't understand for external supernatural experiences -- which we somehow believe we do understand.

It's important for us to share our hope with others, and it's important for us to maintain a sense of reality in the midst of our hopefulness. Realistic hope can prompt us toward actions that align with that dream of what could be. And it's important for us to share our anxiety with others too, if we're conscientious enough to share our anxiety with people who will help us shift out of autopilot and back toward a more intentional approach to how we manage our anxiety. Mary is a great example of connection in this passage. Everything that happens, she runs to tell someone. She isn't a great example of personal responsibility, though. We can forgive a fictional character in the throes of grief for not being grounded and centered. In our own lives, we can strive for a sense of connection with ourselves even as we foster connection with other people.

We can draw a lot of lessons from these short paragraphs, then. First -- even though our integrity may be seen as sedition and anxious people may persecute us for our intentional alignment with our deepest, most noble selves -- when we engage in fully alive lives, our experience might be beyond what we ever dreamed life could be.

Second, our anxiety can convince us that we know things we don't know. It's important for us to remember that we can't know everything. Our sense of curiosity can help us manage our reactivity.

Third, our anxiety can make us forget things we do know. We can become sharper about examining our beliefs and identifying when we are holding two mutually exclusive ideas in our heads. We can choose to follow the belief that aligns with our deepest values and let the other one go as a product of our anxiety.

Finally, hope is important, and it's most powerful when it's balanced with reality. When we hope for things that are impossible, we can't move toward them in any meaningful way. When we hope for things that are possible, we can act in accord with that hope and create more meaningful lives for ourselves and for the people around us.

John 19: Personal Sedition and Its Consequences

Following the episode of Pontius Pilate's compromised integrity, the established community's reactivity to the message of radical love and authenticity culminates in an execution. This execution was nothing special within the context of the Roman Empire. Thousands of men were crucified for the crime of sedition, the public torture and capital punishment serving the additional purpose of dissuading other would-be insurrectionists. The Jesus character in the gospel of John is someone special, but the means of his execution is by no means unique for the time.

Like other gospel authors, the author of John can't resist telling the story so that some quips from the Hebrew scriptures seem prophetic. By the time the gospel of John was written, it was already part of Christian culture to look at their Jewish sacred texts and imagine that the earlier authors were writing about Jesus, which is to say that they imagined that the texts were about them. When the followers of a messiah claim that words written centuries ago were about the individual they revere, they are essentially asserting that they have special knowledge. "We are enlightened enough to know who these words really refer to. Everyone else is ignorant. We are special; you are not. You should listen to us, but we have no reason to listen to you."

If I looked back at something written in 1555 and decided that those words were actually referring to a twenty-first century individual, most folks would think I was a bit off my rocker. Except that, people do exactly that with the predictions of Nostradamus. Though the prophetic accuracy of Nostradamus has been debunked (along with much of his legendary biography), some people somehow think that a person living five centuries ago could see into the future and write actual predictive prophecies. At least with Nostradamus, he presumably had some idea that he was writing predictions of the future. The early Christians took things a step further and imagined that many different authors from centuries past were unknowingly writing about a particular individual, who just happened to be the legendary founder of their sect.

Thus, portions of the passion narrative in every gospel wind up being a somewhat cobbled together string of short excerpts from various authors within Hebrew Scriptures, interpreted as a sequence of events which then appear to have been prophetically predicted. It's a clever way to tell a story that legitimizes one's beliefs, and it also seems to have enough depth of meaning without digging any deeper than the appearance of prophetic fulfillment. Once you realize that what happens in the story seems to be the fulfillment of prophecy, there might seem to be no reason to look for a deeper meaning than that.

One way of seeking deeper meaning in the story is to reject the idea of a singular historical messianic figure and instead consider the personal application in our own lives. If the Jesus character here continues to be an exemplar who represents us, what does this story say about us? That we should placidly go to our death at the hands of angry and fearful religious conservatives who abdicate their violent desires to a cowardly, complicit government? Maybe not. Perhaps a more metaphorical approach will continue to serve us.

Crucifixion was the punishment primarily for sedition -- a crime which the Roman Empire considered to be worthy of public humiliation and torture, as a means of control as well as a means of execution. We know how poorly capital punishment works as a deterrent, and yet we're still strangely committed to that idea as a society. We can't really expect that the Romans could have been any more enlightened about its efficacy that we are. Sedition is rebellion against an authority, attempting to upset the balance of an existing power structure or social order. That is the explicit crime for which the Jesus character is executed. We know that the story doesn't end with the Jesus character's death, but he is effectively removed from participating fully in community in the same way he had been.

In our own lives, growth sometimes means committing acts of sedition, not against an actual government, but against some established social order or authority in our lives. Claiming our own personal power and creating a life that aligns with our deepest, most noble selves sometimes means upsetting some patterns that other people find comforting. When we act in a way that seems to threaten other people's sense of security -- especially if those people believe they are in positions of power over us -- those people are likely to react. Few people know how to manage their reactivity in a healthy way, and even fewer people are willing to do it, even if they know how. That means that our own growth and empowerment sometimes evokes fear in other people, because it seems like we're upsetting an order that they find comfortable.

Their reaction toward you may begin gently, with some effort to kindly guide you back into the patterns they find comfortable. They may escalate into threats about what will happen to you if you continue to upset the status quo. Eventually, some kind of violent reaction might close the door on your participation in that social structure. This doesn't necessarily mean that people will kill you or even physically harm you for outgrowing an established way of being, but emotional violence can still be devastating. People might kill a relationship by cutting off contact, by sowing rumors, or all sorts of other social and emotional executions. It isn't at all pleasant, but other people's reactivity is not your fault. Some relationships can heal again (which we'll consider as the gospel narrative continues), but they won't ever be quite the same. Once you leave a particular orbit, you can't quite forget all that you know from seeing things from a broader perspective.

We get into habits. It's easy to do, and it saves us having to consider every moment carefully, which could mentally incapacitate us. When we grow into a more intentional way of aligning with our deepest life-affirming values -- our personal guiding principles -- we inevitably have to examine some of the habitual ways we participate in our social structures and relationships. Living into a vision of a best possible version of ourselves may mean adopting some radically different behaviors than what we've habitually done in the past. This is not just an internal shift. When we change the dance, everyone on the dance floor with us is affected. Ultimately, we strive for our commitment to integrity and intentionality to improve the well-being of everyone around us. But change is unsettling for people, and they may not be ready for improved well-being if it means changing familiar and comfortable patterns.

Our decisions can be based on other people's anxiety. In fact, we often decide what to do based on how we think other people will react. We may be afraid of rejection, of being "unacceptable", or of losing a sense of belonging. We create limitations for ourselves based on what we think other people can handle. We play it safe. We might understandably choose the safety of familiar and comfortable patterns over the riskier path of personal empowerment. Many people seem content with conformity.

Or our decisions can be based on our own sense of self. We can prioritize our own deep values -- our own vision of a best possible version of ourselves -- over and above the anxiety of people around us. It's true that pursuing a path of greater integrity to our deepest, most noble selves might get us metaphorically crucified for sedition against an established social order. It's also true that alignment to our deepest life-affirming values creates greater wholeness not only for us, but also for the people around us. There is always more to the story than mourning what anxiety destroys.

When we dismantle our own irrational fears and live toward a vision of a best possible version of ourselves, we will necessarily connect with other human beings. We may end up finding new people to connect to, and we may connect with people differently. One way or another, though, we need connection with other human beings. It's scary to feel unwelcome, but there will be new places of welcome that we can't discover if we stay entrenched in old habits. It can be painful to be the object of other people's anxiety, but we are capable of experiencing pain and emerging on the other side of it.

Most importantly, our willingness to risk doesn't necessarily mean that we'll lose something. Sometimes, our journey toward greater integrity will actually inspire people around us rather than making them anxious. Sometimes, our commitment to our deepest values will make our bonds with other people stronger. Rather than compromising our sense of safety and familiarity, we might create something new with the people who are already a part of our tribe. It's up to us whether we're willing to risk losing comfortable patterns in order to build something better in our lives.

John 18-19: External Challenges to Internal Integrity

Once again, we might find ourselves relating to various characters in the next portion of the passion narrative in the gospel of John, in which the characters of Jesus and Pontius Pilate interact. This passage is very dramatic and weaves a compelling tale, and although we have noted this time and again, it bears repeating once more that there are no transcripts of a conversation between Jesus and Pilate. The dialogue here is creative license on the part of the author.

We do have a bit of evidence that Pontius Pilate was an actual historical figure (more evidence than we have that Jesus was an actual historical figure, to be frank), but at this time there is no authentic artifact reflecting what the historical Pontius Pilate thought of a historical Jesus, or even that the two interacted at all. What we know of Pilate, however, is that he became increasingly unwilling to bend to the will of Jewish mobs, preferring to have soldiers kill unruly crowds of locals who disagreed with his decisions. The pleading, reluctant procurator depicted in the gospel of John might therefore be a bit of wishful thinking on the part of the author, or this depiction may have been an effort to avoid persecution from Rome, or it may have been to heap the full weight of blame on the Jewish religious leaders in the story. No one can say with certainty what the author was thinking, but we can at least be sure that the image of Pontius Pilate here is not a full picture of the man's behavior in historical reality.

Since we cannot know the full intention of the author, we might as well see what we can draw from the story for ourselves. Can the figure of Jesus still serve as the depiction of an idealized us? Is there something else for us in this passage? As we have observed, the passion story is a central element to most Christianities, but the themes and metaphors of the narrative are present in the tales of many religions and mythologies. Here, strength takes on a distinct quality when anxiety and fear are not the driving forces behind a person's decisions and behavior. The Jesus character might represent to us a self-awareness that goes beyond self-preservation -- a commitment to one's identity and principles that matters more than personal safety.

We plan much of what we do based on the risks involved. Do I say this difficult thing, if it might provoke a reaction I don't like? Is my authenticity worth facing rejection? Are my principles worth dealing with hostility? Are my needs important enough for me to be vulnerable and say them out loud to another human being? Often, our answers are No. We decide that our deepest values are not worth the risks we might face -- that we are not worth the risks we might face -- if we live with authenticity. Our integrity winds up being less important than our sense of personal safety and acceptance.

The passion story may not serve as much encouragement for us to do otherwise. After all, the character who represents us in the story winds up suffering more than we ever want to. The lesson is not that our authenticity will get us crucified, however. The complete perspective of the lesson, as we will acknowledge in the weeks ahead, is that our authenticity leads to being fully alive -- more alive than we can be when we play it safe and act based on a fear for our own safety. Fear and anxiety limit us from being fully alive in our relationships and in our actions.

Impulsive, "honest" words and behavior are not really much better. Just saying or doing the next impulsive thing that crosses our mind doesn't lead to a fully alive life. In fact, most of our impulses are still going to be driven by fear. That's just the way our minds work. The goal is to be intentional and to have integrity between our actions and what we care about most deeply. In the story, then, we see an example of a person who knows themselves so fully that there is no place for fear to drive their behavior.

You might also notice that the Jesus character doesn't insult or provoke Pilate in the dialogue. He states clearly that his purpose as a leader has nothing to do with political power (contrary to what those who claim to follow him have done with his legacy). He clarifies that he is interested in truth, unadulterated and untainted by fear. He suffers torture and abuses at the hands of those who are less emotionally mature, and even in the midst of that profound pain, he doesn't give himself over to anxiety and fear. His integrity is not just about his internal state of being, it has ramifications for how he relates to the people around him.

The author does have Jesus say something interesting, to pursue a theological rabbit trail for just a moment. The last words the Jesus character speaks to Pilate here are, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin." The gist of the argument here seems to be: (1) God authorizes people in their positions of power, therefore (2) people are not culpable for exercising that authorized power, and yet (3) those who interpret their power based on biblical principles from the Hebrew scriptures are more guilty than political leaders who use their positions of power to do harm. There is no way around the conclusion that God authorizes people to do harm to others (which is really nothing new from the Old Testament), nor is there any way around the idea that those who do not use their power ethically are guilty of "sin." If the same rules apply to God, then, the only logical conclusion from this theological statement is that God is guilty of the greatest sin, authorizing harm and failing to use power ethically. Of course, none of that really matters if God is a fictional supernatural, but these theological diversions are sometimes intriguing.

What can we say about the Jewish leaders and Pilate in this story? Do we find ourselves in these characters as well? Certainly, the Jewish leaders continue to be caught up in their fear. When a more rational voice tries again and again to offer a more reasonable course of action, they dig in their heels. There are all sorts of fears that could have been fueling their drivenness. At the same time, they are anxious to be technically clean even though there is nothing life-affirming about their behavior. They want to maintain an appearance of being beyond reproach by abdicating the harmful action to someone else. They do not want ownership of their decision, but they are committed to getting what they think they want.

In many cases, we still attempt to use the government in this way. We don't want to be responsible for making the changes we think are necessary, but we want someone to be responsible on our behalf. We don't want to be culpable for the harm that is done to others, but we are strangely comfortable with other people being harmed so that we feel safer. All the while, our own anxiety continues to soar, and our integrity is practically nonexistent. The two operate at inverse proportions. When we are committed to greater integrity and intentionality, our anxiety necessarily shifts to lower priority -- we cannot serve our fear and our deepest values at the same time. The question is whether we will be intentional about which we are serving or whether we will let our fear drive us as the Jewish leaders of this story are unequivocally driven.

Pilate, as he is characterized by the author, seems to be aware of what his values dictate and yet is still unwilling to take responsibility for living with integrity to those values. Where the Jewish leaders have completely lost touch with their deepest, most noble selves, Pilate seems to engage in sincere wrestling between his authentic, life-affirming values and the safety of pleasing other anxious people. (Again, this is a literary fictional character we're talking about and not the actual historical Pontius Pilate.) If his integrity were simply a matter of being internally aligned with deep guiding principles, he would seem to be on track. When his integrity requires managing himself in relationship to other people, however, he faces difficulty. The bizarre picture here is of a person with the greatest amount of authority and legitimate power bows to the most anxious voices in the room, because life-affirming values were given less priority than fear of the consequences of disappointing the least emotionally mature people involved.

This is clearly a picture to which we can relate. We like it when we are the most anxious voices in the room because it feels powerful to get our way. Screaming at someone until we get what we want can feel very vindicating, as long as we get what we think we want. Outrage and indignation seem to be preferred methods for people to force others to bend to their will. These are all fear-driven behaviors, however, and thus they cannot be reflective of our deepest, most noble selves. Whatever life-affirming values you think you have, these go out the window when you choose outrage and hostility as weapons of coercion.

When we fail to exercise our authority in the midst of hostility and coercion, however, we fail everyone in the scenario. Just as the Pilate character in this story, we can become so focused on making angry people go away and stop threatening us that we forget ourselves. We forget that what we care about most is not that every outraged person is mollified. We lose sight of our deepest principles because it seems risky to live with integrity to them when people are screaming at us. We become more interested in defending ourselves and being safe than we are interested in integrity.

We could spend eons peeling back the layers of Pilate's deceptively simply musing, "What is truth?" He is in the midst of an internal conflict, as we all most likely are. The Jesus character seems to know truth, however, and he is apparently calm in the midst of the chaos around him. We might assume that he experienced some internal conflict, especially as he was experiencing the pain inflicted on him. Perhaps he called himself names, as we so often do. Stubborn Fool. Idiot. Masochist. The end result, though, is that the truth he knows is more powerful than the suffering he experiences. The truth he knows is worth his integrity, and while some people assume that this truth has something to do with a supernatural, we will see next week that there is another, more useful possibility for us.

Today's passage shows us three possible points on a spectrum. The Jewish leaders are so driven by fear that they are completely unaware of their deepest life-affirming values. Pontius Pilate is aware of his deepest life-affirming values, and he tries to make them important; he foregoes integrity in the face of anxious aggression, however, and loses himself in order to appease other people. Jesus is not only aware of his deepest life-affirming values, he is unwavering in his integrity, making the moment-by-moment intentional decision to live according to the guidance of his deepest, most noble self rather than living according to other people's anxiety, even though he experiences some pain as a result.

Where are you on that spectrum? Are you aware of your deepest values? Do you place them as a higher priority than your anxiety? Do you find artificial power in using outrage and coercion to alleviate your fear in the moment? Are you prone to give in to other people's anxious demands rather than exercising your personal authority to live with integrity? Or do you live by a standard of authentic power and intention that reflects a vision of a best possible version of yourself?

Wherever you place yourself on that spectrum today, where do you want to be? When you consider what leads to long-term well-being for yourself and the people around you, in what direction would you like to move? If you want a more deeply satisfying experience of life, what will you need to do to move toward that? And what little step are you willing to take today to move in that direction?

John 18: The People Fear Makes

We arrive now at the story that all four biblical gospels hold in common, the arrest and execution of Jesus. The version of the story in the gospel of John has some distinctions from the other texts, which is perhaps striking, since it was apparently written after the other three texts were in circulation. (It could also be said that we have no idea what the original versions of any of these texts contained or omitted because the earliest complete copy we have of any of the gospels is from the third or fourth century.) For whatever reason, the author of John told a slightly different "passion story," so we can take a look and see if there is anything of value in those distinctions as we seek value in the story as it is.

The scene shifts to an unnamed garden across the Kidron Valley. The author of Mark indicates that this garden was named Gethsemane, and the author of Matthew copies him. The author of Luke places the scene at the Mount of Olives. The author of John leaves the place unnamed. He also leaves out the embarrassing story about the disciples falling asleep while Jesus was in distress. In the gospel of John, there is no scene of pleading with God. It just seems to be the meeting place where Judas will bring guards. We also don't see any betrayal with a kiss, as the other gospel stories include, Judas is simply a guide for the guards and police. The author of John does include the bit where Peter slices off the ear of one of the guards -- a detail that is in every biblical version of the story, although Peter and the guard are only identified by name in the gospel of John. In this version, however, Jesus does not heal the injured man.

Once Jesus is arrested, two events are described as occurring simultaneously by all four gospel authors, although the events are not described consistently among them. Jesus is put on trial by the Jewish high priest -- a sort of religious court martial that seems to operate under different rules than one would expect from a legal proceeding. Obvious and contradictory false charges are leveled, and Jesus' words are interpreted to be evidence that he is guilty of blasphemy, an offense punishable by death according to Jewish law. (We have previously observed that a great many offenses carried a death penalty in the Hebrew Scriptures.) Interestingly, blasphemy seems not to have been a crime according to the Roman government, but the Jewish authorities didn't have the power to carry out a legal execution under Roman rule, so the religious leaders twist the story further in order to prompt Pontius Pilate, the local governing Roman authority, to pay attention to the case.

As all of this is going on, Peter, one of the disciples closest to Jesus, is questioned three times about his connection to Jesus, and he lies about their relationship all three times. Dramatically, the rooster announces dawn as Peter utters his third denial. In all four of the gospel narratives, Jesus predicts that Peter will deny their relationship three times and then the rooster will crow. Although the wording is slightly different in all four gospels, of course Jesus' prediction comes to pass in an appropriately dramatic fashion. As we will see later on, only the gospel of John takes steps to "redeem" Peter with a similarly dramatic epilogue.

Although we've acknowledged it many times, it bears repeating that any dialogue in the gospel narratives is creative license on the part of the authors. Even if the events described actually took place at some point, there were no recording devices and no transcriptions of conversations. Especially with the number of years that would have passed between historical events and the authoring of the gospel stories, there is no point in getting hung up on the actual words spoken by anyone in the story except to consider what the author was trying to get across. The author is creating a drama and chooses words that heighten that drama and convey certain qualities of the characters in that drama.

Where are we in this drama? This is a particularly low point for many characters in the story, and we might identify with various groups when we are at our most anxious and reactive.

There is Judas, who plays little role dramatically except for impotently following through with a course of action because he's started down that road. He could have thought things through at any point and decided that the eventual outcome of his actions would lead to another person's unjust execution. There would likely still have been consequences to his actions, but he could have altered his course at any point. That he didn't change direction suggests that he was in the thrall of his own fear and anxiety. He could have been driven by anger at Jesus or his cult. He could have been driven by fear that powerful people would eventually catch up to them, and he wanted to end up on the surviving side of that conflict. It doesn't really matter what the fear was that propelled him forward. The bottom line is that he never stopped to connect his actions with his deepest, life-affirming values as a human being. He allowed his fear to run him, and he went into autopilot mode.

Then we have the police and guards loyal to the religious authorities. They are, of course, just following orders. This can be a convenient excuse, or it can reflect a level of trust for the existing power structure. These people probably had little opportunity to evaluate the situation and think things through for themselves. They knew only what they were told.

The disciples, on the other hand, supposedly had plenty of reason to trust the example they had seen lived out in the life of their teacher. The author frames the flight of the disciples as all part of the plan, but wouldn't emotionally mature, principled individuals remain calm and accept the consequences of their choices rather than running off into the night? Or drawing steel and attacking? They are the very epitome of fight or flight reaction in this scene. As things progress, Peter even resists multiple opportunities to authentically express his convictions, presumably due to fear of hostile reactions from the people around him. The disciples literally figuratively hide themselves away.

Whether we choose to see them as the villains of the story or just human beings who felt threatened, the religious leaders demonstrate another anxious reaction. They are unwilling to consider a challenging perspective because they are already convinced that they know all they need to know. They are comfortable enough with things the way they are that they don't have a compelling reason to consider a different way of being. They respond with lies and violence to a perceived threat to their comfort, compromising their principles (and their religious laws) in order to preserve a sense of security and familiarity. They misuse their authority and power because they are insecure in their authority and power.

And why shouldn't they be insecure? The Roman government was already making exceptions and bending its own policies in order to appease the Jewish people, and still there was one uprising after the next. "Messiahs" came along pretty regularly and raised militias to fight futile battles against the Romans. The ease with which Jewish rabbles were roused to violence eventually provoked Roman officials to order the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and scatter the Jewish people throughout the empire so they couldn't wreak more havoc. The religious authorities, comfortable in their relationship with the Roman officials, must have seen this possibility on the horizon. Anyone in their position would feel anxious. Their response to anxiety, however, was to forget themselves and their values in order to make a problem go away.

Finally, there is the Jesus character. While there are some aspects of the Jesus legend that kick in with the passion narrative, up until this point we have taken the gospel of John's portrayal of Jesus as an example for what it is to be a fully alive human being. Continuing in that perspective, Jesus maintains his own sense of personal authority and self-differentiation throughout the scene. The author of John likes to play with the language of having Jesus say "I am," since that is the translation of the name of the god of the Hebrew scriptures. The Jesus character speaks and embodies this sense of self so fully that the people who come to arrest him are taken aback. He speaks openly and directly to his accusers, perhaps with a bit of an edge to his tone as the author of John depicts it. We don't see any sign of a flight or flight or freeze instinct driving Jesus' behavior. He maintains his sense of self in the midst of the rampant anxiety around him, even though that leads toward devastating consequences.

We can probably recall points in our lives in which our anxious responses looked like several members of the cast in this drama. We have continued to follow courses of action despite realizing that they were in conflict with our deepest values. We have remained ignorant of situations in order to limit our responsibility. We have run away from challenging situations, literally or figuratively, and hidden our true selves safely out of sight. We have become so driven about a goal that we stopped caring whether our means of reaching that goal had integrity. Hopefully, we also can find moments when we have calmly and confidently stood in the midst of chaos and maintained our sense of self. If not, it is certainly a target we can move toward.

It may not seem like it when we are driven or fear-filled, but we always have choices. We might be headed down a path that is completely contrary to what we really want to stand for, but we don't have to continue down a road just because we took a step in a particular direction. How often do people change careers or employers, change relationships, change diets and exercise patterns? We are wonderfully capable of change. The moment we realize that we are headed off course from where we really want our lives to lead, we have the opportunity to change direction. There may be consequences, and it may not be the easiest thing to do, but change is possible.

Likewise, we have choices about how we take responsibility for our role in things. It's easy to exonerate the guards in this story perhaps. They really had no way of knowing anything different than what they were told. In our lives, we are told a lot of things. We know enough to recognize that everything we are told is filtered through someone's biases. At least some of what we are told is patently not true. We can find some comfort in remembering that we can only act on what we know, even though what we know is sometimes inaccurate. However, it's also our responsibility to test what we think we know -- to verify the information we receive as much as possible -- so that we can continue to act with integrity to our deepest values as much as possible.

There are times, though, when that feels like more trouble than it's worth. Maintaining integrity to our guiding principles in the face of hostility may be the hardest thing we have ever considered doing. We may feel content just to sit back and stay comfortable, avoiding any external conflict. At some point, though, we will have to deal with the internal conflict of living in ways that are not congruent with our deepest life-affirming values. Our greatest hope of being fully alive human beings is to fully inhabit ourselves -- to be incarnations of our deepest, most noble selves in the world -- to live into a vision of a best possible version of ourselves. This takes consistent and disciplined effort over time, but it is possible for us to stand in the midst of chaos and remain calm and centered, clearly expressing who we are and what matters most to us.

It may be easy to live a complacent life, to keep coasting on autopilot and let things be just as they are. It's even easy to live life under the illusion that you are helpless victim of the way things are. It's unpleasant, but it doesn't require much effort. What you may not expect, though, is that being fully alive is also easy. Once you have habits and practices in place that keep you grounded in your principles and focused on a vision of a best possible version of yourself, engaging fully in life is not constant hard work. The hard work is in shifting from one to the other, moving from one set of complacent, autopilot habits to a new set of intentional, fully alive habits.

The real decision, then, might actually be whether you are content to be the person fear makes you, or whether you are willing to be the person you most want to be.

John 17: We Are All Self-Authorizing

The gospel of John was written for a specific community of people, and there are clues that some of the book was more about recording the beliefs of that community than it was about recording a historical biographical tale. John 17 is one instance where a desire to record the beliefs and creeds of the community are prominently on display. In fact, the first several verses refer to Jesus in the third person by name or by pronoun. This is more the language of a community's common creed than it is the language of an individuals speaking about himself.

No one can say with certainty what the author meant by some of the phrases in this "prayer," but believers from various Christian sects interpret it as they see fit. They actually must do so, because otherwise the words have no value aside from a slightly cryptic historical reflection of a first-century community's beliefs and concerns. Moreover, various Christian readers interpret the words differently based on their own individual understanding of Christianity. Thus, we can confidently take the same liberties as other readers, interpreting the words to fit our deeply held convictions.

Before we get to a full interpretation, however, there are a few features of the chapter that bear mentioning. Some of these may seem tedious in isolation, but in the context of interpreting the entire chapter, they may have greater significance. We will also keep in mind that, for our interpretive scheme, the character of Jesus in the gospel of John is representative of us -- of the idealized best possible version of ourselves.

First, most English translations have verse 2 reading that Jesus has been given authority over all people. The actual translation here would be power or authority over all flesh. This does not necessarily mean power of individual people, but could instead mean power to overcome the "fleshly" fears and beliefs that distract us from living with integrity to our most deeply held values.

It may also bear noticing that Jesus is made to say here that he has completed the work that was intended for him (verse 4). In the narrative, this is clearly before the crucifixion. Many Christians seem to focus on the crucifixion of Jesus as being the real significant "work" of Jesus. If this passage is to be interpreted in the context of the narrative, however, the Jesus character claims that his work is done prior to being arrested and killed. Thus, we must conclude that whatever the author of John considered Jesus' work to be had more to do with his life than it did with his death.

We also see a trace of evidence that reflects an idea of destiny, that people do not truly have control over the outcome of their lives, by the way Judas is described in verse 12. This is more a function of later editors and translators than the more ancient "son of destruction" or "one worthy of destruction" that seem to more closely match the original text -- which, I'll just remind you, we do not have. There is no known "original" of the gospel of John, just a variety of copies with some contradictions among them from which translations are created.

Regardless of translation, verses 6-20 are clearly about the community for which the author of John wrote. Their unity is also a topic of the biblical letters attributed to the same author. We might conclude that the community had considerable strife and drama and that the author was attempting to give voice to a need for unity, or we might conclude that the community was proud of this unified quality of their relationships that set them apart from other communities. Either way, this middle portion is clearly intended as a blessing on the author's community, and a somewhat exclusive one based on verse 9.

Some readers would like to suggest that this prayer for unity extends to the whole of Christianity, and not just the author's own community. It may be a nice idea, but Christianities have never embraced unity with one another. There have been differences of opinion since the earliest documentation of the Christian church. Once the church gained more political power, the differing minority opinions were labeled heresies and the church persecuted individuals who held those differing opinions.

Even with a seemingly monolithic Roman Catholic Church for centuries, there were always schisms and conflicts up until the Protestant Reformation, which spawned a number of different Christian sects. Now, the most recent estimates by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity place the number of distinct Christian sects at over 40,000. How's that for unity? Even within the bounds of a single Christian congregation, one will find differences of belief and practice, and those differences lead to conflict, and that conflict often causes schisms within the community. In two thousand years, one thing the Christian church seems to have perfected is disunity.

Criticism is easy, though. What usefulness can we draw from this chapter, should we choose to do so? There is some language about the "name" and the "power of the name." Name here connotes authority; to know something's name in the ancient world was to have power over it, even back to the story about Adam getting to name all the animals in Genesis. If "God" is really our deepest, most noble self, then this is where our authority comes from. We are self-authorizing. Actually, every person is. Some people just pretend that their authority comes from something external to them. Ultimately, though, human beings are self-authorizing entities.

There is also some talk about "evil," and "the world" as the unenlightened practitioners of evil. We have suggested before that "evil" and "sin" are the outcomes of mismanaged fear. If this is the case, the protection from evil would be the ability to dismantle irrational fear. "The world" would reflect those people who behave as victims of fear, and based on casual observation, there are an awful lot of those folks running around. Fear, whether it manifests as shame, hatred, greed, oppression, apathy, or some other nuanced form, is churning within all of us. We self-authorize our reaction to that fear or our dismantling of it.

One way that we dismantle irrational fear is by telling the truth. The truth empowers us (verse 17). The consecration language of this passage reflects the transformative potential of every person. The author of John portrays Jesus essentially passing the torch here, indicating to his disciples (and thus vicariously to the readers) that they have the same ability that he has to live boldly intentional lives of integrity and authenticity. That is a message worth carrying forward.

Thus, a re-envisioned Humanist commissioning of John 17 is still high-minded and idealistic, but it may offer some resources for us that the creed of an ancient community does not:

Then, the Exemplar looked at each of them and said, "Now I am speaking to your deepest, most noble selves. The time has come for you to embrace your own capability. I have honored my deepest, most noble self, and in so doing I have shone a light on my authentic self. I have recognized my power to dismantle my fear and live with integrity, and in so doing, I have made clear a way for others to be fully alive. And this is what it is to be fully alive: that you know your deepest, most noble self -- the root of your deepest life-affirming values and principles -- and that you know your own capability to live with integrity to those values and principles, through connection with your deepest, most noble self. People have always been capable of this, but you have now seen it in action.

"I may have awakened you to connection with your deepest, most noble selves, but you have been the ones to nurture that connection and live into a deeper sense of your authentic selves. You now know that all of your power comes from within you. You understand something that many people do not, and you must live with integrity to your life-affirming guiding principles even as the world around you continues to react to its incessant fear. Your authentic life is the embodiment of your deepest, most noble self. You are the incarnation of yourself. You have the power to dismantle your irrational fear, and you have the power to remain calm in the midst of other people's fear.

"May your lives be full of exuberant joy, even as you continue to live among people who don't understand what you are doing. Other people will resent you for not going along with their anxiety, but don't run away from relationships with others just to feel safe. That would be giving power to your fear. Continue to do the work of connecting with your deepest, most noble self, so that you can dismantle your own fears and be a model for others. Other people's beliefs and decisions and reactions are going to look very different from yours. Continue to seek the truth and base your lives on truth rather than irrational anxiety. In this way, you will serve others and build a better world, just by living with integrity.

"Remember that every person is capable of this kind of connection, to some degree. Every person has inherent worth and dignity. This unites us all as human beings. We are all diverse, and our differences are something to celebrate. Yet, we hold in common our humanity, and thus our intrinsic value. May you find connection with other people, even those who seem different from you. May you recognize the empowerment that flows from meaningful relationship, and may you take responsibility for forming mutually empowering relationships. Then, you will connect with others with the same level of authenticity as you connect with your self. That is the essence and the power of genuine love."