Are in personal experience. Real belief doesn’t get passed on through DNA. We can pass on religious traditions through our family and extended community, but not actual faith. We learn whole-hearted trust in someone else not by reading their bio, but rather by giving them time to prove themselves in relationship with us.

At some point, your faith has to have a foundation that is not simply taking someone else’s word for it—you have to encounter the divine for yourself.

At some point, you have to let someone else encounter the divine for themselves—you have to give them the freedom to build their own foundation rather than just take your word for it.

At some point, “We have seen the Lord!” must become, “I have seen the Lord!”

Unforgiveness  a lock. Condemnation and judgment are a prison. Guilt and shame are shackles.

When I am unrelenting in my unforgiveness towards others, I restrict their flourishing. When I am pitiless in my unforgiveness toward myself, I hold myself from the joy of being fully alive.

We lock our doors for protection—of our belongings, of our privacy, of our loved ones, of our own selves.

We lock our doors out of fear—of intrusion, of harm, of damage, of theft.

We lock our doors out of upbringing, training, habit, and good old fashioned common sense.

It’s one thing to be someone’s assistant. To help. To accomplish tasks. To pay attention to details. To anticipate needs. To follow directives.

It’s another thing to be someone’s friend. To live life together.  To spend time together. To share thoughts and emotions, hopes and heartbreaks, laughter and tears.

It’s yet another thing to be someone’s sibling. To be family. To be deeply bonded. To share blood and DNA. To have a common lineage and legacy.

She wasn’t entirely wrong.

This “mistake” was not lost on John as he wrote his Gospel: He began with his own creative retelling of the Creation Story found in Genesis. God had now returned to his Garden in human form. Evil had killed him in a garden. Faithful followers had buried him in a garden. And the first person to see him resurrected assumed he was a gardener.

New life. New creation. New world. New kingdom. New everything.

A question like “Why are you crying?” can come across very differently depending on the tone of voice.

With sharpness and disdain, it sounds like a frustrated parent to a child who is upset over not getting a second helping of ice cream.

With softness and compassion, it is an invitation to share one’s innermost grief with a trusted friend who is ready to hear and help bear anything.

You can’t bear to go home, so just stay where you are. Alone. Out in the wild world, under the wide-open sky. As close to your loss as you can be. Let grief happen wherever it needs to happen. It’s ok to sit. To let your sorrow hold you there for a while. Eventually, in time, the weight will lift.

Sometimes, when something shocking and life-altering happens, the worst thing we can do is rush away and try to get on with our lives.

Go home. Sit among family and friends and objects and routines and smells that you are familiar with. Sleep in your own bed. Sit at your own table. Recline on your own porch. Be in your own skin.

The space between a life-altering experience and understanding it is an uncomfortable place to be. One of the things that makes humans unique amongst all the creatures is that we create meaning. Not only that, we thrive on meaning. We do not tolerate “senseless” very well.

Yet “senseless” experiences will come our way. Losses, changes, tragedies, failures, and fallings. Hopefully few and far between. Yet whenever they come, I’ve found that it doesn’t often do much good to ask “Why.” At least not immediately, nor very emphatically.

Yet what I am seeing might only be partial reality. Thus, what I am believing might only be partial truth.

This is not cause for doubt, or disbelief, or cynicism, but rather for hope. Hope that there might be much, much more than what I am currently experiencing.

There is always more to see. Always more to believe.

Any faith system that keeps seeing and believing locked-up, boxed-up, or fenced-in is an inadequate faith for the expansive universe in which we see and believe. Any faith system that does not leave room for a larger God than it can currently conceive of is more concerned with itself as a container than with the God that is meant to fill it.

When Simon Peter stepped into the empty tomb, saw the burial clothes, and noted the absence of a body, “He saw and believed.” What did he see and believe? He saw no body, and so he believed that it was gone. Which was, true, as far as anything could be true to him at that moment. That is all. It wasn’t until later, when he saw the risen Jesus, that he then believed in the Resurrection.

There is always more to see. Always more to believe.

Was going on in the early hours on the third day after Jesus had been crucified. Back and forth. Pounding hearts. Breathless lungs. Sweating bodies. Surprise. Shock. Panic. Just trying to put the story together. Just trying to get the facts straight. Just trying to tell as many others the breaking news as quickly as possible.

The initial explanation (the only one that made sense at the time, really) was that his body had been stolen. What? Who? Why? Where? There were so many questions. And the disciple’s feet couldn’t carry them fast enough to uncover the answers.