I’m pleased to let you know that we have two brand-new jackets and a super-soft fleece pullover available in the KAIOcreations store! Choose from a just-right lightweight bomber jacket in army green, a sturdy denim jacket available in white, black, or classic denim, or a comfy fleece pullover in carbon gray or black.

"For He is our peace; in his flesh He has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it."

—Ephesians 2:14–16 (NRSVUE)

So I am back home (as of Friday) in the next stage of my recovery process after my Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG)x4 surgery done on August 7th. I’m doing my best to take care of myself and follow my medical team’s instructions so I can heal up as efficiently as possible. I want to thank everyone once again for your kind thoughts and prayers as I move through this process.

I once went into the Garden of Gethesemene, there to spend the night in prayer, centering my whole meditation on what I thought was the heart and substance of the Gethesemene incident, “Not my will, but thine be done.” I expected to come away chastened, submissive, surrendered. But in those silent hours I found my thought shifting to the words of Jesus to the sleepy disciples, “Arise, let us be going.”

On August 7th, only a little more than a week away, I will be undergoing open heart surgery in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I very much appreciate your prayers! There are some things I know, and some things that I don’t know at this point.

“What I’ve taken can’t be broken, I will never see a finish;
What I’ve reached won’t fall away—I will never see it die,
I can grab all that I want now, it’s the man who hoards that wins it
Maybe if I keep on grabbing, I won’t see His weeping eyes.”

Come now, ye wretched,
Come out of the Shadows,
Arise now and lift up your face to the dawn:
The Silence is broken,
A Word now is spoken
And all of the Shadows at once are all gone!

There is a River filled with tears
That courses through these broken years;
Caught up within the reckless love,
It lifts my heart to Jesus.

He bids me see His broken heart;
The wounds for me, His nail scars;
Caught up within the reckless love,
My tears and His co-mingled.

There is a River filled with love:
The tears of my dear Jesus.

Carl Beech has it right. Perhaps God doesn’t want to heal me.

There are those Christians who believe that it is always God’s will that we be healed, because that seems to make sense to us. God is good; God doesn’t want us to suffer, right?

Maybe not.

This terrible, slow disease that we suffer from which destroys our compassion stems from what Brennan Manning calls the ‘agnosticism of inattention.’ …. In order to love, we must first begin to see.

An artist sees Michelangelo's Pietà in a new light

It was the angle of the light that brought me to utter ruin.

The light, golden and flashing off that sumptuous Carrara marble, the light that poured like liquid over Michelangelo Buonarroti's Pietà from behind Mary's left shoulder. It was only a moment, but the video briefly showed the sculpture in a way that utterly ruined me. Unlike every other image that I have ever seen of Pietà, this was lit far differently, and it was then that I saw it.