If you are looking for my daily devotionals, you can find them at this website hosted by Beehiiv. Though I will continue to blog here, I’ve found it easier to maintain a daily schedule with an email list there. I hope you’ll join me for reflections on important dates and my own favorite saints!
Monthly Archives: January 2025
This is the Day
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)
Dear Saints,
It feels like the world is falling apart at the seams. Everything is horrible. The oligarchy is upon us and will hamper even our weak attempts to prevent a sixth mass extinction on the planet. Liars and narcissists rule our nation. We are in apocalyptic times, where the word means both “ending” and “unveiling.” We may wish things would have remain veiled.
In my ordination vows, I promised I would do my best to “equip the saints for ministry.” I intend to keep doing that. Four years ago as I wrote liturgy for Saint Junia house churches, I began looking to my faith tradition, 2000 years of church history, and the writings of activists, reformers, and those seeking peace with justice from many different traditions. I’ve contemplated how to best support my community and “equip the saints” while ecosystems collapse, fascism rises, the church equivocates, and the internet becomes an AI propaganda tool for the worst humans on the planet.
I believe that the communion of saints who have gone before us teaches us everything we need to know.
I am beginning a series of daily devotionals. They will generally reference a person or an event from this day in history and a short reflection. I am using the widest possible definition of “saint,” much the way William James uses the term: a spiritual person who inspires us to be more like them. This is a practice of virtue ethics and character formation, to ask the question: “What kind of person do I want to be? What kind of life do I aspire to live?” These questions redirect our attention from what we cannot control to what we can, and they move us from fear and anxiety about the future to gratitude for the present.
My grandfather, Loren Barnhart, survived World War 2, and would quote Psalm 118 every day when he woke up: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” My Grandma Gennie said it could be irritating to hear this verse day after day, especially when it was rainy and cold. But the psalmist, like Papa, had survived a war. They knew every day was a gift. Years after he died, while she lived with my parents, Grandma would sing the verse, also. And yes, it was irritating.
But it is also true.
Saints, I offer you the saints. May they help you live these days.
Feast Day of Gregory of Nyssa
Today is the feast day, in Eastern and Roman Catholic traditions, of Gregory of Nyssa, who died in 394. Among many other gems, he said this:
“Moses’ vision of God began with light; afterwards God spoke to him in a cloud. But when Moses rose higher and became more perfect, he saw God in the darkness.”
Conclusion: Epiphany
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.” (Matthew 2:1-2)
Epiphany, as i said last week, means a manifestation of the Divine. The gospels are very interested in who recognizes Jesus and who does not: pagan astrologers recognize him. The political and religious power structures do not.
I’ve been exploring consciousness over this Advent and Christmas season because I believe noticing and recognizing the Divine has to do with a shift in our consciousness, a willingness to question our perceptions, our automatic reactions, and our personal and cultural narratives. Becoming more conscious of our own consciousness allows us to change how we relate to our selves and to other people. Many of these concepts are ones I’m borrowing from both Buddhist teachings and from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
This expanded awareness is not just about navel-gazing. It’s about cultivating an inner and outer peace that changes relationships and how we approach the world. It is 3000 year-old wisdom that modern neuroscience is validating with empirical research.
I’ve appreciated learning more about the friendship of Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh, monks from the Roman Catholic and Buddhist traditions who found that their faith traditions were more complementary than competitive. Both mystical traditions (I would argue most mystical traditions) speak about self knowledge and divine knowledge as being intimately tied to each other. As we learn more about our own consciousness, we learn more about the infinite and about God. As we learn more about God and the infinite, we learn more about ourselves. The knower and the known, the seeker and the sought, are united in a dynamic dance. We seek God’s face, but God continually directs us to our neighbor’s face—and our own.
The way this manifests in our social world is that often the people who recognize the Divine are not insiders, but outsiders. Hanh and Merton saw each other as spiritual brothers. I, likewise, have found spiritual siblings among Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and agnostics. I believe the great epiphany for us all will be finding ourselves in the same stable, kneeling in front of the same manger, and the child we recognize there in the hay will look remarkably like our selves.
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, may we grow into your fullness, so that you may be all in all. Amen.
Week 5, Day 4: Co-regulation
“Be happy with those who are happy, and cry with those who are crying..” (Romans 12:18)
I’ve shared a bit about game theory and the research of John Gottman because I think it is insightful and helpful research into the ways we individuals act as part of larger social systems. One of the key insights into Gottman’s research on couples is about co-regulation.
We can see co-regulation illustrated by a study of sixteen married women who were put into an fMRI machine while electric shocks were applied to their feet. Researchers knew that holding someone’s hand could reduce the pain and fear of the electric shock, so they created these experimental conditions: holding an anonymous person’s hand, their husbands hand, or no hand at all. The women had also filled out assessments of their marital happiness.
When the women held the hand of a partner with whom they had a good relationship, the electric shocks created less pain and fear responses in their brains. The touch of a loved one helped them regulate their own response to the stimulus. But if they had a negative relationship with their spouse, holding their hand provided less comfort than the hand of a stranger!
At a physiological level, good relationships help us co-regulate our negative emotions and experiences.
Gottman’s training for couples involves helping them simultaneously manage their own and their partner’s emotions. This skill doesn’t just apply to couples, but to parents and children, co-workers, neighbors, and even strangers. We humans have a unique ability to be able to spread peace and self-awareness.
I’ve been speaking about becoming consciousness as a way to create more awareness in ourselves of our own experience, more room for self-determination, more capacity for trust and forgiveness. But becoming conscious of the working of our own minds also helps our relationships become more life-giving and supportive.
Prayer: Source of Life and Relationship, thank you for the people in our lives. Help us to bring out the best in each other. Amen.
Week 5, Day 3: Forgiveness
“Forgive us for the ways we have wronged you, just as we also forgive those who have wronged us.” (Matthew 6:12)
Yesterday I mentioned an important idea in game theory: the Prisoner’s Dilemma, in which each player has to choose whether to cooperate or betray the other. Several research studies have used the Prisoner’s Dilemma to explore how people actually approach relationships, and what happens over time when people play multiple rounds with other people.
How do you treat someone who has betrayed you? Do you let yourself be a doormat and trust someone who has shown they are untrustworthy?
It turns out there is an optimal strategy for playing the game over multiple rounds. If the other player betrays you in round one, you betray them in round two. But if they don’t betray you in round two, you return to cooperation. This strategy is called “tit for tat, with forgiveness.” Players who use this strategy, on average, will do better than players who try to play aggressively without forgiveness.
(There’s also a lot of fascinating research on our need to punish perceived rule-breaking behavior, even if it costs us personally—but I’ll have to save that writing for another day).
I find this research fascinating because it shows that forgiveness is not just some high-minded spiritual virtue; it is necessary for species survival. Anthropologists theorize that this kind of pro-social behavior helped our ancestors thrive. Humans that couldn’t let things go just… didn’t survive.
This conclusion runs counter to a lot of our popular opinions about human nature and evolution, that violence and domination led to “survival of the fittest.” Increasingly researchers believe that the communities who were most “fit” to survive were those that cooperated and those where forgiveness became a virtue.
When I talk about forgiveness, of course, I have to acknowledge that forgiveness has been weaponized to keep people in abusive relationships, and it has been unevenly deployed. The oppressed are often expected to forgive their oppressors.
But I would also point out that this tension highlights exactly what the game theory points out: forgiveness alone is a really lousy survival strategy, and it does not maximize the rewards for all players involved. Inasmuch as forgiveness helps us return to an even playing field, and inasmuch as it helps us restore right relationships, it is a virtue.
Becoming conscious allows us not only space to acknowledge and process our anger, but to evaluate the pros and cons of forgiveness. It helps us behave in a way that brings flourishing to larger groups of people.
Prayer: God, you forgave us before we even knew to ask. Help us extend that same grace in ways that bring flourishing to the world.
Dave Barnhart 
