Endures
When life turns inward, it collapses.
But grace does not leave us there.
For every enclosure, a Presence opens.
For every wall, a Christ crosses.
For every life that forgets how to give,
a Love gives itself away.
THE TURN INWARD
When life turns inward, it collapses.
Isolation is not merely loneliness;
it is the refusal of relation—
the soul’s attempt to be self-sufficient,
to hoard its own breath.
But creation was never made to exist alone.
The tree needs soil.
The body needs air.
The heart needs another heart.
To live only for oneself
is to begin the slow work of extinction.
THE KINDNESS THAT STAYED
Christ has been with me for as long as I can remember—
not as a doctrine to defend,
but as a kindness that stayed.
Before I had language for faith,
He was presence in the quiet gestures that held me—
a nun sharing her lunch when I was homesick,
my grandmother whispering stories of Jesus
as if He lived next door.
That was how I first met Him:
not in argument or system,
but in kindness alive.
As a child and young adult,
I used to describe Christ with a simple phrase I had heard and believed:
“Sharing is joy.”
To me, that was who He was.
He shared everything—
His bread, His time, His life,
even His death—for me.
Long before I could name it as theology,
I knew it as truth:
joy is never owned; it’s given.
And Christ’s joy was in giving Himself away.
THE REVELATION OF NEARNESS
Through every season since—
migration and marriage, rupture and return—
that same kindness has endured.
Even when faith felt fractured,
the nearness remained.
It was never absence,
only unrecognized grace.
Over the past thirty-two years,
this has been the slow revelation:
Christ was never waiting to be found,
but walking beside me all along.
Proximity was not the destination of discernment,
but its beginning.
And kindness was never a metaphor for His love—
it was His love, made visible.
What follows is not theology, but remembering:
a witness to the Christ who endures by drawing near,
who turns fragments into communion,
and teaches that life itself is sustained
not by what it possesses,
but by what it gives.
GRACE AS NEARNESS
Into this collapse, grace enters—
not as an idea, but as a presence.
For every system that closes,
a Spirit enters.
For every wall we build,
a Christ crosses.
The Gospel is not the story of humanity climbing toward God,
but of God descending into humanity.
Christ is not the abstraction of divinity,
but the nearness of God’s own life.
THE PATTERN OF PROXIMITY
From the beginning, Christ has been the antidote to isolation.
• He does not conquer from above, but dwells within.
• He does not demand belief before presence, but offers presence before belief.
• He does not wait for purity, but enters the leper’s tent, the widow’s table, the stranger’s road.
Christ through all. All through Christ.
Religion has often tried to lift Him higher—
to make Him unreachable.
But every time He is raised beyond our grasp,
He descends again—
into bread, into water, into flesh, into neighbor.
PROXIMITY AS STEWARDSHIP
Proximity is not sentiment;
it is stewardship.
To draw near is to take responsibility for another’s life—
to risk being changed by their presence.
It is to let eternity touch time
through ordinary acts:
listening before speaking,
kneeling before rising,
sharing bread before asking belief.
This is how Christ endures:
not by escaping the human,
but by entering it more deeply than we dare.
Salvation is not distance from the world,
but depth within it.
Grace is not a ladder,
but a table.
RESURRECTIONAL NEARNESS
When the world closes in on itself—
hoarding power,
mistaking control for belonging—
the Christ of proximity walks through locked doors
and breathes peace into what we have sealed away.
His nearness is resurrection:
not the erasure of fear,
but its transformation.
TEARS AS PRESENCE
Crying is communion.
Tears are not weakness—
they are the Spirit’s arrival.
Every time we cry, something heals.
Not because pain leaves,
but because presence enters.
The rupture is not the end;
it is the beginning—
a doorway, a holy opening
through which the Spirit breathes
and begins the slow work of healing.
But when we tell someone not to cry,
we interrupt that sacred work.
We extinguish what Spirit has just lit.
THE EXTINGUISHERS
That is the danger of comfort without presence—
it becomes a spiritual extinguisher.
A spiritual extinguisher is anything—
a phrase, posture, policy, or ritual—
that smothers the soul’s honest movement
in the name of control, composure, or convenience.
It sounds harmless:
“Don’t cry.” “Be grateful.” “Everything happens for a reason.”
It can appear holy:
“Just pray harder.” “Keep strong.”
But beneath these familiar tones lies quiet violence—
the suppression of the very breath
through which Spirit heals.
Psychologically, this suppression begins early:
children told to “be strong” or “stop crying” learn that emotion is unsafe.
Culturally, it becomes toxic resilience,
forced optimism, performative positivity.
Spiritually, it manifests as bypassing—
using faith to avoid feeling, rather than to enter it.
Across traditions, the pattern is the same:
when pain is silenced, presence is exiled.
When lament is denied, communion is lost.
And when the Church mirrors that silence,
it forgets that tears were never proof of weakness—
they were the sacrament of nearness.
Healing begins when we stop extinguishing
and start witnessing.
Healing = Fire − Extinguishers
Presence > Performance = Spirit Allowed to Breathe
To be near is to let another weep
without rushing the ending.
To be Church is to hold that silence,
not to explain it away.
Because the Church is not the healer.
It is the hearth—
the place where Spirit enters through shared humanity,
and stays.
FROM WITNESS TO VOCATION
Every fire we tend in another
leaves a little warmth within us.
Presence changes both the one who gives
and the one who receives.
When we bear witness to another’s pain
without extinguishing it,
the Spirit breathes through both lives at once.
This is how proximity becomes vocation:
not through power or perfection,
but through participation.
We are shaped by the nearness we offer.
We become what we behold.
The hearth is not the ending place of healing,
but the sending place of grace.
From its light, we learn again how to walk with one another—
not as saviors or teachers,
but as companions warmed by the same flame.
HEAVEN’S RHYTHM
What Christ reveals is not only compassion,
but the pattern of creation itself.
The Holy Trinity lives as eternal communion—
Father, Son, and Spirit giving and receiving love without end.
Through the Christ of proximity,
that same life is mirrored in us—
fragile, human, yet holy in its echo:
love that stays,
forgiveness that restores,
kindness that remains.
In Him, heaven’s rhythm becomes ours.
What is divine in its essence
becomes human in its expression.
And every act of nearness—
every moment we choose presence over performance—
rejoins what was never meant to be apart.
OUR VOCATION OF NEARNESS
To follow Him is to become proximity ourselves:
• To draw near to one another in vulnerability.
• To draw near to creation in care.
• To draw near to the Spirit in attentiveness.
The Church is not the fortress of the saved,
but the household of proximity—
a people who remember that life endures
not by what it protects,
but by what it gives.
THE ENDURING WORD
If life for itself ends,
Christ with us endures.
And in His endurance,
we learn again how to live—
not as isolated selves,
but as stewards
of one another’s breath.
For this is the mystery of faith made flesh:
It is no longer I who live,
but Christ who lives in me.