Marianne's FLASH💥DEVOS Podcast

Dear Readers, Listeners, and Supporters: thank you for coming along with my Flash Devos for the past 180 posts. I need to step away from the computer for now. Unexpected health challenges prevent me from writing and producing these devos. Please help yourselves to the archives. I pray that I will be able to return to this work of my heart. I leave you with a prayer calling in the vision of equanimity in today’s reading from the lectionary.2 Corinthians 8:13-15 Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.”May we share what we have gathered and ask for what we need, so that in every season we may all feel whole.Dear friend *Deirdre Purdy is a digital creator in Chloe, West Virginia who posts “Pillion Viewpoint” from the back seat of a BMW regularly on “Adventure Rider” magazine. “I can see all the way down the road, like the driver, and anticipate the curves and traffic,” she writes. “I also ride with the clouds, the farms, barns, and churches, 100 year old banks, and county courthouses. Sometimes I make a 1/3 turn and take a shot over my shoulder, aiming without looking, and once in a while catch gold.” See her posts at advrider.com and Facebook. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Psalm 126:1-2When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.+Cheer out loud when rescue becomes real. Not maybe he will save us, or maybe he’ll help us, or if we do what’s right he’ll stay. Here and now, no matter what, in this and that and in everything, life changes when the Lord arrives.Tall, heartless, brutal, kind, earnest, every color, shape, location, and time. Jesus is coming for every one of us.My friend *Lily DeCort is an Ethiopian American painter based in Chicago. Her work, ranging from luminous landscapes to evocative abstracts, reflects the liminality of her experience. Through dark skies, peaceful paths, and vast waters, her paintings explore themes of beauty, vulnerability, healing, and the human journey from wonder to loss and hope reborn. Learn more about Lily’s art at https://lilydecort.com/Readers support Flash💥Devos with prayer, tips, and subscriptions. Thanks for your gift! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Readers, listeners, and followers alike--Thank You! I appreciate your support for my Flash💥Devos + Podcast! As a thank-you gift for November, here’s my review of my friend Andrew’s latest book, just published in October. Andrew’s years of researching and writing “Reviving the Golden Rule” created this remarkable work of scholarship that relates to our world today. The content here could be a life-changing present for a loved one--or someone who’s hard to love.A Review of Andrew DeCort’s Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal our Worldby Marianne Abel-LipschutzAndrew DeCort’s latest book, Reviving the Golden Rule, explores the many reasons why we love or hate our neighbors. It’s an encyclopedia of the ways love wins. “Neighbor love is the core and culmination of God’s will for humanity,” DeCort believes. You can come back to this book repeatedly for encouragement, strategy, and lessons in the subtle ways we all fall short.Building on literature of visionaries across faiths and centuries, DeCort traces human detours along with stories of nonviolent love and humility, transformational spiritual practices that change communities. “My hope is that this book can serve as a school for love and revive neighbor love as the most healing movement in human history.”He has done his own fearless moral and ethical inventory and been transformed by devastating personal experiences to come to a truer sense of self as a passionate believer in Jesus. DeCort’s studies of the nuances of othering and dehumanization are insightful and are themselves devastating, as these warped beliefs shape the horrors we see today.For example, he talks about how we dehumanize others – even parts of our own nature– and reject them with our words and actions. These habits of othering act as gateways to such behaviors as what philosopher Judith Butler named “ungrievability.” DeCort explained, “ungrievability means that if you’re grieving, I don’t care. Your pain doesn’t matter to me. What happens to you doesn’t matter. We begin to tolerate levels of suffering that are actually seen as necessary.”Othering heightens the paradox of neighbor love. “When we see others as morally related to ourselves and equally worthy of love, the whole purpose of divine revelation has come to life in us. There is nothing more important than neighbor love for Christian ethics, and everything else flows in and out of it.”In fact, there’s been a significant misunderstanding of what we call the Great Commission, DeCort asserts. “This final invitation from Jesus to continue his work on earth is all about neighbor love, baptism, and belovedness. It’s an invitation to actually embody and practice what he taught across every boundary of identity and difference… That’s not a list of doctrinal statements.”“I’ve written this book to revive the dead dogma of neighbor love and to reawaken us to the living truth that it was since the beginning—a radical vision and practice of being human,” DeCort claims. “If that belovedness and that practice of radical love isn’t crossing every boundary like Jesus said, then we’re no longer extending the movement that Jesus launched.”DeCort’s desire for honest witness inspired him to invite famous atheists to review his book. They commended it. “It was essential to me for the book to be tested, so I looked for someone who has deep disagreements with what I’m writing,” he explained. “I wanted someone to sniff it out and see, is this book actually talking about authentic neighbor love or is it still this pious game that Andrew is playing?”This book is no intellectual game. It’s a serious endeavor, a remarkable work of scholarship, and a generous gift to all who want to live more fully and love the world into a better shape. “Neighbor love makes humanity shimmer and shine in full color like precious diamonds as if for the first time. How was it that I went through life and couldn’t see the glory all around and within me? I am born again, and neighbor love sets me free.” These words close his book, opening a new door for our collective future. Keep this mighty book handy in the days and years ahead.Paperback: IVP Academic, 2025Buy Now: [ BookShop ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ] [ Audible ]First published in the Englewood Review of Books, November 12, 2025https://englewoodreview.org/andrew-decort-reviving-the-golden-rule-review/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Psalm 118:19-21Let the doors of Creator’s right waysopen to me. I will go through themand give thanks to Grandfather.This is where Grandfather’s good roadbegins, the upright in heart willenter here.I will give thanks to you, for youheard my prayers and came torescue me.+Thanksgiving celebrates the reciprocal nature of God’s love. Doors open; we enter with grateful praise. We wander; Grandfather finds us. It’s our choice to accept rescue.Everyone’s been saved from something. Who or what obligates you to deeper commitment today? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Thank you for reading and listening along to my Flash💥Devos this October. In gratitude, let me offer “Take Me to the Border with You,” my most popular article from 2024. The week I spent at the Mexico/U.S. border in 2019 radicalized me. Sharing ministry of presence and welcoming migrants humbled me. The realities of worldwide immigration, refugees, asylum, and exile scorch my heart. I pray we may all become more faithful neighbors wherever we are. Take Me to the Border with Youby Marianne Abel-LipschutzThe Del Rio area looked simple from the airplane window. The river cut a path, paralleled by a fence, between two mirrored cities that were surrounded by vast, open brushland. Questions prickled the edges of my awareness as I watched the land come into view: How did our society get to this point? Whose border is this? What can we do? Will we do what we can?So many migrants congregated along the Rio Grande between Texas and Mexico in 2019 that I felt compelled to go too. The hundreds, and thousands, and then hundreds of thousands of people migrating northward astonished me. I wanted to witness that yearning for change among so many people from so many places, those who escaped terror and trauma as well as those who saw their only hope for a future on the other side of the border.I wanted to feel swept along in that human vortex from over fifty countries—pushing strollers, walking side by side, riding buses, hiding behind trees, waiting in food lines, moving ahead, seeking a future, everyone breathing at once. I quickly said, “Yes!” when a Christian crisis-response team asked me to join them as a bilingual chaplain in Del Rio, Texas, for a week. I wanted to stand with others in their struggle for a new life. My voice rose with a thousand yeses in many languages, like uncountable monarchs released to the open sky. “Yes,” we cried. “Take me to the border with you.”***I live and work in both Iowa and Guatemala, and I’ve listened to people in both places describe their quest for the border. One year ago, a slight boy named Elver approached me in a rural church. We were volunteering with a mission team on a hilltop overlooking Guatemala, the farthest we could get from a border without trying. There was hardly any work or water. A robin’s-egg-blue, button-down shirt draped lightly and formally over this boy. Eleven years old, Elver had an elegant air, even when giggling and scampering around the churchyard with friends. He had studied me all morning while mothers and children coloured pages on the pews. Finally he sat beside me and confided a raw and tender worry. “Will my father ever make it to the United States?” His dad hadn’t left town yet, but the threat of his absence already affected him profoundly.Elver had probed the options as thoroughly as an adult, seeing danger overflow with impossibilities. “Will my father come back?” “Why can’t I go with him?” His persistent questions ached both his heart and mine. “How far away is your country?” There was no easy answer, though the distance could be measured. A factual reply would only sting. We coloured the same page for a while, the scrape of the pew shifting on the floor the only sound between us. Guatemalans had welcomed me into their country. I didn’t believe this child’s dad would find the same welcome in my country. Our hearts were united, but our countries were worlds apart.***The community shelter where our team volunteered had opened in the spring, organized by city, business, and church leaders. The Border Patrol had requested assistance with the extraordinary influx of people across the international border, so these community leaders had formed the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition to offer hospitality and hope. The Coalition converted an old municipal building a mile from the river into a resource and respite centre for migrating children and families. Other organizations and people from all over the state and country donated thousands of hours and supplies.Coalition volunteers and staff intentionally welcomed people for months from countries as diverse and far-flung as Angola and Chile. These men, women, and children had come across the bridge or “through the water,” as they called it. Once Border Patrol determined that individual migrants and families could be released into Texas with provisional documents, officers delivered them to the shelter. Over the summer, the shelter averaged 60 people a day. One day Val Verde served 226 people.Anticipating new federal laws restricting migrants’ passage, the daily average dropped to two dozen people by the end of August. The Migrant Protection Protocols that took effect in late September effectively closed the border. The change at the Val Verde shelter was dramatic: The well-organized camp had more volunteers and staff than migrants needing respite. Thousands of people were still leaving their home countries daily. But most of these people were nowhere to be seen—with thousands more held in detention, and hundreds being deported monthly.In early October, the epic human migration through the southern US border had slowed to the point of becoming almost invisible. I felt bewildered and speechless on my first day of deployment, alienated from the reality I knew was somewhere right in front of me. Thousands of people from dozens of countries were out of sight—quieted, quarantined, and controlled. Most people were turned away in accordance with the new protocols. We waited for Border Patrol to call us when someone could be delivered to the shelter.After months of hosting thousands of the world’s people, those were solemn days of waiting to see what would happen in Del Rio.Sharing snacks and juice boxes and hot coffee in the presence of the Lord, we lived together briefly in the sacred space between the now and the not yet.On Monday afternoon, Border Patrol brought over a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Selia and her four-year-old daughter Paola. They’d come from El Salvador, eighteen hundred miles south, where Selia’s husband was involved in gang violence and drug trafficking. To preserve her daughter’s future, Selia had resolved two years before to meet the legal requirements for US entry. One day in 2017 she grabbed Paola’s hand and they just started walking. We met on the day they legally crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande and entered the United States in 2019, one step closer to reaching her goal to appeal for asylum.She spoke like a person in shock, hoarding details as if they were a scarce resource. Paola played with shelter staff in another room decorated with cartoon murals over the institutional cinder-block walls. After a shower, a few meals, a good night’s sleep, and the assurance of safety, Selia began to relax. By the next day, she spoke with more ease.Selia talked straight through the morning. She worked along the way at various jobs—at a store selling clothes, cooking for a street vendor, styling hair at a salon, cleaning a boarding house where they could stay. She confessed a deep shame that she also worked at a bar with other migrants in order to earn money for food. “They made you drink beer to get you drunk then they could do whatever they wanted,” she admitted. Selia eventually found stable employment as a waitress at a restaurant whose owner treated her well. Once she had saved enough money for the final stage of the trip, she and Paola spent fifteen days moving from Tapachula closer to the northern border, and waited for most of the last ten days in a Mexican shelter for a court hearing at the Del Rio crossing.On Saturday and Sunday night, they had slept in a public park because the shelter had shut down as part of the effort to reduce access to the border. Communicating with officials at the point-of-entry office on Monday morning, perhaps the most important part of her journey, was surreal. “It was like living in a movie,” Selia explained. “I couldn’t understand anything they said because I don’t speak English.”Now we sat together on metal folding chairs, an assortment of volunteers from several states who simply listened to her speak in Spanish in a cold room in Texas. We gave Selia our full attention as she shared some details about a journey many of us would never take.Intermixed with the grief and the shame and the terror, this mother described how people came together along the way and volunteered to meet each other’s needs. Selia brought migrant kids up from the public park to the restaurant where she worked in Tapachula to make sure they would eat every day, telling the owner that these were her own kids—even though it was a lie. When she shared what little she had, she said, God kept giving her more. She was an ordinary person using the resources she had to act on behalf of others.This exchange at the respite centre shrank the enormity of the migrant caravan down to a human scale, where we could see and hear and touch and be kind to each other. She was no longer an anonymous figure trailing a child on a dirt road in an unidentified picture on a news website.The border was no longer a fixed place between us but simply a point of discovery beyond which our conversation could expand into a safer, deeper realm. Sharing snacks and juice boxes and hot coffee in the presence of the Lord, we lived together briefly in the sacred space between the now and the not yet.The next morning also brought Maribel, a twenty-three-year-old woman from Honduras, two thousand miles away. She didn’t speak English either. She was seven months pregnant. Border Patrol officers had apprehended her after she crossed through the water. Volunteers helped Maribel choose clean clothing, shoes, and a backpack with snacks and supplies. Staff worked out transportation to her US contact for later in the afternoon.When a volunteer outlined her options, I realized how much in Maribel’s life changed in Del Rio. “You know,” he said to her, speaking Spanish calmly, “You have a US contact and money for the bus, but you can go anywhere. You are not required to go to the contact. You are free to go anywhere.” I wondered whether she had ever heard this before. Maribel wasn’t familiar with many city or state names, but she was indeed free to go anywhere and, for her, that probably felt like a whole new world.Both migrant women I met at the shelter were Christians, acutely aware that God had shown them favour. Both had been on strenuous journeys; Maribel was visibly exhausted and fragile. She described one terrifying week when she ran away from a bus that had crashed in an accident somewhere in Mexico. She kept running, she said, for days. When Maribel traded her socks and shoes for new ones, sand and dirt crumbled off her feet. She took a shower, extra-long by any standard. “That shower probably feels really good to her after being in the river,” Selia commented to us as we all waited to visit with Maribel.Maribel looked refreshed when she came out of the shower trailer, as if spiritually cleansed. We offered her a plastic bag for saving her balled-up damp clothing and muddy shoes. Instead, she pitched them in the trash with the grand flourish of a magician, as if all the terror and exhaustion of the journey vanished with the black bag. This marvelous release showed me how someone could set aside all they had known up until that moment and take a step beyond their circumstances, leaning into the next life. Motivated by desperation, trauma, and a desire to preserve the future for their loved ones, these women said, “Yes, today is the day. Yes, I will leave now.”Late Tuesday afternoon, Selia and Paola and Maribel boarded the bus to San Antonio and points east. Maribel would meet family in Houston; Selia and Paola faced a two-day bus ride to find relatives in Maryland. These brave women adjusted to their afflictions as if all they had let go of or lost had no ultimate worth. Only Selia asked for prayers, though not for herself. “Money is nothing,” she said, her face peaceful, speaking from a restored inner sanctuary of true value. Instead, she sought intercession for her migrant friends in Tapachula, Mexico—women and men from other countries who did not fare as well as she had and who still suffered in humiliating work. “A prayer opens the doors of heaven,” Selia assured us.We had spent less than twenty-four hours together, each of us learning from the other. In a human crisis, the people carry the disaster with them. These women felt comfortable enough to lay down some of that burden and gather up the challenges of a new life ahead.“Money is nothing,” she said, her face peaceful, speaking from a restored inner sanctuary of true value. “A prayer opens the doors of heaven,” Selia assured us.No other migrants came during that week to the Coalition’s shelter. Our assignment shifted to serving in and around Del Rio. The city was a typical disaster-response site: the storm has passed through and those left behind make sense of what happened and what’s next. We talked and prayed with people at the park, in the grocery store, at restaurants, in Starbucks, at the mall, even while picking up a few items at a fundraising garage sale. Some felt lost; others felt sad about the thousands who are held in detention on both sides of the border. Many people worried about those who are still coming. No one anywhere knows what will happen to everyone.After finishing our chores on Friday afternoon, I asked my co-chaplain if she could take me to see the fence and the river. We loaded up the van with the rest of the volunteers and toured Del Rio’s west side, starting with the massive International Bridge to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. The border fence ties into the cyclone fence and concertina wire that surrounds the bridge installation, designed like an interstate control point with toll booths and areas for truck inspection with police and ranger stations. A pedestrian walkway stretches between the two countries. There is no place to go but across—or back.She made a U-turn and drove downhill along the river’s edge about a mile north, stopping at a clearing in the tall grasses where many people had come through the water. I imagined makeshift crosses with plastic flowers studding the dirt between cacti and sedges, impromptu monuments commemorating the people of many nations who lost their lives, or their history, or their family. Those who had cast their sanity into the current after a loved one lost their grip and drowned, drifting beyond reach. Footprints on the sand gave me chills. I imagined people latching onto a Border Patrol officer’s hand after a rescue, or teenagers scrambling up the ragged incline in the dark.We saw it in the daytime. Just the thought of spending one night in the open rangeland after months on the run crippled my imagination.The field of vision at the riverside was vast. Colonnades of trees and brush on dry mesas anchored an immeasurable sky. An ever-changing corridor of water rolled by effortlessly, as gravity pulled everything downstream. We walked along the sandbars in silence, squinting with an arm crooked over our faces to shield ourselves from the brilliant sheen reflected off the wide water. Each of us stopped now and then to size up the distance to the opposite shoreline, where mirages of migrants appeared in the flickering light of day, highlighting the terror of crossing over or of being captured.The black steel see-through fence, about half a mile further east on dry ground, had an endless quality like the river, but it was neither coming nor going. It was just there, a stark inversion of the iconic white picket fence that marks off the front yards of the American dream.My brother often shares photos from his neighbourhood in New York City, where the Statue of Liberty stands watch nearby. But I didn’t think the border fence could be imbued with any moral vision or timeless call for hospitality the way Lady Liberty beckoned viewers from all sides of the Upper Bay harbour, a gift from one country that became a symbol for the gifts of all countries. Even a poster of her poetry and her bronzed body, full of creative opportunity, couldn’t be attached to the fence—nothing could without being detected by electronic surveillance.I took a picture just in case I ever forget what the rest of the world looks like from my country’s side of this border.Over time and one by one, God changes people’s hearts. God is always inviting us to cross the borders of our own imaginations into a gloriously better day.Each person has a story of how they got to the border and where they’re going, even if it means deportation. The stories are all different, and yet each one is the same as the last one or the next: no matter age, history, language, or country, they want to live.The border is a place where the future changes forever. These survivors withstood the frightening interrogations: Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here? Prove it. Once you cross over, there is no going back. And if you can’t cross over, there’s still no going back. There are thousands of people in US detention facilities, awaiting court hearings. At the border, all we have is now.More people try but never cross over than those who are able to make it through. I stand with those who don’t make it too.What are we trying to stop at the border? There will always be people migrating through southwest Texas, news writers say. Migration is a cycle, an economic reality. By the time some migrants head downtown for their appointment with the US court system on their asylum appeal, the conditions they fled in their passport country may have subsided. But are we wise to ignore the movement of the poor, or the people, or the economic cycles, or the wind?When we let these legendary migrations pass us by, we stay unmoved by the presence of God. I thought I knew where I was going when I travelled twelve hundred miles south from Iowa to Del Rio for my deployment week. Yet the assignment to serve at the border challenged me to believe that divine intervention can bring justice to the Rio Grande: not because of new legislation or a cultural awakening but because, over time and one by one, God changes people’s hearts. God is always inviting us to cross the borders of our own imaginations into a gloriously better day.Over a century ago, the Del Rio brushland was bisected only by a river, the tallgrass and bison so thick they slowed the wind passing through them. The wind passed through the border of the grasslands like time or a prayer. The wind keeps passing through because no one from anywhere can stop the breath of the living God from passing through our world.~A version of this article first appeared in Comment Magazine, 1 July 2021. First published on Flash Devos/Marianne’s Substack, 28 October 2024. The 2025 Podcast is the original October 2024 recording. Readers support Flash💥Devos with prayers, tips, and subscriptions. Thanks for your gift! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Genesis 1:21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every wingéd bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.+Honor the physical reality in this image—everything we can see, as well as hidden things like birds in trees, insects on tree bark, microorganisms in the earth and water. Listen as wind ripples leaves. Feel the swift current on cold feet.Consider what is good to God.*Meg West lives near Charlottesville, Virginia, delighting others with her plein air oil paintings since 2000. Her landscapes depict scenes throughout the Shenandoah Valley, as well as Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and beyond. “I enjoy the rhythm and momentum that comes with a steady flow of painting,” she wrote. “We went to Sugar Hollow this morning and David hiked to the waterfalls and I stood in the water and painted,” a unique way to celebrate their 41st wedding anniversary. Find Meg on her blog at http://www.megwestoilpainting.net/Flash💥Devos is reader-supported with prayer, tips, and subscriptions. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

“Thank you for reading and listening to my Flash💥Devos during September. As my gift to you, I invite you to walk with me around our neighborhood in Antigua, Guatemala. In this article, recently published on FieldFare on Substack, I talk about how I’ve become acquainted with this foreign place in a different time zone with its own climate, geology, languages, people, buildings, history, and cuisine. If we were together, we’d also witness the Divine presence everywhere. I pray that you enjoy wherever you are today as a gift of God; share it with someone new! ❤️‍🔥” Words and images: Marianne Abel-LipschutzIn the Land of Eternal Springby Marianne Abel-LipschutzWe spend most of each year at 5,000 feet above sea level in Antigua, Guatemala, a UNESCO World Heritage city. Known for 16th-century colonial enterprises that spread across Central America, Antigua prizes its Spanish-Baroque architecture with tile roofs, small buildings connected by plazas, and lush manicured gardens. Mystery embellishes history here, where about 46,000 people live in the Panchoy Valley. Our immersion into this city’s life makes the tropical part of our year distinct from our other home in the rural upper midwest of the United States.Whenever we return from the States, it takes me a few weeks to remember what I like about living in Antigua. Elaborate gates and decrepit-looking walls conceal mansions or parking lots. Sometimes the city appears to be disintegrating, as if an older civilization is being recycled. Walls span centuries with degraded adobe, pitted colonial stone, and disintegrating brick rising up from cobblestone sidewalks, eras and peoples smooshed in a slow erosion. Archaeologists complain that the way Guatemalans salvage materials makes time a shifting kaleidoscope that resists order.Thousands of people transit alongside our neighborhood at the city’s northern entrance every day. Street life criss-crosses between ancient and modern times. Ruins of cathedrals and convents lend a sacred presence to secular venues from restaurants and schools to hotels, rock piles, and empty lots. Tired medieval church bells ring a dull thud for early morning services. A statue of St James the Apostle, the patron saint of Antigua, fills a wall shrine inside the McDonalds restaurant, while Ronald McDonald lounges in the plaza outside.We share an alley and walls with the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo, a thriving destination hotel and convention center created from the rubble of the first convent in Latin America, dating to 1538. On clear nights I can hear choral music piped through the hotel’s loudspeakers, conjuring supernatural spirits and howling ghosts. A subliminal spirituality animates my thoughts toward hope and restoration.For now, this place is my other, the entity outside myself that shelters my coming and going. It is not mine; I don’t belong to it nor it to me. We greet one another anew with each visit. Returning to our home base in Antigua reignites my compassion, knowing that people work around the clock to maintain the environment we share. I imagine monks and nuns kneeling on scuffed pews behind crumbling walls, praying for everyone’s wellbeing. One of my Spanish teachers grew up within the ruins of a 16th-century cathedral—her dad was the caretaker. Pigeons and tourists alike tottered through what she thought of as home. Tourists come for the architecture but it’s the people who make this city worthwhile.Antigua is always being reinvented, a living monument to perseverance and survival. Undaunted by recurring floods, earthquakes, and volcanic explosions, Guatemalans have been reconstructing this city with the debris of its previous landmarks since before documentation began. Across every sector, areas are roped off for demolition, almost everything needs maintenance, and city policies mandate restoration wherever possible. It’s all part of the work-around, an orientation of reuse and recycle within Guatemalan culture. Antigua is a city that will never be finished.*****Living in Guatemala is a dance between intimacy and separation. I often feel alienated from the subtropical highland environment that, even after ten years, remains unfamiliar. Having lived most of my life in northern humid continental or subtropical climate zones, I feel sensitive to the disorientation experienced by migrants, refugees, and exiles. All of us try to find places in the world where we can feel whole.Most scenery keeps me at a distance. Postcard-quality mountain vistas, winding roads, dense jungles, and fuming volcanoes decorate many horizons. Highly managed and wild places clash visually. Vegetation prospers so freely that epiphytes subsist on electric cables and single-stalk plants propagate in the volcanic ash on clay roof tiles. Jungle has an omnivorous hunger that consumes itself in ferocious reproductivity. Jungle is tough to enter or escape: encroaching, enveloping, swarming, all-encompassing. I imagine the masked and mythical Mayan ancestors slipping through the shadows.Nature no longer provides relief. Downsizing to two seasons instead of four destroys my reliance on a fixed internal calendar. Called the “Land of Eternal Spring”, our winter is their summer. Trees flower after leaves have dried and dropped, not before or during the greening time of leafing out. I can’t imagine not having rain or a drink of water for six months, yet each year I witness this world shrink before the rainy season begins in June. A statuesque walnut tree in our courtyard at Casa Philippi—one that looked dead just weeks before—erupts into foliar delight when the first rains fall.Corn palms from Africa, philodendron from Central America, coleus from southeast Asia, and schefflera from New Zealand—plants that I know from interior spaces in the US—grow here as cultivars and weeds that fill ditches or function as living fences. A spider plant colonizing the lawn becomes a mirror of questions: what is a spider plant, a native of South Africa, doing here? What is its history?Encountering plants that represent my old life blends welcome and annoyance. I wonder if my presence is as intrusive as these species may be. Years ago, I tended a hanging spider plant in my college apartment alongside an anemic schefflera that favored the bow window overlooking West Philadelphia. I never imagined we would all meet again in Guatemala. Nature offers traces of my changing place in this world.Here I coexist with plants as if we are wary of forging a deeper acquaintance. I delight in the waist-high bird-of-paradise flowers that look like neon origami cranes tiptoeing on evergreen stalks, native to Cape Provinces in South Africa. The improbably designed, turquoise-flowered Strongylodon vines, originally from the Philippines, dangle like a giant’s necklace awaiting pollination by bats. Dried leaves the size of paper clothes from the indigenous Monstera set off motion lights in the night breeze, unsettling me as if a phantom tossed its cloak into the brush. Gnarled roots crawl up buildings like desiccated serpents.My favorite place in the neighborhood is the plaza of the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo which features a colossal ceiba, the national tree of Guatemala. I can see it from my window and feel thrilled to be its neighbor. A symbolic ancestor for the Maya, its name is Yax Che (Green Tree or First Tree), a mighty force that connects earth and sky. Expansive and generative, its canopy offers a safe harbor. Roots reach intricately into the living power below where earthquakes shimmy the planet’s mantle. Tourists take selfies in front of this great being, a trivial act that seems misaligned with the tree’s sublime majesty.*****Some days we sit with Gustavo in a nearby pocket-book park, on the far bench he likes for reading his La Prensa newspaper with the mid-morning sun. A former municipal administrator, he greets us grandly. Call him with any concern, he assures us each time; he knows people. I wonder if we would ever need those people. Conflict and bureaucracy seem alien in the park as students snack and scan their phones between classes while kids circle scooters around the fountain. Lovers entwined on the grass giggle and tighten the tender hold between them.It’s rare that we are the only ones in the park. We ourselves feel loved and loving just seeing parents carrying children’s backpacks, friends holding hands walking home after work, couples embracing at the corner, every moment used for expressing care and affection. The great grackles cackle their social songs high in the treetops or waddling along ceramic roof tiles. Butterflies skim the breath of air. A monarch makes me wonder if we’ll meet again in Iowa, another place we both call home.Around midday, we keep an eye out for Margarita the tortilla lady, who sits for an hour between two tiendas, selling out of a wingspan-size basket. As we buy a few quetzales’ worth, we could be bystanders in a tourist’s snapshot, alongside the chicken bus belching black smoke, the wild dogs skittering by, and a moto dodging upturned stones along the Alameda Santa Rosa. On our way home, we shop with Ester, the abuela who loves my husband. She saves avocados for Harry, a potato or two, and gives him free cilantro for his soup because, she winks, “You need this for your caldo.”As a United States citizen, I will always be out of place in Guatemala. I accept that I am a guest here while acknowledging that parts of my own nature remain foreign to me. Some nights while reading on the sofa, the ventilation system at the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo shuts off and the city quiets down. I hear crickets, and cloistered sopranos harmonizing canticles piped through the hotel’s loudspeakers. Living alongside this medieval convent bestows unexpected blessings. I pray for a spirit of welcome and discovery in myself and in the world’s future taking shape around me.Published on Fieldfare 19 September 2025 https://substack.com/home/post/p-174018957Thanks for reading or listening to Marianne’s Flash💥Devos + Podcast. This post is public so feel free to share it! Try a subscription! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

James 6:29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”+Department stores sell “BELIEVE” as a home decoration but reminders aren’t enough. Saying, “I commit to peace” means choices follow; a simple act becomes the next hard thing. Even the disciples fled when Jesus reduced everything to God’s basic plan: “Believe in the one he has sent.” Imagine what we’d miss if the disciples hadn’t come back to accomplish their part of God’s work.Empower others to experience what happens when we believe together.Today’s devotional also appeared this morning in Red Letter Christians’ WakeUps devotional newsletter.Thanks for subscribing! 💥 Means a lot! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

John 3:3-5Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.”+Birthing transforms parent and child. Choosing to be born again reacquaints us with suffering.Jesus promises love everlasting through it all.Today’s devotional also appeared this morning in Red Letter Christians’ WakeUps devotional newsletter.My friend Lily DeCort is an Ethiopian American painter based in Chicago. Her work, ranging from luminous landscapes to evocative abstracts, reflects the liminality of her experience. Her paintings explore beauty, vulnerability, healing, and the human journey from wonder to loss and hope reborn. Learn more about Lily’s art at https://lilydecort.com/Thanks for subscribing!💥It’s good you’re here! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Psalm 94:16-19Who will rise up for me against the wicked?Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?Unless the Lord had given me help,I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.When I said, “My foot is slipping,”your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.When anxiety was great within me,your consolation brought me joy.+These couplets witness human vulnerability. When no one comes to “rise up with me” and no one “will take a stand for me,” hope disintegrates.Divine joy extinguishes wickedness.*Marcia Milner-Brage works from direct observation. Marcia faces the blank page “to transfer all my senses, whether I’m looking outward or inward.” She writes, “For me, being in nature is going to church. Through observing the bounty of the earth, I fulfill my calling.” Find her great work on socials and https://www.flickr.com/photos/marciamilner-brage/Your prayers, tips, and subscriptions💥matter! Thanks! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Romans 1:11-12I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. +Today is the first anniversary of my Flash💥Devos! Thank you for making this dream come true — that we can join our hearts in prayer to address the realities we live and face, together and apart. Here are my intentions for this coming year’s Flash💥Devos. Drop your wishes in a message and we’ll pray over those, too! * Let’s encourage one another. The mutuality of our faith is a wellspring around which we can gather.* Let’s stand together in lament and sorrow, in wonder and joy, in silence and community.Stay fresh in the Spirit and alive to your surroundings. *Marcia Milner-Brage works from direct observation, facing the blank page “to transfer all my senses, whether I’m looking outward or inward.” She writes personal essays and, in visual art, drawing, painting, and collage. “For me, being in nature is going to church. Through observing the bounty of the earth, I fulfill my calling.” Find her great work on socials and https://www.flickr.com/photos/marciamilner-brage/How cool that readers support Flash💥Devos enthusiastically. Thanks a ton! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Tomorrow will be the FIRST ANNIVERSARY of my Flash💥Devos + Podcast. Since I launched Flash💥Devos last September 1st, readers and listeners have devoted over TEN THOUSAND minutes in prayer, coming back again and again to contemplate, to reflect, and to be inspired by Divine Presence.I stand with all of you today--loyal followers and subscribers and casual acquaintances alike--offering a prayer of gratitude for seeking mercy and grace in your lives. Spiritual solutions matter. Thank You for subscribing, following, and praying along with me!A few things caught my attention this year:One huge inspiration:* You showed up! :)Two thrilling stats:* More than half of my subscribers are people I haven’t met yet.* People downloaded my Flash💥Devos podcast nearly 10,000 times!Three ways your participation built community:* We chose quietness.* We prayed across thirty U.S. states and eight countries.* We honored diverse world views and practices.Four surprising things I learned with Flash💥Devos:* People drift in and out to read like curious butterflies without a trace.* I didn’t feel strongly about some devos but others did.* Daily devotional reading habits flow through seasonal and weekly cycles.* I’ve picked up hope from these devos more often than I imagined I’d need.Five awesome comments — and many others — refreshed me:* J. offered: “Beautiful presentation, and also a prompt for me to invite a moment of spiritual contemplation into my life. As my spirituality is less defined and traditional, I approach Christian devotions, Bible verses, hymns, etc., much as I do poetry - I let them filter through my mind and see what deeper or applicable meaning emerges for me.”* S. clicked on a purple heart with this endorsement: “Your one minute flash devos are an encouragement! Our [baby] is up 4x/night still and the sixty seconds is what my brain can give focus to for reflection. Thank you!”* A. cheered: “Wow, Marianne. This is the grounding and orientation I needed today. Thank you! I continue to love how simple, short, and lit these invitations are. I echo back to you, ‘Be strengthened in the truth of your witness.’"* M. confided: “Your sharing of devotions comes at a very good time for me. Although 2024 has been a very good year, I’ve really struggled with the state of our country and the world. I’m seeking more positive news than that which I see on the ‘news.’ Your offering comes as an answer to my prayers!”* E. shared: “I grew up in the Lutheran Church, and while I have deconstructed a lot of the junk from the 90s church culture (...the 90s definitely did a number on me), I still have a deep spiritual practice.”Shout out to these artists, friends, and family who gave me permission to highlight their work alongside the scripture and commentary! Please support their creativity! Jill Hinners, Maureen Seamonds, Marcia Milner-Brage, Lily DeCort, Meg West, Maria Wickwire, Olly Costello, Annie Soudain, Elle Billing, Holly Harris, Christina Farrell, Paula Tomy, Allison May Kiphuth, Colective + Arte, Jack Abel, James Abel, Betsy Baker, and Coralee Barrow.Please stay with me for the coming year on Flash💥Devos + Podcast. Let God multiply our efforts for the good of all, for the good of the future, and for the good of this exceptional present moment. Whether you read, listen, or just stop by, thank you!Dedicated to my mother and my brother Steve, companions on the everlasting journeyIrene M. Abel ~ April 1931 - August 1994Stephen F. Abel ~ December 1958 - August 2017 Readers support Flash💥Devos with prayer, tips, and subscriptions. Thanks for your gifts! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Here is my Thank-You gift to readers and listeners of my Flash💥 Devos + Podcast for July. This good book by a dear friend offers a fresh perspective on the Beatitudes. I pray that Andrew’s honesty and commitment to change reaches your heart, too. Check it out! ♥Finding Presence in the Midst of Pain Blessed Are the Others: Jesus’ Way in a Violent World by Andrew DeCortReviewed by Marianne Abel-LipschutzAndrew DeCort’s Blessed Are the Others sketches the crucial work of reconciling with God about suffering through the Beatitudes. Jesus proclaimed this “divine justice manifesto” to inspire right relationships of mutual flourishing. DeCort draws widely on his international career as a public theologian, pastor, professor, and scholar in this practical and engaging book.He weaves stories from texts, memoirs, and the writings of James Baldwin, Etty Hillesum, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others whose witness about devastation illustrate Beatitudinal wisdom. “Jesus says there’s no need to suppress the painful reality of being poor humans,” he writes. You can read Blessed Are the Others and weep. Just don’t stop there.You’ll find answers to the pivotal question we all have about the miraculous transformation of grief into goodness. “How does Jesus invite us to flourish in the face of our universal experiences of suffering, conflict, and loss?” Blessed Are the Others explores the Beatitudinal Way as “an endlessly generative, culturally divergent path of humane happiness.” This profound book is easy to hold but hard to believe. DeCort’s disruptive vision of the Beatitudes can make us squirm.He repeats a glorious and unsettling message: the Beatitudes apply to all of us. “These are not random well-wishes as we often seem to assume. Jesus is describing an interconnected path and intentional process of becoming human,” DeCort writes of the austere design of these eight movements or blessings. “Each blessing is accompanied by a promise that speaks to a core fear that we face in choosing to walk this way. The whole path reflects Jesus’s deep sensitivity to the embodied human soul.”The Beatitudes challenge us to cultivate interdependence by “doing our work,” healing the poverty and destitution that scorch our personalities. This is not a simple “Come to Jesus” message. We must bring love to the outsiders within us, DeCort maintains, the parts of ourselves we fear, the internal hatreds and rejections that complicate our inner lives. If not, we will project those wounds, “othering” those around us, “painishing” [sic] them for our suffering. DeCort’s writing on transcending this grief is memorable.“Each blessing is accompanied by a promise that speaks to a core fear that we face in choosing to walk this way. The whole path reflects Jesus’s deep sensitivity to the embodied human soul.”DeCort elaborates on his life-altering encounters with loss, terror, and abandonment during more than a decade in Ethiopia with his wife, their self-exile, and time in North America. After years of resistance, he finally allowed himself “to enter into that haunted house of my own pain.” In counseling, simply composing a therapeutic list of losses shattered his defenses. “As I tried to write that letter to God, electricity surged through my body and up my arms. I felt like I was going to blackout and fall backwards in my chair,” he recalls. “I wept hysterically, hyperventilating with overwhelming distress. It was the closest I’ve ever come to feeling like I was about to die.”Nevertheless, he encourages us to brave the world beyond our fears so we can “enter into the ultimate unionizer of humanity: our grief.” DeCort cautions us: this spiritual work will separate us from the crowd:“This theology leads to a revisionary way of becoming human. It’s poverty-processing, tear-soaked, nonviolent, hungry-and-thirsty, compassionate, God-seeing peace and justice. Humane happiness isn’t winning. It’s learning how to relate to one another as if we’re all actually beloved and the Beatitudinal Way is actually blessed. Jesus’s community found these divergent revisions to be blasphemous betrayals. They called it ‘subverting the nation’ and worthy of death (Luke 23:2).”I loved how DeCort’s study layers the Beatitudes like tree rings that embody the heart of God within us, promising that as we integrate total belonging, we will stand and bear witness while honoring joy in the midst of the crimes of our times. “Creative resistance to violence is one of Jesus’s most groundbreaking teachings,” DeCort asserts.“Jesus proved in the most intimate, ultimate way possible with his own body that humans can do their very worst. And still, God isn’t violent and doesn’t save with violence. God’s salvation is the presence of love, even in pain, free of vengeance.”I highly recommend DeCort’s beautiful book for the ways he coaches us to pursue the difficult work of surrendering to the promises of God. Fifteen pages of resources and questions for reflection at the back offer prompts to explore the Beatitudinal Way in group discussions, in daily life, and in reading scripture more effectively. Through these exercises, I learned to apply the principles Jesus died for and stay grounded in reality.“If you’re poor – in body, spirit, or otherwise – God is unconditionally committed to you,” DeCort assures us with pastoral compassion, emphasizing that our cosmic destiny is fullness of life. “If you feel like you’re falling apart or there’s nothing left to live for but pain, you will end up fully at home with God. If you’re hopeless, you’re held by heaven. You’re going to be eternally okay.”Paperback: BitterSweet Collective, 2024Buy Now: [ BookShop ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]Thanks to the Englewood Review of Books for publishing this review first on July 2, 2025! https://englewoodreview.org/andrew-decort-blessed-are-the-others-review/Reset with a spiritual break and feel restored. Subscribe to Flash💥Devos! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

The spiritual life of home and place shifts with the seasons for me. As my Thank-You gift to all of you who have come alongside me during June on Flash💥Devos, I offer my article about the world I encounter on my lawnmower, an unlikely but perfect place to connect with creation. May the ways you tend to the world bring you surprise and insight, too. Around the Yard in 100 Daysby Marianne Abel-LipschutzSpring mowing in Iowa releases the sweet pineapple aroma of chamomile. I discovered this stubborn, single stem plant in our driveway gravel, creeping improbably across compacted zones like it owns this place. Driving from one side of the lawn to mow beyond a building, I trim it so often that it barely tops my toes. Also known as Common Mayweed, this herb defies annual baths of RoundUp, subzero winters, snow plows, and herbicide spills. Green sprouts proliferate even after the grader blade shaves the gravel so flat it pools water like beach sand. Mayweed is a persistent gift that teaches me how to thrive in unlikely places.Chamomile varieties have been cultivated since the Neolithic. Commercial producers harvest a blue oil and components of the flowers and leaves for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and teas. One source claims that people around the world drink more than a million cups of chamomile tea daily. The tiny plant yields bioactive phytochemicals that treat ailments from hay fever and hemorrhoids to insomnia and muscle spasms. Native to northeastern Asia and northwestern US, sources say chamomile was likely brought eastward across America with the Lewis and Clark expedition as they returned to St. Louis in 1806. Rich folklore and traditional healing treatments document its spread westward from Asia.On our farm, mayweed is a wild companion, my souvenir of our history here. We bought this property from the Federal Land Bank in September 1987 and did not meet the former owners until later. Foreclosed in 1983 during the agricultural crisis, this dairy and general farm had been operated by generations of one family for almost one hundred years. Neighbors declined to buy the land, a common protest strategy, leaving the acreage to the care of renters. The property’s ragged edges showed how quickly vegetation reclaims the spaces people leave behind.We moved here in late November after most plants and shrubs had withered. I would have liked to walk around the yard with the former owners to learn what grew where. Even if we had met then, they probably would have directed my attention away from the weeds. We had never lived west of the Mississippi or on a farm, and though many common plants and trees were familiar in this northern climate zone, many were new to us. We’d come from West Virginia where eroded, hillside soils formed from decayed woodlands over rock and clay. Iowa offered a new nature with lush prairie sods and soils created by glacial drift layered over ancient marine sedimentation.Our first year here presented a calendar of outdoor surprises. Perennial onions, hyacinths, and tulips appeared after the snow melted. Rhubarb emerged like an organism coming out of hibernation. Asparagus fingers poked through like Rip Van Winkle calling out to meet the newcomers. Rangy willows waved their yellow catkins at us when we looked out the kitchen window. A solitary cherry tree by the road, exposed to harsh northwest winds for countless winters, finally exhaled some blooms after much effort. Peony fists shook in the wind along the west ditch. I would have enjoyed a crowd of white or lavender lilacs, even a few hollyhocks. It’s just as well that this place had few frills. Roses and fussy ornamentals would have perished from my neglect.I feel at home with seemingly insignificant plants like chamomile that blend in as part of the scheme of things. Pineapple Weed is another popular name for this miniature cousin of the daffodil. It sprouts above the grit with a lime-green stalk topped by a yellow, cone-shaped, button flower stuffed with potential. Thousands of its seeds weigh a fraction of an ounce, an abacus of years counting forward into the future. We notice mayweed in northeast Iowa at the beginning of June when that unmistakable sweetness rises again.The area where mayweed grows best now was the site of the property’s original house. This small, clapboard structure had been used as a garage and metal-working shop after the family moved into the big house across the driveway, built in 1924. By the time we bought the place, the shop was a multi-generational mix of wasp nests, spiders, parts, nails, oil slicks, and metal paraphernalia that outbuildings accumulate as if by magnetism. We salvaged odd tools and dimensional lumber, and bulldozed the rest to expand the driveway for maneuvering large equipment.The demolition exposed that patch of ground to daylight and rain, activating a botanical legacy that hosted the mayweed. The tropical smell enchanted me, an unexpected scent in the driveway when I crushed the flower buds and leaves while walking. Mayweed thrives in cut-over plots and waste ground such as former construction sites. Iowa is a well-manicured state where tiny mayweed can go unnoticed. Still, the plant lives intentionally: one hundred days from seed to seed. Millions of seeds spread everywhere every year, scattered by mowers, blown by the wind, and walked someplace else on the bottoms of our shoes.As new owners of this property and newcomers to Iowa, we had a pick-and-choose loyalty to the farm’s many components. We offended some people and delighted others when we destroyed the original small house, sold and dismantled the concrete silo, torched the chicken house, and allowed a small grove of unkempt walnut trees to be harvested. Some of the adults who’d grown up here feared we would tear down the dairy barn, a safe deposit box of summers spent filling and emptying the hay mows, playing hide and seek, and tending to livestock chores before breakfast. To them and to us, the emblematic structures seem permanent although we all know they are not. What is necessary to one generation may be tossed in the burn pile by the next.It seemed a neighborly thing to do when we agreed to sell the dilapidated township schoolhouse on our property’s northeast corner to Jim Grupp. He wanted to gift it to his sister as a surprise 65th birthday and retirement present the following year. Their home place is a half-mile north, they’d attended the school, and both had become educators. He moved it 33 miles south to Reinbeck where she lived and refurbished it as an antique store on Main Street. On our corner, the absence of what was once a township landmark has been restored as a quarter acre of good farmland with a similar but different cultural value.I see the plants and trees as iconic elements of the local landscape, much like a red livestock barn or a utility tractor by the machine shed. Wild and domesticated plants and trees add to the dignity of our immediate environment and define it as a place where families work and live. In April, you can smell the impenetrably frozen ground come alive out of winter’s darkness. The land itself is a breathing organism so complex and so generative that just paying attention to it feeds a deep place that renews our souls.The co-creation of landscapes through crop farming initially unsettled me. We leaped from backyard scale to industrial volume in one season, upending my notion of being part of a bigger picture that meanders over time to one that, like chamomile, lives from seed to seed in a hundred days. Each Iowa season measures out three months of specific characteristics that disappear when the next one phases in, emphasizing the now of a vivid present. Each farm owner’s time on a property is dynamic, adjusting the tension between growing and dying, meaning and stewardship, preserving and releasing.Whole sections of farmland across our county and state grow seedlings at roughly the same rate in May, as if farmers collaborated to quilt the land with tufts spaced six inches apart. Before you can turn around in a good year, the wall of corn rises up so thick in late June that you can’t see more than a foot deep into any field. Indigenous peoples honor the spectacular corn tassels of late summer in elaborate headdresses, symbols of a fruitful and prosperous season. Harvest transfers the grain into bins and the spectacle ends as farmers prepare the cropland for winter.Tillage options, conservation practices, water management, and crop rotation change the ways our farms look and produce over time. Smart farmers invest in a balance between developing, conserving, and harnessing the soil’s capacity for productivity. Dominant crops draw energy and resources like urban areas. It took me a while to see that no matter how controlled the production farmland may be, abundant life will flourish all around the edges, too, if it’s allowed.Some herbalists theorize that people move to where the plants can heal them. I should have conducted a plant survey to compare with our soil survey. Iowa had the continuity and stability we needed, with a banquet of plants that could feed or soothe us, entertain or confuse us. I could gather flowers for a vase or greens for a salad without planting anything. Summer ditches filled with brilliant orange daylilies, milkweed, wild parsnip, native grasses, vivid lavender bergamot. Aromatic sprays of white flowers in July became rich purple elderberry jams in the fall. Queen Anne’s Lace, cattails, and goldenrod defined early August. The dried minarets of flowering motherwort soothed my heart in the wintertime when herbal teas brought the outdoors inside for healing and hope.I harvested buttery dandelions on April 23 once, the British day for making dandelion wine, and sipped a sweet gold liquor that fall. I recognized plantain, white clover, and other everyday first-aid plants that tolerate a mown lawn. Dainty violets nestled in the grass, as if a princess and her attendants had tossed lavender petals across the yard. Violets also grew in the understory of our mature red cedar windbreak whose trees had thunder-struck tops, bark crusted over rotten barbed wire, and a poke-your-eye-out maze of dead branches that stuck straight out from the trunks. The lovely violets, delicate symbols of love and faithfulness, complimented the cedar, prized for its essential oils that preserve what is good and worthy.I could have lived better if I’d eaten the mulberries that crept into the windbreak, crowding the lanky cedars. Growing ten feet in a year, these invaders held a treasure of medicinal qualities I didn’t learn about until decades later. Silkworms, which we don’t have, favor the leaves. Raccoons, which we do have, climbed up the ladder of cedar branches to grab the ripe fruits. Mulberries treat cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, anemia, and arthritis. One source describes the plant as a “powerhouse of nutrients” with everything from fibers and carbohydrates, to lipids, antioxidants, and beneficial polynutrients. I might have avoided several health problems later if I’d been half as wise as the raccoons and eaten my fill every June.I also ignored the pesky message of burdock, or cocklebur, that clung to me after every autumn walk like a post-it note. English settlers brought burdock to America. Commonly used in Chinese medicines and as a food, burdock roots, leaves, and seeds can boost immune systems, lower blood pressure, kill germs, reduce fever, and purify blood. It can treat cancer, colds, acne, dry skin, and rheumatism. Burdock’s first year elephantine leaves spread out close to the ground, just below the reach of mower blades. In the second year, Burdock zips upward like a tree, sprouting prickly purple cannonballs on the ends of flower stalks that dry into a brown burr. A coarse biennial herb, one treated here as a noxious weed like Russian thistle, burdock has admirable qualities of persistence, purpose, and adaptability.This alluring array of plants, crops, critters, birds, livestock, and trees that come and go with the seasons coached me in respecting the big cycles of life. These forces influence us but are beyond our impact, no matter where we live. Here the flower succession marks time as the earth tilts away from the sun, cutting back daylight until the sun passes the meridian of our horizon and drifts ever southward. The land has a permanence, yet it shifts. Rocks have a permanence too, yet they move. Whether barely perceptible or terrifyingly obvious, the creative vitality on earth teaches us about movement and change as essential forces we need not resist.The oldest plants on our property are the Horsetail or Scouring Rushes that poke up like pencils along ditches in the spring. These are the oldest plants anywhere they grow. The genus Equisetales emerged during the Carboniferous era when the Appalachian Mountains were being formed and basic plants with seeds began to grow. I knew Equisetes from when I worked at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia after high school. Enormous cross-sections of Equisetes trunks and slabs decorated with its delicate branches filled reinforced cabinet trays. Dinosaur food, Equisetes varieties formed huge forests that died and compressed to become the coal we harvest for fuel. Medicinal supplements use horsetail components in the treatment of kidney and bladder stones, urinary tract infections, brittle fingernails, joint diseases, and bleeding problems. The plant absorbs silica and is so coarse when dried that it’s used as a sandpaper for polishing the reeds of musical instruments, or bundled into a scouring brush.Yet Equisetes are insubstantial; they look like the idea of a plant or a drawing a child might make. Its leaves are like sheaths cut from tissue paper, wrapped around the hollow stem, segment jointed to segment like a telescopic toy. Hundreds cluster in groups. Plants are virtually indestructible, thriving in rich, moist soils. Equisetes and hybrid corn were all that survived a recent herbicide application. We have the oldest and the latest plants side by side in our fields.Plants teach me how to grow where I am. Like pineapple weed that thrives in wastelands and Equisetes that prosper in rich soil, I learn to adapt to the conditions around me. It may not be the place I prefer, or the conditions I like, but resilience is a skill I can cultivate. Resilience and adaptation are powerful change agents. These vital forces transform me into a dynamic version of myself that remains true to my natural being.When I feel weary, it's a signal that I need to go outside. A simple walk shifts my unease, returning me to the place where God puts me. Every square inch of our property has been disturbed in some way. Even the rocks rise up through the ground each year, as if hoisted by geologic tides, the thawing and heaving of deep winter frosts. Come springtime, a new crop of rocks should be harvested before field planting begins.When all else fails, I go sit on a rock. Spending time on a rock is like investing a day at the beach where everything that is everlasting, bound to the Earth in the water’s everflowing cycles, becomes an enchanting mystery. The sea breeze freshens our faces. Our toes squish into the sands of time. A rock in my yard will be remarkably the same long after I’m gone. That fact of nature assures me that the trouble of today will pass too, adding its small part to the whole.A walk around the yard connects me to the grand scheme of abundance. I can collect a cup-full of ripe flower buds--mayweed, red clover, violets--while the water boils in the kitchen for a delicious tea. A pocketful of catmint will draw the barn cats closer as they nudge me to see what I’ve brought. When all the plants disappear under winter’s cover of whiteness--so improbably and completely vanished it’s as if they never existed--I can bring us both back to life in my teacup on a dreary January day.These resurrection rituals are so elemental that I can forget who I am and just think, “cup of tea,” taking for granted the bounty around me. Accepting what I’m given helps me steward the divine life force. Seeds of the kingdom grow everywhere: in the driveway gravel, under the trees and rocks, speckled among the leaves and twigs in the roof gutters. Even in a few minutes staring out the window or imagining my favorite places, I can allow myself to grow.We’ve lived here long enough to experience the start-to-finish, whole life of many things, something I never imagined. As a newcomer to farm country in 1986 I knew we would have a future here but I simply couldn’t imagine it. An adventurous young adult, I did not have a long view then, except as an abstraction. I did not have my own history in any place that lasted longer than ten years. I had no vision of our past here as the first in our biological families to move west of the Mississippi.Recently we cut down thirty Austrees we planted twenty-five years ago from sticks that came in a package delivered by UPS, trees that served us and our environment well. They had outgrown their time, both above and below ground. Tree limbs broke off in storms, threatening passersby and buildings; their vast root systems clogged drainage lines so completely that the tiles had to be replaced. The stumps revealed how the old trees were dying on the inside, a natural life cycle in the grand scheme of things. Cutting them down felt like a hard but fresh start on a place that’s no longer called by the former owner’s last name. We’ll never be locals like they were, but our stories add a small part to the bigger picture of this place on Earth.Once we stopped finishing out hogs over twenty years ago, the activity and traffic of animals, people, and equipment ceased too. Tree seeds had already rooted invisibly into the barnyard alley’s expansion cracks. Cedars, mulberries, and willows busted through the concrete, creating shelter for critters and birds and wildflowers. I catch a whiff of pineapple now where I least expect it, renewing my faith the way a mustard seed makes inroads in a mountain. The tiniest effort at the living edge of the universe becomes a turning point on a new journey forward.A version of this essay was first published in Front Porch Republic, August 10, 2020 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Ephesians 2:17-20, 22He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.+Let the prophecies of generations find fulfillment in you.Peace rules.A version of today’s Flash💥Devo also appeared this morning in Red Letter Christians’ WakeUp devotional email newsletter. *Olly Costello is a white queer illustrator, PIC abolitionist, food growing enthusiast, and community seed saver. “I hope my work can be a small contributing part of creating our new culture, grounded in honoring the inherent sacredness of all beings and pushing us beyond violent cultures,” Olly writes. Discover their inspiring work on socials and at https://ollycostello.com/Your subscription💥means just what you think! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Here’s an essay about learning to heal loneliness, offered to you as a Thank-You gift for reading, listening, and praying along with me during May. I feel so encouraged by your presence. May reflecting on respectful relationships bring insight and hope into your world. The Museum of My Lonely Heartby Marianne Abel-LipschutzMy complicated history with stealing may have started on nature walks in grade school. Teachers taught us simple ways to study what we explored in our suburban Chicago town. Students made leaf collections, smearing Elmer’s white glue on the backs of dried leaves we’d picked up in the neighborhood to fill pages in autumn scrapbooks. One leaf per page with the tree’s name. There was no mention of maybe the leaves were needed by the soil or that they belonged to the land where they’d grown.We killed butterflies and beetles, and organized them on quilting pins on a whiteboard. We printed each insect’s name carefully before gluing the paper strips alongside each insect. Lightning bugs filled Mason jars for a few days. We threw them out after their lights dimmed. In a family of five, school projects weren’t kept long.There was no talk of the torture of small creatures. Nature was just there. There for the taking.No one mentioned that our parochial school was built on the traditional homelands of the Three Fires: the Ottawa, the Potawatomi, and the Ojibwa. We all lived on land stolen from Three Fires peoples when they were forced west against their will in 1835. Stealing is part of our history.***I stole money from people and things from Woolworth’s dime store downtown in fourth grade. I slipped a check out of a lady’s pocketbook at church one Sunday, then forged it for cash at the local movie theater later that week. After buying popcorn and Raisinets for the matinee, I set most of the money aside to donate to the mission fundraising competition at our Catholic grade school. I really wanted our class to win and be cheered when the money thermometer filled up with Maybelline red paint. Beyond seeking the approval of the nuns, I couldn’t say exactly why I engaged in stealing. Psychology suggests I wanted to draw attention to our family’s need for attention. Ours was a good-enough family but we kept secrets about serious problems.Eventually, a police officer knocked on our front door and inquired about the forged check. I confessed and agreed to apologize to the lady at her house with my dad. He offered her cash restitution, money I had to pay off through chores. Sadly, the silence about domestic violence at home persisted along with my shame.My stealing habits shifted to other pursuits. Some Saturdays I’d borrow a grocery cart from the local Kroger’s store and wander the trails of Panfish Park for the afternoon, walking the cart as if it were a companion. I’d return it to the rack in the parking lot on my way home. I wish someone had taught me that the woodland preserve itself was another support, an important companion in a lonely time.Stealing is acting on the impulse to take something for my use or pleasure that doesn’t belong to me. It’s as true in a store or a library or someone else’s home as it is in a forest or along the shoreline where a mussel’s abalone glints in the sunlight and, delighted with this beachfront trinket, I transfer it into my pocket and off we go. Of course, I don’t think of that as stealing but I should.Loneliness is a common human feeling when social attachments fade and interpersonal connections diminish in value. Different from solitude or being alone, loneliness can motivate me to connect with something or someone outside my boundaries. In the past, that yearning to be in a relationship could be satisfied by stealing. Disordered feelings still urge me to take what isn't mine but my self-restraint is stronger now. I’ve learned to feel content without needing to possess more.***I treasure all manner of stolen objects, plucked without permission from environments where I once felt connected so tenderly that I didn’t want to live without their charm. I cradle each item into my surroundings. Wherever I’ve moved, I’ve carried shells and pottery shards and leaves and beaver-toothed shreds of oak and seed pods and a hunk of coal--even a tiny bird nest half the size of this paragraph that was blown out of a tree. Living with favorite things helps me attach to a new location where, before long, I’ll bring home new souvenirs from the beginnings of relationships that mark my settling in.Tiny worlds fill the six-inch wide disk that holds up my nightstand lamp. Each object carries its own folklore--stories about its formation, mode of living, origins, and its history with me. There are two shells from Deer Isle, Maine, a favorite place shaped by ocean, wind, rock, and marine life: one conch and a snail decorated with barnacles. There’s a quarter section of a broken sand dollar polished by the beach; is it from Florida? I forget. Rather than reading at night, I like to pick up a third, finger-tip size snail shell with a fabulous Fibonacci spiral and marvel at its elaborate patterning.No, wait. I picked up that chipped sand dollar on the bright sand outside Corpus Christi, Texas, when I visited my brother James two years ago.Six years ago I added a chunk of dolomitic limestone to the nightstand. I noticed the rock in the construction backfill behind my brother Steve’s old house in suburban Washington D. C. where I’d wandered in the woods after his funeral, inconsolable and bereft at his unexpected death. We had no history with dolomitic limestone or construction backfill. Why this rock would forever remind me of my brother is a mystery and a testament to the possibilities of meaning-making with nature. I view it now the same way I saw it that afternoon: chalk white, hard, devoid of darkness. A palm-size gravestone.The nightstand itself is a (stolen) found object: a three-foot wide polished marble circle balanced atop a dark wooden base with shapely Victorian legs taken from an abandoned mansion on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia in 1972 with my boyfriend at the time. Who knows the origin of the marble tabletop? And what are these things doing in my bedroom now, half a century and half the country away from where I picked them up?Yes, a lost house itself is a tragedy, but there is an entire universe in the items inside, an entire universe in the single page of a book that drifts away while you’re running to catch a flight. There is an entire universe in a quote, an entire universe in interpretations of a book that begs for humanity to find a way to survive when our environment cannot sustain us anymore. In lieu of words, do not send invented photos or videos that supposedly say something profound. I would prefer silence. I would prefer a room where I can sit with someone who holds in their hands something they saved from the end of the world this time, something that reminds them of someone else. ~Hanif Abdurraqib*I imagine that the popular slogan, “Take Only Photos. Leave Only Footprints” was a hard sell when it emerged as an awareness campaign for responsible partnership with nature decades ago. Yet through such educational projects, the self-centered practices of littering and taking things without permission have evolved.Indigenous ways of requesting permission to forage or hunt teach us the common courtesy of belonging: we ought to seek permission from the property owner as well as from the animals and plants themselves. The USDA distributes pamphlets endorsed by indigenous herbalists instructing readers how to conduct honorable harvests and grant respect to all living things.The mutuality implied by seeking consent is valued now as a moral concept and a spiritual practice that can lead to solutions for our loneliness. Granting consent opens a relationship--whether between us and the divine, the created world, or the people we choose. Acknowledging our dependence on one another is as critical as recognizing that we all have gifts to give.New principles for seeking reparation and restitution for past harms elaborate on these profound interactions. Seeking a truce or brokering a treaty don’t end the cycle. Museums are returning objects collected through the centuries and brought to foreign places for an adult’s version of “Show and Tell” after colonists, explorers, and conquerors took what didn’t belong to them and brought it all back home.We can witness the difficult repatriation of stolen goods, paintings, and possessions from the Nazi era being restored to their rightful owners. Descendant communities are regaining title to their traditional homelands in many countries. The bones of deceased peoples are being returned to the soil from which they grew in sacred burial rights long denied. Truth and reconciliation commissions foster the agonizing heart work of restoring stolen souls and vandalized countries damaged by hatred, racism, rape, and war.Putting things back where they came from is not always possible.Nature is there for the taking, but it is also there for the tending.I choose to unlearn the antisocial habits of my youth by resolving my needs in healthier ways. My parents’ plan to secure my confession and give restitution to the church lady I harmed were sound principles of reconciliation for the incident of forging that check in fourth grade. Broken people are restored to community through grace and forgiveness. I need that mercy now in reconciling my human nature through redemptive relationships in my walk through this world.“Lessons for the End of the World,” by Hanif Abdurraqib. New Yorker, 2 February 2025. https://www.abdurraqib.com/Reset with a spiritual break and feel restored. Subscribe to Flash💥Devos! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Acts 11:25-26 Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.+The spiritual revival in Antioch around 46 A.D. flourished so broadly that locals called the diverse crowds by the nickname “Christians.” They called themselves disciples, followers, brothers and sisters. Now a Christian identity is complicated.What distinguishes believers today?Subscribe to Flash💥Devos + Podcast or Follow for the latest posts. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

My March Thank-You gift to readers and listeners of Flash💥Devos is this article about a puddle that kept me company through the first COVID months of 2020 and beyond. This body of water served me as a Visio Divina, a sacred window of possibility that I searched with the eyes of my heart and soul. I pray that an environmental image or experience can be your holy partner through a time of grief and weariness.Pool of Tears by Marianne Abel-LipschutzFor the first six weeks of a stay-at-home order I served daily shifts as a chaplain on a 24-hour-a-day national prayer line created as a response to the COVID crisis. During the early morning, late afternoon, and again in the evening, several dozen chaplains in other time zones and I answered phone calls weary people made to an 800-number looking for relief. For two or more hours strangers invited us into a baffling intimacy amidst real isolation and social distancing.I inquired about their location as a conversation opener. No matter where the person lived, each caller felt close. “I’m talking on the couch in my living room,” one lady from upstate New York said. Her radio’s volume was louder than her voice but we managed. She feared losing her faith by not going to church. She had never prayed anywhere else and wasn't sure if the prayer line would work to rekindle her faith.An elderly man sat uncomfortably propped up in a hospital bed in Mississippi, gulping with fear and a deep, dry wheeze. “I don’t know if I will have to go to the ICU,” he worried out loud in a mellowed southern drawl. His urgent pleas matched the intermittent code blue alerts I overheard on the hospital PA system in the background. “Could you just pray that I can go home with my dog?” His mood brightened when I asked about his schnauzer, Millie. I felt comforted, too, by listening to his excitement about how she’d snuggle close to him everyday in the easy chair.One client outside Cleveland, Ohio, lamented the emptiness at his kitchen table, unable to fill the space left behind after his loved one departed. His melancholy mixed with a flurry of sounds forever bouncing around in my mind from decades around our kitchen table—the same table where his life now joined with ours. I imagined him sitting across from me at this vintage formica set we’d found at a garage sale. A lonely elder in Cleveland taught me how objects retain intangible goodness that can perish as memories recede. We prayed that love would not drift away, too.***In between calls my attention drifted to a puddle in the driveway. The puddle appeared with the pandemic after melting snow pooled with a sheen of feathery hoar frost one morning. Its steady but ever-changing presence became a stand-in companion during the isolation of 2020. I'd look out the window at the puddle as daytime air warmed the water and find myself rapt by the glittery frost flattened into a scrim of matte gray that mimicked the overcast sky. Sometimes a sparrow would drop down from the electric cable and walk around the edge, assessing the puddle. The bird would lap the chilled water and return to its perch, ascending effortlessly in one swift gesture.The puddle intrigued me. As opaque as a stilled pond, I saw its potential locked up like hope frozen in time. The shallow water out the window on my right became a contemplative partner that connected me to life beyond the confines of our house in northeast Iowa. Our bodies, made in God’s image, are 60% water. Our lungs are roughly 83% water. We are watery beings reflecting the divinity that gave us life yet we're lodged in a specific time and space.The fluid canvas spread across the driveway directed my daydreams. I imagined watering holes where massive creatures lowered themselves gracefully into the coolness of an afternoon. Some days my worried mind emptied onto the agate-studded shores of Lake Superior where sky greets water on the far horizon. Watching the sparrows stand the same way I do at the puddle’s edge, I wondered about the colors of water that only their eyes can see. I wasn’t thirsty enough to drink puddle water but my needs led me to the edge, too.“We can excite one another's imagination toward good,” writer Christina Baldwin commented on her blog that first COVID spring, “so that when we wake up empty and frightened the first thing we see is how we are held and what we are learning.”Sometimes I’d answer the phone and receive prank calls, vindictive comments about God, salacious chatter, or a hang-up. Yet each time I heard people express their anger, panic, and desperation it taught me about my own grief. Everyone we knew was at risk; COVID updates dominated most conversations. I honored how differently we suffer in each prayer as the comments of aggressive clients attuned my understanding. Occasionally a caller reciprocated and prayed out loud for me. Each prayer became an extemporaneous psalm tailored to one sacred moment together.I let two late night callers talk all they wanted since our conversation kept them from pursuing suicide plans. The next evening, despite algorithms that randomized and matched hundreds of callers to volunteer chaplains, I recognized the voice of one man on the line. We both gasped, bewildered to be together again. He had been drinking the second night, too. Long silences revealed how hard he tried to justify what he called the “nonsense” in his life. Prayer helped both of us survive what we couldn’t understand.***Throughout the weeks, the puddle acted like a scale model of the universe, tutoring me about the ways water has shaped our small place in time. Water tapers to the thinnest edges as gravity, pressure, and volume conform it to the earth. On our farm we drink paleowater drawn up from aquifers lined with carbonaceous rock. As a child, our son crouched in our driveway’s ivory limestone gravel, harvested from local quarries, searching for fragments of fossil invertebrates deposited by the tropical waters of the Western Interior Seaway. On summer nights when the puddle was clear, moonlight filled the shallow pool.A heavy downpour forced the puddle to overflow its usual boundary until wet patches in the long driveway connected. Water slid eastward and slightly downhill, shining between the field rows heading east, giving shape to the globe of the world. Ancient watercourses rose again. Buried for half a century and channeled through drainage tile that conserves surface flow, excess storm runoff made the grassed waterway a swift river for the afternoon. Floods inundated nearby lowlands and creeks when massive storm systems emptied the Midwestern sky. Old watershed pathways lingered for a day above ground. After the storm, the puddle stretched out, supplying a few days’ worth of water for the birds. Even the black mama cat who lives as a squatter along this mile of Wagner Road came into the yard for a drink.Watching birds bathe refreshed me as if I, too, had been cleansed of grief’s residue. They step deliberately into the water, as if wading into the ocean from the beach. The bird shakes each leg, perhaps testing the temperature. Liquid baths reshape and prime their feathers. They throttle and preen with miniscule muscles in a high-speed splash. Their beaks toss water up into the air like goofy jugglers, faster and faster as droplets fall, totally immersed in a frenzied shimmy shake. Staying at the window brought joy around me. If I went outside, the birds would fly away or hide in the foliage of nearby trees.One morning something landed in the puddle, surprising me as much as if word balloons that read “Plunk!” and “Kersplash!” had also appeared. I couldn’t see what but something landed in the water. Ripples calmed flat, then nothing moved. The slim puddle has limited ability to hide anything. A tiny button head popped up on the opposite side and just as quickly ducked underwater. I studied the surface. The fins of a small wake tugged my gaze from one side to the other. Suddenly a classic swimmer’s frog kick propelled the creature halfway to the lawn.A frog? I laughed out loud. How did this tiny frog even find this puddle? Back and forth, around the edges, across the stretch again, the frog swam enthusiastically. We might see three toads a year, usually in the damp muck that collects behind the machine shed doors. Spring peepers call out each night from the ditch beyond the window. This one had ventured far from the pack. Suddenly it disappeared into the grass. My penalty was to stand at the window and admit that I’d taken this small view of the world for granted.After my term on the phone line ended in May, puddle studies kept me company as COVID evolved from a crisis to a fact of life. In mid-summer, the puddle shrank flat like a hydrologic diagram, suctioned dry by evaporation into the atmosphere and percolation into the soil below. Exhausting itself, the shape became a musty, lime-green scum. A sludge of crusted grit gathered eroded leaf shreds, mower clippings, small insects, and stones. I wondered where the smaller birds found liquids when their oasis devolved into a wasteland. Puddles and drain tile outlets are the only standing water on our ridge.***In 2021, I waited eagerly for the puddle’s return with the onset of spring rains. The puddle did not stay long; the new year morphed into more pandemic loss. My heart sank as the forecast for a drought summer became reality. Eventually all the small birds of the yard disappeared once their fledglings launched out of the windbreak. They no longer stood on the electric cable or balanced on the barn’s gutters. By summer’s end, we were short 11.5 inches of rain for the growing season. We all needed a puddle.So many people had lost so much as the pandemic dragged on—loved ones died alone, traditions cast aside, routines became meaningless. In our house, we had been spared; we had adapted. Now I had lost something that seemed only important to me. If a lake or an ocean disappeared, surely people would care. But a puddle? I didn’t know who I could tell about my loss. It seemed pointless to pray; surely the puddle would come back. I didn’t have a Plan B for living without water. We all—the birds, the black mama cat, the prayer line callers, and me—need living water, even if it’s something we slosh through on our way to everything else.A version of this article first appeared as “Bodies of Water” on micksminute.com on 11 August 2020, and in a later version as “Puddle of Tears” in Fathom Magazine, 12 July 2022.Refresh your outlook with a spiritual break and feel restored. Support Flash💥Devos! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Thank you to all who’ve been praying with me during March as we celebrate Divine mercy. Today’s thank-you gift is a Lenten revelation about attuning to Christ’s suffering through experiences I had at Prairiewoods, a Franciscan Eco-Spirituality Center in Hiawatha, Iowa. May the gift of reconciliation come to you through nature as well, a reciprocal movement of loving forgiveness that shifts how we live in the world.Bouquet of Thorns by Marianne Abel-LipschutzA direct encounter with Jesus in a locust tree taught me how God shares life with each of us individually. During a 2015 Prairiewoods retreat called, “Beauty is the Path to God’s Life,” led by Father John Quigley, OSF, I discovered some answers to questions I had about reconciling suffering and hardship. Honestly, the world looked weary that first day through the meeting room windows; a late winter gloom of overcast skies lingered after a frigid winter.John spoke eloquently of God’s desire to manifest love through the vivid realities of the created world. A perfect example of this yearning claimed space on a table set with a white cloth. A torso-sized bouquet of extravagant flowers in a glass vase arranged by Sister Rita, FSPA, stood like a silent but flamboyantly-dressed person right next to John. The upright plant stems drank living water, softening the textures of dozens of petals and leaves as the hours passed.The marvelous flowers revealed God’s presence clearly, a counterpoint to the drab day which was a better representation of my broken heart. I had been feeling condemned through some harsh life events, and felt doomed to bear this time in silence. But John urged us to see God’s creativity as pervasive. “God is not just doing beautiful things. God is not just making nice flowers and pretty pictures,” he commented. “God is always breathing, always expressing.”I walked in the woods when the skies cleared the next afternoon, attuned to a revelation of God’s desire that John encouraged us to expect. The world was waking from winter dormancy. My feet left prints on the soft earth below the mulched trails. Not many birds called from the trees and no critters skittered past me.A handful of skinny fingers pointing outward from a tree trunk caught my attention. I saw thorn clusters wrapped around the tree at eye level. It was the weekend after Easter, and an image of the crown of thorns flashed in my mind’s eye. I felt like one of the bystanders on the Via Dolorosa, a witness to the awful suffering that comes with great love. Further down the path from the thorn-rimmed, honey locusts, I watched while a maple tree wept, sap seeping from the gray bark down to the cold ground like a waterfall of tears.This profound spiritual encounter with God was an intense lesson in becoming one with the suffering of Christ. Not that I could feel his level of suffering; this was my human experience of his human experience. Even the trees took part in his suffering.Romans 8:17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.When I returned to the honey locust grove in June to take some pictures, God was still waiting for me there. It was a lightly rainy day. Cool raindrops fell off the leaves as I walked up to the grove on the hill.The tree I met three years ago was still there, too, but the thorns were shockingly alive, flushed red with the lifeblood of spring. I touched the fresh stiletto points of surprisingly soft thorns. The blood of Christ flowed out through the tree to reach me. Like Thomas, I had doubted my ability to connect with God’s love again.The oxygen-rich, blood-red new thorns growing over and into and around the old gray clusters embodied the energy of Christ’s living and dying for us. Hope is not just in my nature, dormant. As a child of God, hope is my nature. Experiencing this incarnation of God’s almighty presence offered sacred time to touch, and see, and arouse my desire to share this gift with others.A version of this article first appeared on 19 March 2019 on the blog of Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center, Hiawatha, Iowa. http://prairiewoods.org/bouquet-of-thorns/Thanks to people like you, Marianne’s 💥 Substack is a reader-supported publication! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Isaiah 55:2-3Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.Incline your ear, and come to Me.Listen, so that your soul may live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you.+The default setting for life--work, eat, distract, repeat--yields discontent, isolation, and harm. Yet believing in promises and everlasting and abundance can seem hopeless.Embody spiritual vitality.*Annie Soudain is a retired art teacher with a studio in Hastings in East Sussex, England. Annie creates local landscapes from Fairlight, Pett Level, Rye Harbour, and Romney Marsh in watercolors, wax resist on silk, and lino printing. “Her deep enjoyment and understanding of form and pattern help us to see the natural world more clearly,” an exhibition catalog said. “Her interest in plants started in her early years spent in Cornwall, on long walks with her mother, most memorably along disused railway tracks where the cuttings were undisturbed and full of flowers and insects.” One reviewer of her autobiographical book The Marsh, The Sea, and The Sky, quotes her, “‘I am lucky that so far, I have never run out of ideas.’” Discover Annie’s art through prints, cards, puzzles, and tea towels at www.anniesoudain.co.ukRefresh your outlook with a spiritual break and feel restored. Subscribe to Flash💥Devos! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Thanks for joining me during these first six months of Flash💥Devos. My Thank-You gift today is an article I wrote about my first international mission trip when our family traveled with a team to Haiti three years after the earthquake of January 12, 2010. I am still being discipled--and disciplined--by the people and circumstances we encountered there. I pray that you, too, can meet people whose faith manifests as powerfully as we witnessed in Haiti.Field Testing My Faith by Marianne Abel-LipschutzArriving in Haiti with our service team from the Midwest, I imagined we had washed ashore like jetsam that had no place on land. My body throbbed with that thrill of merging into an urban pace that sweats with the mash-up of humanity. Confronted by the stench of urine and scorched plastic and the ear-piercing music and shrieking horns radiating from neon-painted buses, the reality of life in Port-au-Prince dragged me under like a riptide.Our group stood in pickup trucks for the half-hour drive from the airport to our guesthouse. Technicolor scenes of life in action alongside eerie destruction captivated me as we drove through the city. At one point on our journey, we watched half a dozen men detour off the sidewalk and form a semi-circle to hoist the front quarter of a truck out of a gaping hole in the crossroads. Cars, buses, and trucks swerved around them. After they succeeded, the men congratulated each other and walked away as if leaving a stage set after a comedy sketch.Bustling city life played out in front of multi-story buildings that had collapsed into rubble from the magnitude 7 earthquake that had hit Haiti three years earlier—the structures looked like the toppled monuments of another civilization. Twisted rebar stuck out of buildings as if the city was pegged to the bedrock, ready to float with the next seismic wave. I imagined the crushed people who would never be unearthed, someone’s briefcase, a dented lunch box, perfect shoes, disordered parts of people, and all the things that would never be put back together.Controlled ExposureHumanitarian aid flooded Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake with its vast and irrevocable destruction. Characterized as the worst catastrophe in any country in the modern era, investigators reported 316,000 dead or missing persons, plus 300,000 injured, and over 1½ million people displaced. The collapse of the electrical grid, the National Palace, the cathedral, United Nations headquarters, and the national penitentiary counted as notable losses, along with the disintegration of over sixty percent of infrastructure. A cholera epidemic flared after UN Peacekeepers with the bacterial infection were unwittingly deployed from Nepal. Hurricanes and drought followed within the next few years.My husband and I and our son served with Global Ministries and the National Spiritual Council of Haitian Churches (CONASPEH), an organization dedicated to community development, Christian education, pastoral training, and justice advocacy. We travelled with twenty nine people from several denominations, ranging in age from teens to elders. We split into work groups each day, sending one third to a pop-up medical and dental clinic, another third to an elementary school, and the last portion to construction sites managed by CONASPEH.The field clinic took over a three-room administrative building in Croix-de-Bouquets, a refugee settlement of plastic tarp shelters on rock-strewn hillsides outside the city organized by USAID and humanitarian organizations. Sixty thousand families, resettled from tent cities in Port-au-Prince, lived in this barren and forsaken sector. Arrows pointed to zones with biblical names like Canaan and New Jerusalem, broadcasting a prophetic blessing into the air. I helped people at the clinic and prayed with them in my broken French while they waited for the doctors or the dental team.Haitian hosts controlled our exposure to local conditions. They also cautioned us against spontaneously giving away toys, food, or money. Such impulsive generosity could create animosity and endanger everyone. We huddled behind the privacy curtain to eat part of our lunch before wrapping up the rest to slip to our Haitian coworkers. I grieved for the hungry children who stood outside. Investigators tallied 1.5 million orphans left by the disaster, as if cities the size of Philadelphia or San Antonio were filled only with children whose vulnerabilities grew more complex each day.Where is God?Every night our team debriefed and shared “God sightings.” Others reflected on interactions with Haitians, inspirational sunsets and sunrises seen from the rooftop, and what it was like to share a few days of living alongside the perils Haitians face everyday. I remained silent, not knowing what to say. Battered by the life in front of me, I failed to see any hope. I had no context for this world's disarray and withdrew, missing the hope completely. The country looked doomed to me.Treating chronic maladies that could be alleviated with clean water, basic nutrition, antibiotics, and analgesics can seem both necessary and misguided. We lamented the paradoxes, especially that our white privilege allowed us to stay protected. My faith frayed at the edges as my awareness of people’s suffering became inescapable.One day our friend John and I accepted the invitation to join a monthly meeting of CONASPEH pastors. John was a pastor and counselor and I had served as a crisis team chaplain. We were eager to learn about the pastors’ service and offer fellowship and counseling advice. A translator named Fritzmarque nursed a profound dialogue between us and the nineteen men who came for their day-long session. Fritzmarque told us many church staff felt burned-out from the excessive community demands that could not be met. He despaired especially over widespread youth prostitution. Youth under age fourteen comprise 42% of the country's population, forecasting a tragic social bankruptcy. “If you lose your personality,” he commented, “there is no market in the world that can pay it back.”We gathered in the cinder block school on the CONASPEH campus, a replacement of the original K-12 building that had been demolished by the earthquake. As the pastors introduced themselves and their needs for ministering to people across Haiti, I recognized their frequent use of the French word for sadness, tristesse. These men searched us for answers. They expressed shame over their broken faith, helpless to provide for their own destitute families. They wanted to know how to talk about addiction, murder, child deaths, unemployment, and illness. La réalité haïtienne, they repeated without further comment, shaking their heads, staring at the floor. They anguished over what most people avoid—the reality of life in Haiti. Spiritually devastated, their tristesse swirled in a pool of lament.John suggested they tell people, "I can't be your god." We can listen to people’s sorrow about coping with no work, injuries from violence and traffic accidents, and sick family members who have no access to medicines, clean water, or nutritious food. We can think through situations with those who come to us, consider options, and pray together for divine intervention. That’s usually all and it has to be enough. “Pray, pray, pray,” the lead pastor pleaded. “Only God can help us now,” he concluded, as if throwing down an anchor into quicksand.Yet the energy shifted in a closing blessing that the pastors gave over their despondent pleas. Their spontaneous a capella rendition of “How Great Thou Art” in Creole rang through the bare block building as if it were a cathedral crowded with believers whose agonized wailing had blossomed into exalted praise. The hymn paints a short trajectory for the Christian life, advising us to not trifle with the burdensome narratives of hardship but to seek the creative power and ultimate sovereignty of God. I had always thought the song skipped over the tough parts where we stumble in life to rush for the known and glorious end, but these men embodied a transcendent worship. I yearned for an authentic faith like theirs.The ReckoningThe stunning cost of their witness surfaced in an unexpected way after we returned to Iowa. Within a month, we learned that the son of the director of CONASPEH had been abducted and killed in Port-au-Prince. Reverend Patrick Villiers wrote in an email, “The longest night was when at least twelve armed men penetrated my house, tied up my wife and I, hands and feet, took away our computers, our phones and other objects,” he explained. “Worse than that, they took our little son, who since that time has never returned to his home.”After a week of ransom negotiations failed, the kidnappers murdered 12-year-old Demetress and abandoned his body in a remote area. The pastors’ memo to the Global Missions members was forthright. Terrorist actions meant to intimidate them only strengthened their resolve. They refused to stop advocating for social justice in city government. “Death comes,” the Villiers declared, having also lost a foster son in the earthquake. "Life will not cease.'' They pledged to continue "fighting for what we believe is fair and prophetic, a beginning of peace and an end to all violence in Haiti.”I confessed my unbelief when I heard their son's high-pitched screams in my mind and heart. I gasped and trembled, imagining prowlers dragging my 14-year-old son from his bedroom. His frantic voice slit my heart like razor wire. I had sat in silence in Port-au-Prince with no God sighting worth reporting because I couldn’t recognize God’s action around and within us. I condemned Haiti until I surrendered to the hope commanded by servants like Françoise and Patrick who, bound and gagged at gunpoint on their floor, kept praying. God's love did not put their suffering to shame. The God of the living lifted up the Villiers' unimaginable grief in a profound reckoning against the enemy in Port-au-Prince and in me. Out of the wreckage, they salvaged an honest testimony for peace and carried on in faith. I saw God in hindsight and learned meekness as a posture of hope that survives the trials we face.All photos © Marianne or Harry Abel-Lipschutz or members of the team. A version of this article first appeared on 29 June 2021 in https://www.fathommag.com/stories/field-testing-my-faithSubscribe to Flash💥Devos. Refresh your outlook with a spiritual break and feel restored. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Thanks to everyone who has been praying in community with me this year on Flash💥Devos. I feel so grateful for your presence! My January 2025 Thank-You gift is this article about how prayer invited me into a new world of connecting with the Divine as well as with others. I pray that my experiences give you hope for change in your own life. Check this post on my Substack page to see the original photos that accompany the article.Dancing with Almighty God by Marianne Abel-Lipschutz“Will you pray?” Everyone’s eyes shift downward. We squirm, hoping somebody else starts. It gets awkward. We know prayer is an essential part of faith, yet when asked to pray in public, many of us cringe. Prayer comes from our inner life and we want it to be just that: inner. Like John the Baptist, someone praying out loud can be snubbed as an outsider who has leaped beyond normal spiritual categories.I spent a long while as the person searching for her feet when the opportunity to pray out loud came up. Prayer and praying aloud changed for me—and changed me—while living and serving in Guatemala. Initially, I didn’t consider prayer something that could disrupt my comfort while I was outside my passport country. Hopelessness, violence, malnutrition, intractable corruption, dirty water, environmental degradation—these forces troubled me. But prayer? Within days of being in Guatemala, I learned that my prayer life needed awakening.All Together NowWe first traveled to Guatemala on a short-term mission trip in 2013. Prayer infiltrated our team immediately. We gathered on the airport exit ramp, breathing gritty diesel exhaust in the cool night air. The director said we’d travel for two hours west to Chimaltenango, but first, we’d pray about the drive. “We pray Guatemalan style," he explained, guiding us into a circle. "Everyone. All at once.”Most of the two dozen people had volunteered with this ministry before, so they prayed out loud. No one waited their turn or worried about what to say. My focus shifted in and out as phrases echoed around the circle like a kaleidoscope twirling with sounds. I couldn’t track my thoughts. I had never heard anyone—let alone everyone—pray like that. I jumped in not thinking about what I said or how. I just prayed. As amens drew the huddle into silence, I felt a new vitality emerge within me.Prayers integrated seamlessly into each day. A traffic jam, a flat tire, an ambulance passing by, nice weather, rain, a good meal, sunburn, a productive work session, an unexpected treat or disaster—every occasion merited divine conversation. Add evening worship, devotions, and our individual prayers, it was more prayer than I’d ever experienced in my life.Over the weekend, we held medical clinics, kids activities, and worship in two villages. The townspeople spoke Kaqchikel, a regional Mayan language that mesmerized me with its clicks and consonants. Translators converted our English into Spanish, and then passed that version to local speakers. These tri-lingual conversations slowed our concentration to such a delicate pace that we might as well have tossed a hat-full of baby turtles between us.After worship, the pastors gathered everyone for prayer at dusk. My ears and heart throbbed while several hundred people called out to God in three languages for half an hour. It was as if a wind had blown through, stirring up a mosh-pit of wailing, whimpering, fainting, alleluias, and defiant shrieks meant to rout the enemy.Kingdom KinshipWitnessing others’ rapport with God shifted my awareness of kinship in the Kingdom. I could see blank spaces in my Christian life where I just hadn’t thought about prayer. I hadn’t been considering how, why, or when I prayed. My relationship with Jesus was conceptual until I stepped into the place reserved for me. Intentional prayer offered me the tangible opportunities God promises those who obey him.Eventually we spent months at a time serving with this ministry throughout central Guatemala. Consecrating ourselves and our work to God shaped my days and who I was becoming. At a house church crammed with 30 people, during an altar call after a medical clinic, on the airport parking lot, wherever we went and whatever we did, Jesus shared more of the inner life I had once guarded.Connecting my inner life to the inner lives of strangers in public in foreign languages added to my transformation. Hearing others pray for me, my faith prospered in ways that silent prayer alone did not teach me. I learned that to be welcomed as a fellow believer in other languages, addressed intimately by strangers as “beloved” and “dear sister,” declares the mysterious unity of our faith. Even when we can’t understand each other’s words, the Spirit speaks clearly through us. We recognize one another as co-heirs with Christ, cherished children of God.This new lifestyle of prayer prepared me for the other side of authenticity—reaching into my own despondency. When I forget what it’s like to be holy, I picture myself alongside one of several friends, discerning stewards who will invoke the presence of the living God on my behalf. I stand awash in prayer, raw and bathed in blessing, speechless in the shared presence of the Almighty, mumbling, “Thank you,” and “Alleluia.” Prayer always brings us closer to God.I didn't know anyone besides Jesus who had anything meaningful to offer these people. I prayed that the Holy Spirit would steer us safely into the presence of a righteous God.My Living ClassroomIn 2016, we became full-time missionaries and began daily language school. I listened to coworkers pray in Spanish, and thrived in multicultural and multilingual Christian community settings. My ears tuned to the idiomatic forms of expressing desires and wishes, the tender litanies of expectation and lament.God took me into the living world beyond my classroom worksheets. My heart broke while listening to people plead for themselves and their families in public witness before God. In villages, at cafes, in workrooms, waiting in lines, crying in church, telling me their story in the car on the way to the city. Finally I understood.Their petitions told me truths that international news headlines miss: how to suffer with your own little children, to feel exhausted and parasitic and hungry, to survive outside hope, to cope when you’re irretrievably lost. I didn't know anyone besides Jesus who had anything meaningful to offer these people.When my turn came to speak, I cared about my response. My pleas would perish as empty words, no matter what language I used, if I didn't really believe what I said or who I addressed. But my bumbling Spanish conveys sincere conviction when I draw on divine authority. So I prayed that the Holy Spirit would steer us safely into the presence of a righteous God. Occasions like these summon the authoritative power of Emmanuel, God with us.An Infusion of HumilityRecently a missionary friend took us along to visit Aracely, a pastor working in a village in the Cuchumatanes Mountains. She needed supplies and encouragement. A slight woman with a melancholy manner, Aracely welcomed us into her home. Her family lives on a shelf carved off a mountainside, 8500-feet up. Prayer taught me to notice when we had a divine appointment and this was one of those times.Aracely introduced us to her mother and son, Carlitos, as she pulled out chairs for us around the cooking fire in her dark kitchen. While boiling some fresh quail eggs on a conventional stove, she shared honestly as if we—like our friend—were long-time confidants who lived far away and couldn’t visit often. She told us about the burden of caring for her elderly mother whose behaviors had become unpredictable and dangerous with the onset of dementia. Then Aracely asked about our families and ministry activities, commenting wisely on the conflicts all missionaries face.We sipped a hot, sweet corn drink Aracely made, and talked while she and Carlitos peeled the tiny freckled eggs—their first harvest from a trial flock. When she offered us a palm-full of these first fruits, I realized we were essentially receiving her tithe. I turned away to hide my tears. I looked into the firebox where the burning bush itself was her kindling, alight with the eternal flame of a loving God. Aracely had given us everything she had, including a communion of hope.We prayed earnestly for each other before departing, joining hands and languages in a unified faith. In my prayer I mentioned her family’s concerns, their plans for the community children’s programs, and our gratitude for the serene blessing of her company. Aracely held the quiet incarnation of the divine Presence elegantly. And in the name of Jesus Christ, she affirmed a dignity in us that I forget is there.I stood silently at the end, surrendered to the peace fostered through her attentive spirit. We acknowledged that Jesus stood right there, praying with us. My heart opened wider; my capacity to believe expanded. I experienced true grace that day. When good people like Aracely take on my burdens and ask God to bless me, I feel replenished by an infusion of deep humility. I felt as if Almighty God tied the ends of the rainbow in a circle around us, sealing us in his covenant of light.When I choose to take someone’s life into my heart and hands, what I say matters. I used to feel only the awkwardness of praying out loud. Now I love to pray the way some people love to dance. Listeners hear the hope when our hearts speak. Jesus invites us to dance in the gilded throne room of Almighty God.*A version of this article first appeared in Fathom Magazine, 8/Oct/2020 Dancing with Almighty God • Fathom MagFlash💥Devos + Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Subscribers enrich the beloved community through the arts and spirituality! Thanks for being here today! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Thanks for praying with me during December! In gratitude, let me offer some reasons why a funny thing might happen to you, too, if you explore Visio Divina. When I took responsibility for my spiritual life, practices like Visio Divina enchanted me. May these Flash💥Devos enrich your experience of the Divine in 2025. Thank YOU!Seeing Anew with Visio Divinaby Marianne Abel-LipschutzToday’s image of the back cover of this handmade bible from the 8th Century astonished me — and made me wonder what the front cover looks like! Each time I examine it, my fingertips tingle as I imagine rubbing the smooth gems, tracing the twined filigrees, and turning the cover this way and that. Without a single word of text, I perceive a powerful impression of Almighty God. What do you see?I love picturing the monks’ workshop more than thirteen hundred years ago where skilled artisans brainstormed how to honor the world-changing prophesies inside. The cover’s elaborate patterning, gems, cultural histories, and spiritual energy merge into an order of the whole that’s saturated with time, place, meaning, and creativity. A Morgan Library entry on the Lindau Gospel covers describes some of its cosmological dimensions that may have already captivated your spirit. “The Greek letters alpha and omega are inscribed on the vertical arm of the cross and refer to the beginning and end of time. “Likewise, the mass of snakes and other creatures filling the four carved plaques between the arms of the cross establish a link between the Gospels and the primordial act of creation.” Once we open to revelation beyond the text, Presence lives. Turquoise, topaz, emeralds, gold, and moonstones speak of the glory of paradise itself. How does what you perceive connect or clash with who you are right now? That’s where Visio Divina begins. …people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of God’s divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. ~Romans 1:20 MSGFor several years, I participated in Visio Divina sessions once or twice a month at Prairiewoods, a Franciscan eco-spirituality center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, about an hour away from my home. Our ecumenical group of seekers included artists, writers, readers, and prayer warriors who collaborated in wide-ranging dialogues with the Word. God inspired us with creative interpretations, uncanny wisdom, and honest reflections about our faith. The Prairiewoods sessions, guided by Pastor Rodney Bluml, included two hours of prayer using an illumination and an accompanying verse from the St. John’s Bible. This edition offers exquisite testimony through terrific writing and remarkable illustrations inspired through community practice in the Benedictine tradition. Artists collaborated for more than a dozen years to reimagine the scriptural texts for our new century, blending the traditional crafts of the monastic scribes of the Middle Ages with the book arts skills of the modern era. Texts and images meld to communicate a true message from God.My sensory focus deepens with Visio Divina as foreground and background shift in a kaleidoscopic array. Some days my take-away was a silent knowing or a realization that no one answer prevails. I learned to align with vitality. I could see the hope in the world more clearly after simply being there. Scripture is beamed out to us on the same screen as ads and porn. What are we looking for? How do we recognize the Word or acknowledge when Presence is with us? Visio Divina, or divine seeing, joins prayer with Bible study in an active process of entering the presence of God with a teachable heart. Each encounter with a Bible story, even a familiar one, is a way God comes to us. Visio Divina offers a structured time of contemplation about an image and a scriptural text. Every person receives the Spirit differently.Studying a nature scene on different days or in the context of lectionary readings, I might see the water flowing or tall trees as guardians. The forest may loom as a wilderness that draws me into solitude. Maybe the immanence of rocks, the sky, or the vastness of creation would fascinate me another day. I invite the Spirit’s action within and welcome the community energy of focused prayer. God speaks to us through intuition, colors and sounds, even the sweet minty aroma from the porcelain teacup on the mahogany table. Our prayer becomes our conversation and we listen in while God gives individualized hope, encouragement, counsel, or direction. A logical extension of this spiritual practice is to see things in new ways. Scripture is beamed up on the same screen as ads and porn. How do we recognize the Word or acknowledge when Presence is with us? For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. ~Romans 1:20 NIV Visio Divina infiltrated all aspects of my world. I’d been using two troubling pictures from 1955 in an intensive memoir writing project over the past five years. After practicing Visio Divina with very different visuals, I saw information in those family album snapshots that I couldn’t perceive before. I couldn’t see what I couldn’t even look at. These fruits of the Spirit sprang from looking at hard things that grew through our community practice.No matter what mood came with me, I’d take home a sense of revival and wonder. The deep fellowship, the laughter and silence, our songs and stories, everything drew me closer to God. I kept the printed librettos, with the St. John’s Bible illumination on one side and the verse on the other, in a binder. When I travel, I pick out a few sheets from my bootleg bible for daily devotions or spiritual fellowship, a renewable resource of word and image that keeps the Spirit alive.Without my conscious intention, God shapes me through Visio Divina. Many ah-ha moments connect me to the Spirit, such as when I realize something that later seems so obvious, I’m surprised I didn’t “see it” earlier. Everyday images and interactions become fields where new awareness grows.A “Rough Road” highway maintenance sign I placed as the visual focus for the most recent Flash💥Devo came from a time when family dynamics had crashed around me. I felt bereft and without recourse in our troubles. On the drive home after a Visio Divina session, I saw beyond the “Rough Road” construction warning I’d read many times. These real words suggested I could lean into the process and accept a bigger perspective. “Rough Road” became my therapeutic text for coping with life.The point is to get people to peel off their visors, to remove the goggles, to abandon the screens. Those screens whose very purpose is to screen the actual world out. Who cares about virtuality when there’s all this reality—this incredible, inexhaustible, insatiable, astonishing reality—present all around! ~Robert IrwinOur prayers over each other and our lives in God touched me the most at Prairiewoods. If I missed a Tuesday, I’d imagine a circle of intent and focus for a few moments of prayer. Openly sharing the surprise and mystery and heartache of our days where peace and transformation are the norm changed me. When we hear God speak through each other, we experience the hundred-fold divine benefit of community.Visio divina is one of several spiritual formation disciplines, such as worship, fasting, solitude, silence, service, prayer, or study. Find a few that fit you well. I’ve grown immensely by relying on visual images and visualization to add depth to my faith. I pray that my FLASH💥DEVOS will delight you with surprise and revelation. Perhaps you, too, will recognize Divine Presence in unlikely places nearby.God's eternal power and character cannot be seen. But from the beginning of creation, God has shown what these are like by all God has made. That's why those people don't have any excuse. ~Romans 1:20 CEV I love collaborating with photographer Jill Hinners and sculptor Maureen Seamonds whose creative work draws us inward and inspires us to look outward. I’ll be offering more artists’ images of art, daily life, and nature in FLASH💥DEVOS in 2025. Join us!*Text from the Morgan Library website: https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/online/imperial-splendor/lindau-gospels#:~:text=This%20treasure%20binding%20is%20a,royal%20gift%20of%20immense%20importance.*Lawrence Weschler quoting Robert Irwin in Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, from the second edition of his biography of Irwin: https://lawrenceweschler.substack.com/p/november-2-2023Flash💥Devos is a reader-supported publication that fosters engaged spirituality through contemplation, prayer, art, and action. Please join us, won’t you? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

2 Corinthians 7:11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done.+We fear remorse and shame when seeking forgiveness. Yet the Lord shows mercy and grace. Reconciling with God opens hearts and doors so we can turn to others in peace.Seek the fruits of reconciliation through Jesus that create a flourishing life for all.Flash💥Devos + Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Your subscription is a gift to the arts and spiritual communities we share. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Psalm 65:11-13You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.The grasslands of the wilderness overflow; the hills are clothed with gladness.The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing.+Break off a piece of your daily bread and share the Creator’s gift of abundant life with someone new today.Celebrate the beauty and goodness our Creator lavishes on everyone.You're an inspiration! Thank you for joining me today on Flash💥Devos + Podcast! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Acts 27:38 When they had eaten as much as they wanted, they lightened the ship by throwing the grain into the sea.+With 276 people aboard a doomed ship headed for Rome, Paul showed faithful leadership. Passengers accepted Paul’s promise that his God would save them if they all obeyed. God made this an epic story that restores our hope on every stormy day.Believe this prisoner’s promise: Jesus assures us all our needs will be met when we trust God and cast our reserves overboard.My friend and fellow writer Jill Hinners searches for peace and inspiration on or near Minnesota’s lakes and smaller waterways. Jill writes, “I collect iPhone images to document all the natural beauty in this place I’m so fortunate to call home.”Flash💥Devos + Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Subscribers support community in the arts and spirituality. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Luke 13:18-19 Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.”+Jesus gives us an add-water-and-stir description of the kingdom. Everything is provided by God. What will you cultivate from this cornucopia in your kingdom garden?Tell someone something cool about the kingdom of God. How did they respond?Thanks for reading and listening to my Flash💥Devos! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Luke 17:14-15 Creator Sets Free looked at them and said, “Go to the holy men and show yourselves to them.” They did what he said, and as they were on the way, they were healed. One of the ten men, when he saw he was healed, returned to Creator Sets Free, giving loud praise to the Great Spirit.+Address and lament how we use racism and ethnocentrism like leprosy to justify shunning, enslaving, and killing millions of people.Join others in applying Creator’s healing gifts of forgiveness and reconciliation.Flash💥Devos + Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Thanks for encouraging creative community with your subscription! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Matthew 24:45-47 “Who will be the wise one, worthy of trust? Will it be the uncle who was told to feed and care for the family while the elder is away? A great blessing will come to that uncle when the elder returns and finds him doing so. I speak from my heart, he will invite that uncle to live with the family and share everything.”+Jesus promises the highest reward for obedience: the invitation into a family that shares everything.Be trustworthy, wise, and speak from Christ’s heart.Flash💥Devos + Podcast is a reader-supported publication > thank you for subscribing! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Luke 1:38 Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."+Mary spoke wisely at a young age. Deferring to the ultimate authority of God, she chose to embody the power of surrender. Setting aside her will for the life of another, Mary raised Emmanuel, God-with-us.Who can be set free to live through our surrender? Commit to begin today.Ceramic artist and metal sculptor Maureen Seamonds is a dear friend from Webster City, Iowa, who is also a celebrated teacher and catalyst for community art. People come into Mo’s rural downtown studio and ask what she’s making. They don't much care what she says, Mo commented, “but meanwhile they’ll touch the work, or hug it, or drape an arm across it. They really know it. It’s nice to think that you don’t have to have a specific vocabulary or training in the arts to understand it.” Visit her studio and public arts events at the Produce Station Pottery or through Legacy Learning Boone River Valley. Flash💥Devos + Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Subscribers encourage community in the arts and spirituality, a marvelous contribution! Thanks for being here today! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Here’s a Thanksgiving gift to all who’ve been reading and listening to my Flash💥Devos in November. It’s an article I wrote after feeling challenged by my friend Mark Petersen who simply said, “Rejoice!” when it seemed to be the least reasonable option in his own life. I hope you’re inspired to use “Sunday Words on Weekdays.” Thanks for praying with me this month.Sunday Words on WeekdaysA recent text message from my friend Mark made me question if our feeling words fit our faith. Mark had prayed about a medical procedure for my husband and shared our pleasure when the feared tests proved the absence of disease. He wrote, “Rejoicing in the good news that they didn’t find any issues.” Mark was absolutely correct: rejoicing was the right response. Yet his message made me wonder about rejoicing. I don’t use that verb except when reading scripture aloud. How do we rejoice now? Our feeling words don’t often match the King James Version of life where people rejoice, sing praises, and beseech their Sovereign Lord whom they address in capital letters. My world doesn’t include people strolling along a boulevard or through the gritty streets of a Broadway musical at the moment they burst into song. I'd be enthralled by the dramatic procession parading out of the old city described by the prophet Isaiah but it’s just not where I live. For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12 NKJV)Rejoicing sounds like a Sunday word and a higher level feeling we save for church. Mad, happy, sad, glad describe most of our experiences. There’s nothing unbiblical about feeling glad; here the psalmist sketches excited gratefulness. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad. (Psalm 126:2-3 NIV) Yet our ordinary days seem far from the grand language of the Bible. High-fives and “You rocked it!” exclamations express rejoicing today. Shouting, “Yay, God!” may be the best we’ve got. Exciting news, the birth of a child, a marriage proposal, a resolution to a long-standing problem, these are common experiences of happiness kicked up a few notches into joy. “Man, that was epic,” conveys an exceptional moment but it hides a deeper personal reflection. Psychologists report that most people don’t even know if they’re happy. Which words capture your faith and reflect your experiences these days? Naming what makes us joyful and why can testify about the holiness in daily life. Recognizing and claiming our connections with God can blend biblical words with everyday speech. My friend Mark rejoices more than I do but his example teaches me how to plug into that everyday joy God wants for us. Our way of speaking on Sundays shouldn’t clash with how we talk every other day of the week. Rejoice means to intensify joy, an experience of rich pleasure and uncommon satisfaction. We receive permission to do just that in Ecclesiastes 9:7 (NIV). Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. This compelling poetry dignifies our ordinary days. The Bible constantly coaches us to be joyful, to not be afraid, to remember that God is always with us. In any translation, these loving words renew our faith when we can’t see beyond the world as it is.When we let go of joy, we lose the majesty in our everyday walk with God, no matter how hard that walk is. What’s a practice in your life that connects you to everyday joy? The Christian narrative doesn’t limit joy to positive experiences; in fact, the Bible calls us to rejoice in all circumstances. This is a tough message, especially when strong feelings mark a time of separation, loss, and grief. “Oh, I wish we could get together but …” people lament, filling in the blank with sadness or the silence of unmentionable hardship. The loved one is in prison, the hospital, hospice, quarantine, or serving abroad. Some extended families face all of these circumstances at once right now. Esther put it bluntly. For how can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family? (Esther 8:6 NIV) Yet the scriptures don’t avoid the expectation to feel joy. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,” James challenges us in his first chapter. When Mary learned the results of her pregnancy test, she offered a song of surrender to bear and raise Jesus. In Luke 1:47 NIV, she declared to Elizabeth and to every generation, “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” It took everything she had to launch Jesus and then he, too, pitched it all as sacrificial joy. Look to Jesus, Paul suggests, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2 NIV)For the joy of dying on the cross, Jesus sacrificed his life. How can we rejoice when a loved one dies, when catastrophe occurs, when our despair turns suicidal? Declaring that “This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it,” (Psalm 118:24 NIV), can seem like blasphemy. We can feel less faithful or even that we are bad Christians if we cannot rejoice when terrible things happen. Yet God also hears our despair. Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life. (Psalm 142:4 NIV)When we let go of joy, we lose the majesty in our everyday walk with God, no matter how hard that walk is. Troublesome questions about life, our families, our neighborhoods, soul survival, and eternal destiny require words that suit our deepest spiritual needs. What’s a practice in your life that connects you to everyday joy? Finding answers to these important questions may intensify any experience we treasure of true joy as well as true sorrow. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17 NIV)Beseeching is another lost art preserved in Sunday language. To seek something is basic but to broaden our search, to beseech someone for mercy, to implore them for healing or to rescue us from a dead end life, these are more compelling motivators than what drives us to locate a misplaced watch. When we beseech the Lord, especially on behalf of the suffering of others, our earnest pleas reach the high heavens where mercy dwells. Begging the Lord in our everyday prayer words adds depth to our understanding of scripture.My friend Mark’s message about “rejoicing in the good news” holds a greater truth than just celebrating the test outcome we wanted. The good news can be a medical report with no bad news, but it also means the good news of the gospel. If you receive bad news, the good news says Jesus will still be with you in coping with that bad news. For Mark, the past year resembles a roller coaster careening around hairpin turns, crisscrossing through his professional, personal, and medical life. When he advocates rejoicing, he escorts me into the rich faith we share. Connecting with God’s purposes and promises is a relief that Christians in all times and places embrace. Rejoicing is an option that makes a difference. Isaiah celebrated how people experienced deliverance at the hands of a loving and merciful God, especially in the midst of unrelenting oppression. The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (Isaiah 35:10 NIV) Ordinary words like hope and peace or righteousness and justice bear fruit when the Holy Spirit enriches our conversations. Give your weekday words the power of Sunday’s worship and watch unexpected gifts appear, “much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.” (Galatians 5:22-24 MSG)  Living God’s way is easier when we use God’s words daily.In memory of Mark K. Petersen 1957-2021First published on redletterchristians.org ~ 15 February 2021Choose a free or paid subscription to my Flash💥Devos + Podcast for a spiritual boost. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

1 Thessalonians 5:14-15 Now, my sacred family members, we call on you to give firm and wise counsel to those whose hands do nothing. Comfort those whose hearts are on the ground. Help the ones who are weak, and be patient with everyone. Make sure no one gives back to anyone evil for evil. Seek to walk in a good way with each other and with all people.+Pray for the well-being of everyone in your life.What would shift if you regarded everyone as your sacred family members?Thank you for praying with me today. Sign up for a free or paid subscription to my Flash💥Devos + Podcast and listen on Apple or Spotify. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Romans 2:3-4 Tell me, when you do the same kinds of things that you judge others for, do you think what you have done will be hidden from the eyes of the Great Spirit? Or do you hold bitter thoughts about Creator’s kindness, patience, and willingness to bear with others?+We silly humans judge our Creator for excessive patience, unreasonable forgiveness, and outrageous mercy.Accept Creator’s kindness. Allow yourself to be drawn back toward the right path today.Give your spiritual life a boost with a free or paid subscription to my Flash💥Devos. Listen to the podcast on Apple or Spotify. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Revelation 22:1-2 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. +Revelation promises no more night and that the tree’s leaves would heal the nations.Invite others into the better paradise where Christ satisfies every hunger and thirst.My friend and fellow writer Jill Hinners searches for peace and inspiration on or near Minnesota’s lakes and smaller waterways. Jill writes, “I collect iPhone images to document all the natural beauty in this place I’m so fortunate to call home.” You might really enjoy becoming a free or paid subscriber to Flash💥Devos + Podcast. Try listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Romans 2:13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.+Righteousness and obedience are inseparable principles. “If you heard what I said, why didn’t you do it?” a parent or loved one may ask. “You say you care about me,” we plead with a close friend, “but how do you show it?” God’s love language is two-fold: trust and obey.Give your life a boost with a free or paid subscription to my Flash💥Devos + Podcast. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

2 Corinthians 5:5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.+This verse gives a scriptural background for the common expression, “Trust the process.” God created us for a specific future. As our lives unfold toward that promise, we can tap the deposit of God’s Spirit within us. Trust the process of God’s Spirit shaping your life. It’s guaranteed to be good!Thanks for joining me to pray on Flash💥Devos + Podcast today. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

2 Corinthians 13:5“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.”+It’s easier to give someone else a failing score on a faith test. The Apostle Paul is pretty clear, though. You’re either in or you're out. Don’t wait for a confession booth to name the ways you’ve strayed. Compare results on a faith test with a friend and encourage each other to grow. Commit to living more “in the faith” today.Thanks for letting Flash💥Devos + Podcast enrich your day! Let’s be encouraging. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Judges 2:10  After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. +What a frightful world it would be where the Lord becomes forgotten. God is always encountered: in the ever-shifting skies, in love shared across time and space, in the gifted labors of our hands and hearts. Give Jesus a chance to grow in your life. Introduce Jesus to your family and friends! Let your witness bring his light into others’ worlds. Your presence means a lot to me! Thanks for reading and listening to my Flash💥Devos. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Acts 4:31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.+We experience the undeniable presence of God physically. The curtain is torn. The turmoil in our lives flutters down like leaves falling onto water. We feel mysteriously comforted. Love comes through.Let a whisper from the heart of God shake your world. Others will notice when your prayers are answered. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

1 Peter 3:8-9 “Be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”+Divine restraint is an appropriate response to evil and insults. Bless the person, condemn the act, and amplify peace.Choose to act like Jesus so you too will inherit an eternal blessing.Thanks for joining me in prayer today! Subscribe for new posts and podcasts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Philippians 2:14-15 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” +Translations for “grumbling or arguing” show how we cleverly negotiate with God. Can we thrive without complaining, disputing, murmurings, reasonings, arguments, or questioning the providence of God? Reach for becoming “blameless and pure” in various translations: clean, innocent, harmless, uncontaminated, without blemish, sincere. Model acceptance, harmony, and thrive in diversity as you grow through life’s challenges. Delighted you’ve joined me for today’s Flash💥Devos! Subscribe for new posts or follow this podcast on Apple or Spotify. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Jeremiah 23:28-29 “Let the one who has my word speak it faithfully… Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”+Quoting scripture to make a point requires discernment in the right use of our authority. The wise consider silence. It’s a solemn responsibility to draw on the power of sacred speech.Let your humble life be your witness to the transforming power of Christ.I’m delighted to share this lakeshore still-life by my long-time friend and fellow writer Jill Hinners. Jill lives in Duluth, Minnesota where she directs a non-profit youth mentoring organization. She searches for peace and inspiration on or near Minnesota’s lakes and smaller waterways. Jill writes, “I collect iPhone images to document all the natural beauty in this place I’m so fortunate to call home.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

To thank you for reading and listening to my Flash💥Devos in October, I offer my article “Take Me to the Border with You” about my week serving at the Mexico/U.S. border. Sharing ministry of presence and welcoming migrants humbled me with valuable perspectives about the plight of immigrants worldwide.Today is National Immigrants Day which celebrates the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty in 1887. I honor those who seek new lives in the United States, including my ancestors who emigrated from Poland, Ireland, Germany, and Alsace-Lorraine. Take Me to the Border with Youby Marianne Abel-LipschutzThe Del Rio area looked simple from the airplane window. The river cut a path, paralleled by a fence, between two mirrored cities that were surrounded by vast, open brushland. Questions prickled the edges of my awareness as I watched the land come into view: How did our society get to this point? Whose border is this? What can we do? Will we do what we can?So many migrants congregated along the Rio Grande between Texas and Mexico in 2019 that I felt compelled to go too. The hundreds, and thousands, and then hundreds of thousands of people migrating northward astonished me. I wanted to witness that yearning for change among so many people from so many places, those who escaped terror and trauma as well as those who saw their only hope for a future on the other side of the border.I wanted to feel swept along in that human vortex from over fifty countries—pushing strollers, walking side by side, riding buses, hiding behind trees, waiting in food lines, moving ahead, seeking a future, everyone breathing at once. I quickly said, “Yes!” when a Christian crisis-response team asked me to join them as a bilingual chaplain in Del Rio, Texas, for a week. I wanted to stand with others in their struggle for a new life. My voice rose with a thousand yeses in many languages, like uncountable monarchs released to the open sky. “Yes,” we cried. “Take me to the border with you.”***I live and work in both Iowa and Guatemala, and I’ve listened to people in both places describe their quest for the border. One year ago, a slight boy named Elver approached me in a rural church. We were volunteering with a mission team on a hilltop overlooking Guatemala, the farthest we could get from a border without trying. There was hardly any work or water. A robin’s-egg-blue, button-down shirt draped lightly and formally over this boy. Eleven years old, Elver had an elegant air, even when giggling and scampering around the churchyard with friends. He had studied me all morning while mothers and children coloured pages on the pews. Finally he sat beside me and confided a raw and tender worry. “Will my father ever make it to the United States?” His dad hadn’t left town yet, but the threat of his absence already affected him profoundly.Elver had probed the options as thoroughly as an adult, seeing danger overflow with impossibilities. “Will my father come back?” “Why can’t I go with him?” His persistent questions ached both his heart and mine. “How far away is your country?” There was no easy answer, though the distance could be measured. A factual reply would only sting. We coloured the same page for a while, the scrape of the pew shifting on the floor the only sound between us. Guatemalans had welcomed me into their country. I didn’t believe this child’s dad would find the same welcome in my country. Our hearts were united, but our countries were worlds apart.***The community shelter where our team volunteered had opened in the spring, organized by city, business, and church leaders. The Border Patrol had requested assistance with the extraordinary influx of people across the international border, so these community leaders had formed the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition to offer hospitality and hope. The Coalition converted an old municipal building a mile from the river into a resource and respite centre for migrating children and families. Other organizations and people from all over the state and country donated thousands of hours and supplies.Coalition volunteers and staff intentionally welcomed people for months from countries as diverse and far-flung as Angola and Chile. These men, women, and children had come across the bridge or “through the water,” as they called it. Once Border Patrol determined that individual migrants and families could be released into Texas with provisional documents, officers delivered them to the shelter. Over the summer, the shelter averaged 60 people a day. One day Val Verde served 226 people.Anticipating new federal laws restricting migrants’ passage, the daily average dropped to two dozen people by the end of August. The Migrant Protection Protocols that took effect in late September effectively closed the border. The change at the Val Verde shelter was dramatic: The well-organized camp had more volunteers and staff than migrants needing respite. Thousands of people were still leaving their home countries daily. But most of these people were nowhere to be seen—with thousands more held in detention, and hundreds being deported monthly.In early October, the epic human migration through the southern US border had slowed to the point of becoming almost invisible. I felt bewildered and speechless on my first day of deployment, alienated from the reality I knew was somewhere right in front of me. Thousands of people from dozens of countries were out of sight—quieted, quarantined, and controlled. Most people were turned away in accordance with the new protocols. We waited for Border Patrol to call us when someone could be delivered to the shelter.After months of hosting thousands of the world’s people, those were solemn days of waiting to see what would happen in Del Rio.Sharing snacks and juice boxes and hot coffee in the presence of the Lord, we lived together briefly in the sacred space between the now and the not yet.On Monday afternoon, Border Patrol brought over a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Selia and her four-year-old daughter Paola. They’d come from El Salvador, eighteen hundred miles south, where Selia’s husband was involved in gang violence and drug trafficking. To preserve her daughter’s future, Selia had resolved two years before to meet the legal requirements for US entry. One day in 2017 she grabbed Paola’s hand and they just started walking. We met on the day they legally crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande and entered the United States in 2019, one step closer to reaching her goal to appeal for asylum.She spoke like a person in shock, hoarding details as if they were a scarce resource. Paola played with shelter staff in another room decorated with cartoon murals over the institutional cinder-block walls. After a shower, a few meals, a good night’s sleep, and the assurance of safety, Selia began to relax. By the next day, she spoke with more ease.Selia talked straight through the morning. She worked along the way at various jobs—at a store selling clothes, cooking for a street vendor, styling hair at a salon, cleaning a boarding house where they could stay. She confessed a deep shame that she also worked at a bar with other migrants in order to earn money for food. “They made you drink beer to get you drunk then they could do whatever they wanted,” she admitted. Selia eventually found stable employment as a waitress at a restaurant whose owner treated her well. Once she had saved enough money for the final stage of the trip, she and Paola spent fifteen days moving from Tapachula closer to the northern border, and waited for most of the last ten days in a Mexican shelter for a court hearing at the Del Rio crossing.On Saturday and Sunday night, they had slept in a public park because the shelter had shut down as part of the effort to reduce access to the border. Communicating with officials at the point-of-entry office on Monday morning, perhaps the most important part of her journey, was surreal. “It was like living in a movie,” Selia explained. “I couldn’t understand anything they said because I don’t speak English.”Now we sat together on metal folding chairs, an assortment of volunteers from several states who simply listened to her speak in Spanish in a cold room in Texas. We gave Selia our full attention as she shared some details about a journey many of us would never take.Intermixed with the grief and the shame and the terror, this mother described how people came together along the way and volunteered to meet each other’s needs. Selia brought migrant kids up from the public park to the restaurant where she worked in Tapachula to make sure they would eat every day, telling the owner that these were her own kids—even though it was a lie. When she shared what little she had, she said, God kept giving her more. She was an ordinary person using the resources she had to act on behalf of others.This exchange at the respite centre shrank the enormity of the migrant caravan down to a human scale, where we could see and hear and touch and be kind to each other. She was no longer an anonymous figure trailing a child on a dirt road in an unidentified picture on a news website.The border was no longer a fixed place between us but simply a point of discovery beyond which our conversation could expand into a safer, deeper realm. Sharing snacks and juice boxes and hot coffee in the presence of the Lord, we lived together briefly in the sacred space between the now and the not yet.The next morning also brought Maribel, a twenty-three-year-old woman from Honduras, two thousand miles away. She didn’t speak English either. She was seven months pregnant. Border Patrol officers had apprehended her after she crossed through the water. Volunteers helped Maribel choose clean clothing, shoes, and a backpack with snacks and supplies. Staff worked out transportation to her US contact for later in the afternoon.When a volunteer outlined her options, I realized how much in Maribel’s life changed in Del Rio. “You know,” he said to her, speaking Spanish calmly, “You have a US contact and money for the bus, but you can go anywhere. You are not required to go to the contact. You are free to go anywhere.” I wondered whether she had ever heard this before. Maribel wasn’t familiar with many city or state names, but she was indeed free to go anywhere and, for her, that probably felt like a whole new world.Both migrant women I met at the shelter were Christians, acutely aware that God had shown them favour. Both had been on strenuous journeys; Maribel was visibly exhausted and fragile. She described one terrifying week when she ran away from a bus that had crashed in an accident somewhere in Mexico. She kept running, she said, for days. When Maribel traded her socks and shoes for new ones, sand and dirt crumbled off her feet. She took a shower, extra-long by any standard. “That shower probably feels really good to her after being in the river,” Selia commented to us as we all waited to visit with Maribel.Maribel looked refreshed when she came out of the shower trailer, as if spiritually cleansed. We offered her a plastic bag for saving her balled-up damp clothing and muddy shoes. Instead, she pitched them in the trash with the grand flourish of a magician, as if all the terror and exhaustion of the journey vanished with the black bag. This marvelous release showed me how someone could set aside all they had known up until that moment and take a step beyond their circumstances, leaning into the next life. Motivated by desperation, trauma, and a desire to preserve the future for their loved ones, these women said, “Yes, today is the day. Yes, I will leave now.”Late Tuesday afternoon, Selia and Paola and Maribel boarded the bus to San Antonio and points east. Maribel would meet family in Houston; Selia and Paola faced a two-day bus ride to find relatives in Maryland. These brave women adjusted to their afflictions as if all they had let go of or lost had no ultimate worth. Only Selia asked for prayers, though not for herself. “Money is nothing,” she said, her face peaceful, speaking from a restored inner sanctuary of true value. Instead, she sought intercession for her migrant friends in Tapachula, Mexico—women and men from other countries who did not fare as well as she had and who still suffered in humiliating work. “A prayer opens the doors of heaven,” Selia assured us.We had spent less than twenty-four hours together, each of us learning from the other. In a human crisis, the people carry the disaster with them. These women felt comfortable enough to lay down some of that burden and gather up the challenges of a new life ahead.“Money is nothing,” she said, her face peaceful, speaking from a restored inner sanctuary of true value. “A prayer opens the doors of heaven,” Selia assured us.No other migrants came during that week to the Coalition’s shelter. Our assignment shifted to serving in and around Del Rio. The city was a typical disaster-response site: the storm has passed through and those left behind make sense of what happened and what’s next. We talked and prayed with people at the park, in the grocery store, at restaurants, in Starbucks, at the mall, even while picking up a few items at a fundraising garage sale. Some felt lost; others felt sad about the thousands who are held in detention on both sides of the border. Many people worried about those who are still coming. No one anywhere knows what will happen to everyone.After finishing our chores on Friday afternoon, I asked my co-chaplain if she could take me to see the fence and the river. We loaded up the van with the rest of the volunteers and toured Del Rio’s west side, starting with the massive International Bridge to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. The border fence ties into the cyclone fence and concertina wire that surrounds the bridge installation, designed like an interstate control point with toll booths and areas for truck inspection with police and ranger stations. A pedestrian walkway stretches between the two countries. There is no place to go but across—or back.She made a U-turn and drove downhill along the river’s edge about a mile north, stopping at a clearing in the tall grasses where many people had come through the water. I imagined makeshift crosses with plastic flowers studding the dirt between cacti and sedges, impromptu monuments commemorating the people of many nations who lost their lives, or their history, or their family. Those who had cast their sanity into the current after a loved one lost their grip and drowned, drifting beyond reach. Footprints on the sand gave me chills. I imagined people latching onto a Border Patrol officer’s hand after a rescue, or teenagers scrambling up the ragged incline in the dark.We saw it in the daytime. Just the thought of spending one night in the open rangeland after months on the run crippled my imagination.The field of vision at the riverside was vast. Colonnades of trees and brush on dry mesas anchored an immeasurable sky. An ever-changing corridor of water rolled by effortlessly, as gravity pulled everything downstream. We walked along the sandbars in silence, squinting with an arm crooked over our faces to shield ourselves from the brilliant sheen reflected off the wide water. Each of us stopped now and then to size up the distance to the opposite shoreline, where mirages of migrants appeared in the flickering light of day, highlighting the terror of crossing over or of being captured.The black steel see-through fence, about half a mile further east on dry ground, had an endless quality like the river, but it was neither coming nor going. It was just there, a stark inversion of the iconic white picket fence that marks off the front yards of the American dream.My brother often shares photos from his neighbourhood in New York City, where the Statue of Liberty stands watch nearby. But I didn’t think the border fence could be imbued with any moral vision or timeless call for hospitality the way Lady Liberty beckoned viewers from all sides of the Upper Bay harbour, a gift from one country that became a symbol for the gifts of all countries. Even a poster of her poetry and her bronzed body, full of creative opportunity, couldn’t be attached to the fence—nothing could without being detected by electronic surveillance.I took a picture just in case I ever forget what the rest of the world looks like from my country’s side of this border.Over time and one by one, God changes people’s hearts. God is always inviting us to cross the borders of our own imaginations into a gloriously better day.Each person has a story of how they got to the border and where they’re going, even if it means deportation. The stories are all different, and yet each one is the same as the last one or the next: no matter age, history, language, or country, they want to live.The border is a place where the future changes forever. These survivors withstood the frightening interrogations: Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here? Prove it. Once you cross over, there is no going back. And if you can’t cross over, there’s still no going back. There are thousands of people in US detention facilities, awaiting court hearings. At the border, all we have is now.More people try but never cross over than those who are able to make it through. I stand with those who don’t make it too.What are we trying to stop at the border? There will always be people migrating through southwest Texas, news writers say. Migration is a cycle, an economic reality. By the time some migrants head downtown for their appointment with the US court system on their asylum appeal, the conditions they fled in their passport country may have subsided. But are we wise to ignore the movement of the poor, or the people, or the economic cycles, or the wind?When we let these legendary migrations pass us by, we stay unmoved by the presence of God. I thought I knew where I was going when I travelled twelve hundred miles south from Iowa to Del Rio for my deployment week. Yet the assignment to serve at the border challenged me to believe that divine intervention can bring justice to the Rio Grande: not because of new legislation or a cultural awakening but because, over time and one by one, God changes people’s hearts. God is always inviting us to cross the borders of our own imaginations into a gloriously better day.Over a century ago, the Del Rio brushland was bisected only by a river, the tallgrass and bison so thick they slowed the wind passing through them. The wind passed through the border of the grasslands like time or a prayer. The wind keeps passing through because no one from anywhere can stop the breath of the living God from passing through our world.~A version of this article first appeared in Comment Magazine, 1 July 2021.Thanks for reading or listening to my Flash💥Devos! Subscribe for new posts and podcasts. Follow on Apple or Spotify. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Luke 21:3-4 He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”+My friend Jay once asked me if the gigantic “Jesus Saves” billboards on urban banks advertised where Jesus saves. It’s a powerfully mixed message. Decide what kind of savings you value most. Is it worth enough to give it all away?I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and listening to my Flash💥Devos! Subscribe for new posts and podcasts or follow on Apple or Spotify. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Psalm 126:5-6Those who sow with tears    will reap with songs of joy.Those who go out weeping,    carrying seed to sow,will return with songs of joy,    carrying sheaves with them.+Sometimes the songs of joy remain silent in the hymnal, tucked in the pew for another day. Grief dribbles from our eyes. No tune carries sadness far. Yet we live as children of promise for that coming day. Sorrow matures in our walk toward new seasons. Listen for radiant harmony as new songs emerge.This devotional also appears on Red Letter Christians WakeUp newsletter today. redletterchristians.orgSubscribe for free posts or follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for stopping by! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Hebrews 6:11-12 We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.+We need companions who can reorient us when we stray. Pulling up our bootstraps fixes some needs but relationships knit us together better. Loving each other the way Jesus loved counts. Stay the course with allies in committed faith.Today’s devotional also appears on Red Letter Christians WakeUps at redletterchristians.orgThanks for joining me on Flash💥Devos + Podcast! Subscribe for free to receive new posts or follow on Apple or Spotify. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Deuteronomy 24:17, 19 Make sure that orphans and foreigners are treated fairly.  … If you forget to bring in a stack of harvested grain, don't go back in the field to get it. Leave it for the poor, including foreigners, orphans, and widows, and the Lord will make you successful in everything you do.+Each of us bears responsibility for our neighbors and for fair distribution of earthly abundance. Justice and righteousness become real when whole communities experience the good life God gives us.Glad you could join me today. Thanks!My Flash💥Devos Podcast plays on Apple & Spotify or subscribe for free emails. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Deuteronomy 24:17,19 Make sure that orphans and foreigners are treated fairly.  … If you forget to bring in a stack of harvested grain, don't go back in the field to get it. Leave it for the poor, including foreigners, orphans, and widows, and the Lord will make you successful in everything you do.+Each of us bears responsibility for our neighbors and for fair distribution of earthly abundance. Justice and righteousness become real when whole communities experience the good life God gives us.Thanks for reading FLASH💥DEVOS! It’s good to pray in community. Subscribe for new posts. Podcasts play free on Apple and Spotify. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Mark 10:49-51 Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’ So they called to the blind man, ‘Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.’ Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Jesus asked him.  +Be conscious of the constant reconciling presence of Jesus. Tell others, “Guess who called me today?” Flip the script. Call Jesus and ask, “What do you want me to do for YOU today?”Thanks for stopping by today! Subscribe or follow for free posts or podcasts. Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com

Mark 10:49-51 Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’ So they called to the blind man, ‘Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.’ Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Jesus asked him.  +Be conscious of the constant reconciling presence of Jesus. Tell others, “Guess who called me today?” Flip the script. Call Jesus and ask, “What do you want me to do for YOU today?”Good to be with you! Thanks! Subscribe for free new posts and to learn along with me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marianneabellipschutz.substack.com