06/15/2026
Thank you to Heidi Krantz for sharing this. What a powerful reminder to reflect on.
This morning's reading hit me especially deeply giving me a lot of food for thought today.
Giving Is Receiving
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
In CAC’s online course The Divine Exchange, Cynthia Bourgeault considers one of Jesus’s parables through the lens of interconnection and abundance.
For Jesus, oneness is not a matter of a static return to a source. It’s a dance of continual “giving is receiving.” We become one because we’re all changing places within a greater whole. We can’t pull a single straw out without the whole thing toppling. Everything is wedged in this great relational field that’s living, giving, receiving, breathing. The depth and breadth and force of the exchange between the parts is the measure of its health. Anything that increases the field of relationality, interactivity, and flow is going in the right direction. Anything that works in the direction of isolation, cooping things up into disconnected, separate particles is decreasing the abundance of divine mercy flowing through the system.
That’s what Jesus is pointing to in his wonderful teaching in Luke 12. The parable goes like this: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will pull down my barns and build larger ones and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night, your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’”
Jesus continues to heap on metaphor after metaphor: Behold the lilies of the field, behold the sparrow, behold the hairs of your head. He creates a picture of a kingdom where every single piece, no matter how humble, is known and supported. He ends the whole thing with a favorite line from Scripture: “Do not be afraid, little flock. It is my Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
If there’s one thing Jesus is opposed to, it’s hoarding—and it’s not just about physical possessions. The ego is the ultimate hoarder. It hangs on to everything. We hoard our entitlements: I am rich, I am educated, I am a person of authority. We hoard our principles and ideologies; we hoard our self-justifications and our resentments. We use all these things to line the nest of our fragile sense of selfhood.
But Jesus sets himself against any kind of hoarding. He teaches a path of radical non-clinging. He says in effect, “Don’t clench your fist. Open your hands.” The world is abundant and provident beyond belief, and what flows through it is a coherence, a beauty, a life force that is a direct expression of the heart of God.
For Jesus, the world is suffused with the glory of divine tenderness and providence. That’s reason he was so implacably opposed to hoarding. Whenever we go into any kind of braced position—clinging, defending, self-justifying, insisting—it immediately makes us spiritually blind. They cut us off from the whole and we can no longer see the abundance that’s flowing right there.
