The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz Podcast

In this life, there is devastation that human beings experience here that defies understanding: pain so all-consuming and loss so indescribable that wrapping our minds around it or explaining it is simply beyond capacity. At times, nature and circumstance remind us all with breathtaking ferocity and blinding speed just how fleeting and fragile we are, how tenuous being here is; the velocity at whi...

Dear World, We felt we needed to say something while saying something is still allowed. We know many of you have lived under malevolent, unhinged dictators before, but this is new for us. For its history, our nation has been led by men who, despite their varying flaws and deficiencies, some of which were quite disturbing, were, by and large, normal human beings. Whatever darkness in them, they had...

Lately, I daydream about the things we could all be doing over the coming years if we didn't have to work tirelessly to protect ourselves from the incoming President and his rogues gallery Administration. I imagine you do, too. Tens of millions of Americans are exhausted, depleted, worn to the bone right now. Since November 5th, many of us have quite literally not stopped: consumed with tending to...

Eight years ago I released my first book called 'A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community.' It was the continuation of my then twenty-year journey as a local church pastor, seeking to craft spiritual communities where all people are truly welcome—especially those most often excluded based on gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religious tradition, nation of...

These are days when gratitude might not come easy for you. It's tempting to scan the horizon each morning and to let our gaze rest and fix solely on the things that burden us; on the sorrow-bringers and the treachery they manufacture, on the terror we are daily surrounded by because of their seemingly boundless capacity to injure and attack. We can easily allow the perpetual, urgent storm they man...

Boy, do I feel like an idiot. I honestly thought January 6th, 2021 was going to be a catalytic moment for our nation. Watching a vicious, snarling cosplay army emblazoned with his name breaking through the barricades around the Capitol, I thought for sure the almost unthinkable horrors of that day would be a dealbreaker for even the most devoted of his sycophantic rank-and-file. I believed that wi...

Some days, I feel like launching a career as a de-motivational speaker. An email from a longtime reader arrived yesterday morning. “We need you to give us hope right now.” the writer instructed. “So many of us are scared and worried, and we need your voice in these moments, now more than ever. With all that our nation is facing in the coming year, your voice is so important.” I truly appreciated h...

The change of the calendar provides us a time to thoughtfully rewind through the previous twelve months: to inventory our decisions, to reflect on upon all we’ve seen and experienced and to make grand plans for the coming year. Most of us find ourselves composing resolutions we hope will make us healthier, less stressed, and more focused—but those might actually be guaranteeing our misery and perc...

Lately, I confess that I’ve been imagining myself in a way I never have before in over a half-century of living here in America: I’m imagining myself as an expat. Seeing my social media timeline, now filled with breaking news that is the stuff of horror films and chilling 1930’s newsreels, I daydream about what it might be like to wake up in a place that doesn’t feel the way this one does: oppress...

It's easy to be fooled by loud things. American Bible Belt Evangelical Christians have gone all-in with Donald Trump, and in doing so they've had to sell their souls, abandon their namesake, and remove any semblance of Christlikeness from their collective faith expression. Jesus has been rendered nonexistent in their midst, deported from their gatherings. Conservative White Evangelicalism in Ameri...

This message isn’t for everyone. This message is for you , the person whose heart is heavy today, the one for whom this season is not merry and bright, the one who doesn't feel at all like singing. It’s for you who face subtraction; who feel the combined attrition of the all losses you've accrued this year: the people who've passed away, the ones who left voluntarily, those you've had to push away...

It's Christmas Eve in Washington, D.C. and from a second-floor banquet room, uproarious laughter rings out from behind frost-covered windows and into the snow-speckled sky. Around a massive table piled to overflowing with food and wine, sit a bloated and blurry-eyed Donald Trump and Elon Musk—along with a snarling, cackling cadre of Republican lawmakers, FoxNews anchors, and celebrity evangelists....

For the past nine years, many of us knew this day was coming. We sounded every alarm, rang every bell, we shot up a thousand desperate flares to rile people from the numbed stupor of laziness, apathy, and false security, and awaken them to the slow, almost imperceptible erosion of the bedrock of Liberty around them. Day after day, we crafted every urgent plea possible to persuade them: appealing t...

The Divided States of America. That’s who we are now. It’s not who we needed to be and it’s the greatest tragedy of our lifetimes that we are , but it’s an unpleasant reality that we need to be clear-headed about in these moments so that we can understand the path forward. Throughout the postmortem of the Harris-Walz campaign, I’ve heard some familiar critiques of the Democratic Presidential ticke...

The war is here. The MAGA Evangelicals were right. The pulpit-pounding preachers were right. Franklin Graham was right. The Republicans were right. Donald Trump was right. Fox News was right. The Religious Right was right. Every single one of them was speaking gospel truth: there is a war on Christmas here in America. They’ve all been warning me for years and I didn’t want to believe them, lest ho...

Dear Friends, If you don't suffer from a mental illness there's something you need to know about those of us who do, because it may be impossible for us to tell you sometimes—and we really want to tell you. There is a disheartening pattern that begins on many of our days. We wake up fully intending to take part in life around us: to return calls or send emails or show up for coffee or meet you for...

There's no other way to say it: these are dark days here in America. And this lack of light has nothing to do with the orientation of the planet and everything to do with the trajectory of our nation. Outside of a very select few, no one is particularly festive right now and for good reason. We'd be foolish not to feel the tension we're sitting in, not to see the weariness in people, not to notice...

We all make mistakes. Every one of us can recall times when our judgment was temporarily clouded; when our emotions betrayed us in a moment of weakness or fear or misplaced anger. In the rearview mirror, we see clearly those moments when we chose horribly and later found ourselves embarrassed and ashamed to realize what we'd done. Such regret is universal, as is the desire to escape culpability wh...

Growing up, I was taught that knowledge was power. I used to agree. Now, I'm beginning to believe differently. Now, I think it's a pain in the ass. Right now, knowing is actually the problem. I woke up this morning, hopped online, and in a few seconds became nauseous as I felt a fresh wave of disastrous updates pummel my nervous system: nightmare Cabinet picks, coming Constitutional crises, possib...

America was always supposed to be the place people could nurture dreams that found welcome nowhere else; the adoptive home for those from every square inch of the planet who came seeking refuge from the tangible nightmares of this life. In word at least, if not always in practice, we have been the door of radical hospitality opened wide to a disparate world fleeing the cruelty of their geography a...

A couple of months ago I was invited by a Florida church to host several conversations on faith, politics, and the threat of Christian Nationalism, held over the course of three days. Because of the disparate audience the writing has found, many people who showed up on Saturday morning would never have otherwise walked into a church. Some hadn't ever been to a house of worship outside of the odd w...

The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy. - The Wizard, Wicked They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs. - Donald Trump Citizens of Oz! There is an enemy who must be found and captured - Madam Morrible We will get ... transgender insanity the hell out of our schools and we will keep men out of women’s sports. - Donald Trump When art imitates life, we who are a...

'Tis the season to be struggling... There is no good time to have a mental illness. I mean, it's never convenient to carry that invisible heaviness around with you; to have to marshal every bit of energy to keep the persistent demons at bay, to muster up enough functional positive momentum to attend to the menial tasks in front of you. There simply isn't an ideal spot on the calendar for such thin...

Not only do the times change, the times change us. Every day we are gradually altered by the world; by what we see or experience, by the people we cross paths with, by the pain and goodness we bear witness to. We are the ever-changing sum total of the moments we log here on the planet, always slightly shifting, forever in transition, never quite finished.  And because of this, invariably we are go...

We’re not going back! We’re not going back! Those words, defiantly but joyfully shouted by tens of thousands at a North Carolina rally back in October still resound in my memory, echoing in my head, and sending pinpricks into my heart. Reliving the jubilation of that day, it’s hard to fathom the suddenness of the ending that followed. This isn’t just a political loss, as devastating as that has be...