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I am a pastor and a clinical psychotherapist. My life's passion is defining healthiness from a human perspective and paralleling it to the holiness of God, divine perspective. Shifting perspectives creates a paradigm that is alongside of rather than over and against. The parakalein of God and the paradoxes of humanity are redefined. Humanity is all about winning and yet we are losing ground everywhere. Divinity is all about letting go of the desire to win and the fear of loss. The Divine embraces the world with loving care regardless of anything.

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On Forgiveness

Posted by Don Paine

There are I think many levels of forgiveness and many stages.  Over the next few days I will share soem thoughts on this topic.

First I am thinking these days that forgiveness is not something I have to do for others.  Maybe it is even something that I cannot do.  When I am told I have to forgive someone it feels like a part of me has been hurt or wounded and it is being told to just let it go and get over it.  The part feels that that becomes a secondary offense.  It does not want to get over it.  It wants to be heard and validated.  It does want to get over feeling badly, being angry, and it actually wants to forgive but it does not want to let the offender off the hook.

What a dilemma.

If I do not forgive.  I am bad because people tell me I need to forgive just as God for Christ sake forgave me.
If i do forgive, the part of me that feels hurt is feeling ignored, pushed aside, and uncared for.

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Duality, polarity, and harmony. How parts interact and develop.

Posted by Don Paine

 Life and the experiences of life invite a person to develop.  What is it that develops?  In the multiplicity of experiences are only exceeded by the multiple ways in which those experiences are categorized and catalogued in the brain.

Every experience, thought, feeling and belief came into existence in response to something or someone.  Each one becomes a part who needs and wants to feel compassion and care, who fears loss of any thing, who desires gain of some kind, who sees other parts as their rivals within.  Each part like two siblings both love and hate the existence of the other.  The internal rivalry between parts and the polarities of those parts do not threaten the system but actually energize the system.  The parts however do not see this because they become “part-focused”.  The develop elaborate systems of protective parts due to fear of loss and desire of gain.

The duality of all living things provides an opportunity to welcome all living things with creative curiosity as how they can assist and desist with each other.  When any and every part is invited into the “light space” of open and creative new life emerges.  When there is an invitation to “dark space” another form of life emerges. 

Humanity begins to believe a lie.  The lie is that they have to do something or they will miss something.   The lie is that if they do nothing they are weak and fearful.  If they do not do anything they are weak and fearful.  So to prove that they are strong they eat to live only to eat to die.

Divinity knows that no matter what happens “compassion and courage” calmly and cooperatively responds not out of fear or anger but out of love and compassion.  Love indeed conquers all things, not by might and power over and against but by the presence of love and grace alongside of. 

The parakalein idea of God is of an “alongside of” posture and position.  God comes alongside of all that is an calmly and compassionately responds not our of fear and anger but out of love and grace.  God surrenders the “might is right” power matrix  to the “the right to surrender my might and power to  the righteouseness of remaining right in my heart toward all” is a dynamic shift from power over to power alongside of.  Power not proven by its thirst to be or prove it is right but the willingness to sacrifice that right to.  It is a shift from being right in the sense of correct vs incorrect to being right in the sense of remaining non-defenseive, self-protective, and self-propagating.

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On Forgiveness

Posted by Don Paine

You have to forgive. 


I have heard that said a lot of times and have said it a lot of times.  Today I am thinking not so much.

In an over and against context of living it seems to be that I have to forgive people or I need to be forgiven by people.  A part of me has been caught more than one in the dilemma and paradox of this valley.  It is the valley of forgiveness.

In that valley there is frustration, anger, fear and lament anything but peace.

As I thought about that I recalled the words of Peter,  “How many times must I forgive my brother”.  Peter had no doubt experienced the valley of forgiveness and wanted out of it.   He was no doubt tired of forgiving people only to feel that he was contributing to their continued behavior and he wanted to know when he could stop that.  When I forgive someone who has no intention of seeing their behavior as needing a “repentance job” rather than a “repair job”, I feel like I am contributing to problem.  It is not about repairing any thing it is about changing something.  Peter may have also been tired of feeling if he did not forgive he was being unforgiving and resentful.  One thing is true something had to change, for Peter.  Jesus words came paradoxically clear as he said, “70 times 7 is how many times you have to forgive your brother.  If Peter heard this literally, he could be unforgiving at 491st offense.  If Peter heard it another way, he might have concluded, so it is not about me forgiving my brother so what is it about.


As I consider the dilemma and paradox of forgiveness, I see two things very clearly.  One forgiveness releases people from the burden of unforgiveness, and two the need to forgive burdens people with perpetuating the hurt and pain they experienced while letting the perpetrator and the victim be fragmented by both unforgiveness and forgiveness.

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The Would Shed

Posted by Don Paine

Words, words, and more words.  Books are everywhere about everything. 


I have often thought about writing but as often figured, who would care about anything I would say.  I had an insecure and doubting part that agreed, no one would read anything I said.  The part even said when I die all the words and thoughts that I thought will die with me for no one will have seen them.  Then I have another part that imagines people hearing me preach or teach or reading what I wrote.  The first is the depleted ego and the latter is the inflated ego.

I have decided to create a “Would Shed” on my blog and to regularly right what I “would say” if anyone was listening.  Random thoughts as they come to me through random or not so random experiences will be the focus of these entries.

If any random thought stimulates a part of you to consider something in a new and different way, I hope the benefit will be your own stimulation and growth.

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Forgiveness

Posted by Don Paine

“The Other Side of Forgiveness”

You have to forgive. 

I have heard that said a lot of times and have said it a lot of times.  Today I am thinking not so much.

In an over and against context of living it seems to be that I have to forgive people or I need to be forgiven by people.  A part of me has been caught more than one in the dilemma and paradox of this valley.  It is the valley of forgiveness.

In that valley there is frustration, anger, fear and lament anything but peace.

As I thought about that I recalled the words of Peter,  “How many times must I forgive my brother”.  Peter had no doubt experienced the valley of forgiveness and wanted out of it.   He was no doubt tired of forgiving people only to feel that he was contributing to their continued behavior and he wanted to know when he could stop that.  When I forgive someone who has no intention of seeing their behavior as needing a “repentance job” rather than a “repair job”, I feel like I am contributing to problem.  It is not about repairing any thing it is about changing something.  Peter may have also been tired of feeling if he did not forgive he was being unforgiving and resentful.  One thing is true something had to change, for Peter.  Jesus words came paradoxically clear as he said, “70 times 7 is how many times you have to forgive your brother.  If Peter heard this literally, he could be unforgiving at 491st offense.  If Peter heard it another way, he might have concluded, so it is not about me forgiving my brother so what is it about.

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Language of God

Posted by Don Paine

Just saw the video from UCC on God is still speaking! What is the language of God? Love! Justice, Peace and Hope!


Amazing challenge to the world to see God's amazing love in the people whom God has made. Be debtors and have no agenda except to love and accept people as they are. Maybe we should put a period where our prejudice, our narrow mindedness, and our self-serving agendas. Then we can put a comma after everyone whom God has made feels love, compassion, community, justice, hope, and peace....and on and on, to all people in all parts of the world!

Maybe this is the Christmas Message to all within and beyond Christendom: When there is peace in the hearts of all on earth there will be only "goodwill (of love, joy and peace) towards all on earth" -

Please take a minute to watch this video and find the Spirit inside and be the Spirit outside!

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God is always present

Posted by Don Paine

The alongside of God is always alongside us even when we do no feel it or experience it.


I am always encouraged when I sense God's presence. I am discouraged when I feel God's absence. I am reminded that we are to live by faith not sight. "Sola gratia" of by grace alone was Luther's great internal discovery.

My wife and I recently visited my daughter and grandson who live in Seoul Korea. We visited the orphanage that she and my son (her natural brother) lived for several month prior to coming to America to be raised in a Christian home. Who would have imagined that 30 years later I would be walking into the orphanage that gave her to us to thank them and to support her dream of giving back to that orphanage. These kids are in this orphanage dropped there by circumstances out of there control just like her and her brother 30 years ago. She brings to them the living hope that she was like them and God is present to heal all betrayals and abandonment through the grace of God that never abandons us even if we feel it at times.

As we walked up the street to the orphanage it was snowing which it seldom does particularly this much. We had prepared a santa sack full of gifts for the children but the greatest gift was to see the falling snow, to feel the magical and mystical presence of a God that pours HIs purity and healing into our lives in unanticipated ways. The children seemed to have never seen a snow ball before so I became a snow ball machine and they the recipients of the fun and magic of the moment. God was present in a way that no one on earth could have orchestrated. Gifts were present to the children, to my daughter and grandson, to me to all of us that are all because of the grace of God's falling snow into our lives.

God was right there alongside of us. God is always right there "alongside of us". I wonder how many times I need to experience that to really know that in the times when I feel abandoned, I am not. My daughter is teaching me though her faith that heals her sense of abandonment and betrayal. My prayer is that we will all learn to be healed in what my daughter would call seoul healing. Where I have caused feelings of abandonment and where I have experienced abandonment God sprinkles his snowy grace into our lives. A beautiful snow falls from heaven on all of us today. God is present always with grace and healing.

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Reaction to Eckart Tolle's A New Earth

Posted by Don Paine

I am amazed at the synergies of different but similar stories and movements. I became part of "selfleadership.org" five years ago and it teachers similarly to Eckart Tolle's work, A NEW EARTH. I delivered a paper at the 2006 International Conference for Social WOrkers in Hong Kong in which I sated that Descartes idea: "I think therefore I am" is at the heart of perpetual conflict in our world. When what I think defines who I am and what you think defines who you are then we have to fight for who we are. What if the "I am who I am and then I respect therefore the who that you are" then mutual respect and shared responsibleness can bring harmony in our internal and external worlds. In other terms: when my parts are part of the whole of me, and when the whole of me welcomes the whole of you and your parts.....harmony and balance will come. I believe more and more that what ever you want to call it: Buddha Spirit, Consciousness, Jesus, Islam higher Self, Hindu Guru...it is the light in all of us. It is being the "I am who I am" without needed to impose that on anyone else. It is the power of now now. It is being authentically "I am" without imposing or intruding on any other I am that is. It is authentic presence in the now in the past and into the future that heals all. Christianity's greatest asset is the person and authentic presence of Jesus and its greatest liability is the presentation of Jesus as the ONLY way. The way is "authentic presence in the inner and outer world in the moment which his Jesus! Lost to many churches Jesus is in every person. When Jesus declared "I am the way", his focus was not on any particular religious tenet as many churches would have us believe. Rather his way was the way of being authentically present in the now of each person's day, sacrificing the drive to be reactive to the design to be proactively compassionate toward everyone and everything, and to live in peace internally and relationally regardless of the external threats. Jesus is not the way as any church defines Him. The way is Jesus as He lives so we should live also. I am a member of the United Church of Christ and a pastor and psychotherapist. The shift in awareness described above is the shift that Eckart is talking about. It is a shift from over and against any parts in me or you to a calm, compassionate, courageous embrace of all people as who they are regardless of anything. This parallels the Dalai Lama's "Unbiased Compassion" It is what everyone has and everyone in the world needs. Let's let the self of compassion and calm rise up and settle down in all of us to the glory of God and the good of humanity. Dr. Donald L Paine, www/parakalein.org

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The Betrayal of the betrayer

Posted by Don Paine

Betrayal grips my soul and threatens the very life out of me. Maybe this is the nature of betrayal. When we feel betrayed we become the betrayer. We betray ourselves because we see the hatred of the betrayal. We think we need a release. Anything that provides comfort in this place of betrayal we grab on to it, holding it for dear life. Then it betrays our living, our hoping our loving.

Betrayal is cruel because it is perennial. Like death it is everywhere.

Death betrays life. It betrays the “living, loving Spirit” in all of us. We speak of death as being God’s will and I scream a deep scream from the pit of my being.

Death is not God’s will. It never has been God’s will.

The betrayal began with the idea that the God of creation was not for love and peace but for power and control. The enemy of betrayal suggested that God had a protective part that did not want us to know as God knows, love as God loves, live free as God is free. Our thoughts betrayed us because we felt betrayed which resulted in betrayal.

We are the betrayer and the betrayed. There is no innocence.

I have felt betrayed and I have betrayed the love and life that I hold so dear. Life is not as important as honor and integrity. What we believe effects our living and our living infects what we believe.

When death came to my brother it cut into all of our hearts. Some have spoken of it as God’s will. While screaming in pain of grief and loss, they embrace a God that embraces them with comfort. This is to their credit and faith.

I see that moment as betrayal. Death betrayed the love and life my brother had lived. When the “angel of death” came to him, I do not think he said okay let’s go without also saying my heart is breaking for my wife, my children my grandchildren. Then my brother, full of grace, said I trust you to be “with” my family. Entrusting them to God’s loving care and living peace.

Betrayal blinds me. Faith that sees beyond the moment and sees everyone in the loving and peaceful way that God sees us sets us free from all burdens of beliefs and betrayals. Some beliefs perpetuate betrayal. Others set us free of the burden of betrayal.

We think it is about who is right or honorable so we set ourselves to judge others and ourselves with a hammer of judgment. We think it is about “truth” some particular truth about this or that. We betray our loving and living.

The inner self as God has given it to all of us looks at the betrayal of the part and has deep understanding and compassion for why the part behaved in this way. There is no judgment or condemnation. There is also no approval or condoning. There is just the abiding presence of love and peace. There, there is healing and life forevermore.

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The Essence of God is......

Posted by Don Paine

What an incredible idea.....can we state anything that would come close to capturing the essence of who God is.


John did in the first chapter of his Gospel. "We beheld the Glory of God full of grace and truth".

The essence of God for John was that in Jesus we could see and experience "Truth and Grace" in a balance of peace and love. The church is challenged in Ephesians to parallel this in the relational experience in the church. The directive is "speak the truth in love (with grace)".

Why then do we in our churches spend so much time teaching dogma and doctrine. I have preached sermons that were on the distinctives of what I believe but today I am growing to believe that what I believe about who God is theologically is not as important as how I let the person of God live in me. It is therefore not about theological or ecclesiastical truth as if the church or group with the right theology or polity will get a "well done thou faithful servant" when they enter heaven. In reality it is not what we believe that matters but how we live in truth and grace. The truth here is living in honesty and openness toward others and oneself. It is not telling people what is true. It is the discipline of inviting people to be honest with you without judgment and having the courage to be honest with them without attempting to control them. This is how Jesus lived.

Grace is then not just un-merited favor. It is also giving people the opportunity and privilege to be respected even if I disagree with them. Grace is responding to the situation or person regardless of what they say or do with the choice of grace. This grace opens the door wide to communion and community.

I spoke with someone toady that attends a churched that has "Grace" in its name while the polity of the church is to police people's behavior and choices while presenting a great image the focus of the church is to control people. In the name of service, self is promoted. We are right and we teach truth and grace is anything but the essence of the church.

The church often presents its truth in dogma and doctrine not in life and witness. The history of the church reflects more of a desire to control and resist control. Wars, mutilations, prejudice, violence, disharmony have been engaged in to prove truth. Speaking truth to power begs the question of who knows truth? and what is true power.

Jesus presented truth and grace in how he lived, loved and died.

Jesus, when he allowed humanity to kill him for no reason except that they wanted to show their power, was full of grace and truth toward the world.

Imagine in your world when you heard someone say something stupid (in your opinion) or did something stupid (in your opinion), you responded to them with grace. They would not feel judged or condemned but genuinely loved and cared for. Imagine a world where people in churches, synagogues, mosques or temples did not present their truth over an against each other in an effort to prove who is right, to speak their truth over falsehood. Imagine in that world that those same people chose to pour grace into each others lives, to live grace over truth telling.

Imagine all religious groups being so full of deep honest truthfulness with themselves about themselves that they could not allow the pride of being right (even if they think they are) win over the humility of being wrong even if you are right. Being right in your heart toward someone when they are wrong in their heart toward you is the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God is not about being right as the way of truth, it is about being right in your heart as the way of grace. The righteousness of God is not about being gracious and letting people disrespect you, it is about being gracious in respect to everyone even if they disrespect you.

John said as he opened the Gospel, if I let myself think of all that I experienced as I walked with, talked with, lived with, cried with Jesus, I think of two words that sum up the difference that makes a difference in the world. Those two words are "Truth and Grace" and Jesus was full of both of them.

When some one says: "you are full of it"! Imagine if the "it" was "Grace" and that was Truth!

Be truthful about yourself and you will be trusted.

Be graceful toward yourself and others and you will be known as one who walks with God and one with whom God walks.

Some walk the talk of being Christians.
Some talk the walk of being Christians.

Others walk in truth and talk with grace which is the essence of God in you. Full of grace and truth we live in love and peace with all humankind.

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Karin's dream and ours

Posted by Don Paine

It is Sunday morning. I am sitting in church listening to my 32 year old daughter Karin Lim. She is wise beyond her years as she brings tears of joy to my eyes.

She invited everyone to consider a dream for their life. I thought of my dream being fulfilled before my eyes. Old men shall see visions and young women dream dreams. The dream of her coming to know and walking with the God who loved her so, was fulfilled as she talked of feeling called of God to return the love she received to the homeland that gave her life. She is talking about how her life dream was to return to the orphanage in which she and her brother spent several months prior to their mother and I adopting them from Seoul, Korea. Life given from one hemisphere, love nurtured in another hemisphere, both come together in her. A proud father humbly thanks God, the adopted Father of us all, for this sacred moment in time.

She speaks of three categories of people to whom she feels called: the strangers (Koreans come bake to Korea with the cultures of their birth apparent on their faces but different cultures in their heart), the outcasts (the mother’s who are unable to care for their children), and the orphans (the children abandoned to an orphanage only to learn of the God who loves and nurtures them through others). Then there is the song, which we heard called “Orphans of God” that has the very same line in it that summarizes my daughter’s heart. Her heart delivered on a platter. Her head surrendered to her heart. Her food is to do the will of the God who loves her. She nurtures three souls at once: hers, mine, and the people, to whom God leads her.

She challenges everyone to find their dream, then find the courage to pursue that dream.

I recall my dream and her adoptive mother’s dream: to pour our love and the love of Christ into these two lives born to another in another country. Nurtured by us in this country to be and fulfill God’s calling on their lives. Orphaned by a mother but not orphaned by God for God loves all, and pours love into all the children of earth. Regardless of the rejection experienced by people, love warms the heart from within where God dwells. All children are welcome into the lap of God’s love. All who love God create a lap into which the unloved of earth can come and be accepted, approved, and adopted.

Karin has a lap of love created in her to gift to the world from which she came. She uses the gift of faith, hope and love blended with her gift of appreciation and art to help these children to discover their dream of love and acceptance is fulfilled in the love that they give and receive and give again.

A proud father in heaven, is joined by, a proud father on earth.

To God be the glory!

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Way of Jesus

Posted by Don Paine

As I sat in church today, I heard the theme as "Jesus loves you". Simple and profound. Complex yet compelling. Mark 5 was the text. (Matthew 8 and Luke 8 are parallel texts) I noticed that in each in counter of Jesus with the seas or wind, with the fear or faith, with the dead or living the theme was the same. The way Jesus was in each case was calm and compassionate.

The disciples were focused on the storm and the waves. Fear of the external shook their internal peace and trust. The audacity of their cry, "Jesus do you not care that we perish" was eclipsed by the audacity of Jesus calm response. "peace be still". Was he talking to the wind or the disciples. To both I am sure. The wind and the waves witnessed his calmness and became calm. The disciples witnessed the "power of inner calmness and care and became afraid. Jesus looked at them with compassion not judgment. I imagine that Jesus would have smiled and said watch and learn. Next time when you see me asleep, trust my presence. I am in your boat. There is nothing to fear except fears furor. Instead of saying "wake up" say to yourself, let's take a knap. No evil will be fall us as long as Jesus is with us.

The way of Jesus is not a theological or dogmatic way. The way of Jesus is a way of being that welcomes everyone and everything into the realm of eternal loving. Competitive desires are not eternal. Competition is of the external world. Calmness is the character of eternal things. Jesus met every competitive challenge with compassion and calmness.

The way of Jesus is even more powerfully illustrated in the next event. Jesus is confronted with a man possessed by evil demons. They shout to him, do not torment us.....I can see Jesus again with a smile of reassuring love and compassion on his face. The "Legion" of demons ask the God of the universe to send them to the swine. Jesus response was not a negative judgment but a calm compassion, "sure go ahead". Evil was not confronted as if God was competing good against evil. Evil was met with compassion and care. The swine headed for the lake where the evil was drowned or dissolved and the life force renewed in the living water that always springs up into everlasting life.

Jesus as anyone or any group might define or market him is not the way. The way of Jesus is the way of love and peace. Love and peace do not triumph over evil as if they are at war. They dissolve the need to compete that is in the world. The dissolve into the transformative sea of glass that calm and redemptive.

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