The Saints - Part 1 - Thomas More

Monday, October 5, 2026

Happy Monday, my friends! Growing up Catholic, the saints and the concept of saints was embedded into our everyday life. I was baptized at St. Timothy Parish, I received First Communion and was confirmed at St. Benedict Parish, and attended grade school at St. Benedict School, which was served by the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity. By a certain age you could ask any of us for our favorite saint and we could rattle off a name and some basic biographical information. The saints were a great cloud of witnesses selected by God and recognized by the Church for their virtues who could intercede for people on earth and in purgatory. Some saints were selected to represent certain vocations, countries, fields, and types of people. Their relationship to those particular areas could be direct—St. Joan of Arc is one of the patron saints of France—while others took some imagination—St. Joseph of Cupertino was the patron saint of aviators despite having been born approximately 300 years before the invention of powered human flight.

While the saints have not been missing in my life, they have taken a bit of a backseat in my spirituality and devotion. Recently, though, they came back to me while listening to the stories and testimonies of my TFAM siblings, many of whom have very different ideas about the saints and who are saints than I ever have held.

When, in the seventh grade, it was time for confirmation, we each had to pick a saint to be our personal model and guardian of a sort. At age 13, I was certain that I was going to be a lawyer. Naturally, I selected St. Thomas More, the patron saint of lawyers. You might already see the humor and irony in that choice, but let’s just say my life has taken a path that intersected with More’s in ways other than the practice of law. More was a lawyer, philosopher, and government minister of great renown in the English court during the King Henry VIII. In fact, More became a close friend and confidante of the king. Yet, when Henry broke from the Roman Church and declared himself the head of the Church of England, More refused to assent and ultimately lost his head by Henry’s order. The English Church is the spiritual origin of the tradition called Anglican, including The Episcopal Church. When I became Episcopalian years later a professor asked me who my confirmation saint had been. “Thomas More,” I said. With a concerned look, the professor responded, “That’s awkward.”

What is your background with saints? Do you have a favorite or patron saint?

Let us pray: Gracious God, you lift up holy people from every generation to be models of faith for us. Continue to send people to show us the paths of faith and help us recognize them in our lives. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.

Faithfully,

Ben +

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God Did Not Make Us to Fit into Boxes

Sunday, October 4, 2026

Rev. Br. Ian Boden, OLF

LGBTQIA+ Person of Faith

LOVEboldly Board Member

Quote

“Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine; preserve what your right hand has planted.”

~Psalm 80:14-15 (Evangelical Lutheran Worship Hymnal)

Devotion

We are the vine that God tends. God formed us and nurtures us. God cares for us and delights in us.

Authentic is one of my favorite words to use to describe Saint Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is today, October 4th. It seems to me that he could not be anything less than wholly and authentically himself. Perhaps it is this authenticity that we recognize in him that makes him one of the most famous and popular saints in history. In fact, it is Saint Francis’ unwavering authenticity and utter determination to follow God with his whole being, whether it made sense to others or not, has and continues, to inspire me not only a person of faith and a gay man, but also a vowed sibling in the Order of Lutheran Franciscans.

Saint Francis was born to a rich family and in his early life he was what one could call a “party boy” and he was determined to be a knight. After he was held as a prisoner of war for several months, he abandoned his dream of being a knight and was discouraged and confused. He was wandering the countryside one day when he found a small chapel, so he went inside to pray. As he was praying, he heard God say to him “Francis, rebuild my church.” Taking this literally Francis went to his home and sold some of his father’s items so he would have money to rebuild the church he was praying in. After a very heated exchange between Francis and his father, Francis left without any money, without his clothes, and felt misunderstood and abandoned by his family.

After begging for stones, and food he slowly began to rebuild the chapel he heard God speak to him in and in time others joined him. He may not have had a biological family, instead he now has a chosen or found family. Those who loved him as he was, not as they expected him to be. Francis realized that this call to rebuild the church was larger than one chapel, it was about something bigger. And Francis brought his whole self to this mission. He preached to birds, he stood up for the poor and marginalized, loving those whom society deemed untouchable. He refused to touch money, insisting that money should be used for the poor and marginalized. He stowed away to the crusades to try and get the Christians and Muslims to stop fighting, only to be told by a Sultan “If all Christians were like you, we would not be in this war.” He meditated on a dispute between a wolf and a village. He was an eccentric who would pray and starve on top of a mountain for days at a time. He was a poet who loved cookies. He was a brother who insisted at times on being called mother, because he felt motherly towards some of those who followed him. Saint Francis loved others, and loved God, and never stopped being authentically himself. He is a saint that refuses to fit into boxes because he chased after a God who was larger than any box he could conceive of. Without Francis’ example of radical authenticity and willingness to take up the call to rebuild the church, the church would not be in the place it is today.

My own life and faith journey looks nothing like that of Saint Francis of Assisi and that is okay. Because we already have Francis, I have been made to be me. God desires me to be nothing more and nothing less than completely and authentically, me.

We are the vine that God tends. God formed us and nurtures us. God cares for us and delights in us, wholly and authentically as we are.

Reflection

1.    In what ways is being authentic easy? And in what ways hard?

2.    Whose beautiful authenticity inspires you?

3.    What boxes are you tempted to try and fit into?

Action

This week I invite you to journal and/or spend some time outdoors and ask the question that was a beloved prayer of Saint Francis, “God who are you? And who am I?”

The Fear of Starting Out

Monday, September 28, 2026

Happy Monday, my friends! We all have our own motivations. One of my friends is motivated, almost beyond anything else, by FOMO or the fear of missing out. She might be ill, have low capacity, or generally not want to be around other humans, yet the fear of what she might miss and the stories she might not be part of is enough to motivate her to do the thing or go to the event. Until relatively recently, I didn’t quite understand FOMO. I was content to be part of some stories while relishing the moments when I decided to prioritize myself, my time, and the stories I might create on my own. To be clear, FOMO isn’t motivation only for people who can’t create their own stories, but I could happily acknowledge the times when I did my own thing and not fear what I might miss.

Recently, I’ve sensed a different fear for me: FOSO or the fear of starting out. Every week you read a new short essay from me and if you’re not a writer or preacher you might assume that producing ideas or keeping those ideas to a relatively short space are the hardest part of my writing practice. No, consistently the hardest part of writing for me, across all of my writing, is getting started.

When I first started using AI as a tool in my writing, I thought that the power of Claude, personally my favorite AI model, could help me get around that fear and its sometime paralysis of getting far enough into an essay or article that I felt like I could write without being held back. But finding the right amount of AI writing to distinguish “getting started” from making an essay “AI-assisted” and sifting through endless AI-generated outlines and reference papers to find starting points created even more noise hiding the elusive entrances to writing something I can proudly publish.

Ultimately, FOSO, if we can really call it a “fear,” is not a fear of starting, but a fear of not producing the best content. The hardest part of preaching, writing, and producing other forms of content is often not the main content or the conclusions but rather is writing the first few lines. Many authors save writing the beginning until the very end.

What do you struggle to start? When is it easier for you to create the end before you create the beginning?

Let us pray: God, you created the world from nothing and though we tell the stories of that creation in orderly patterns, we wonder if you too struggled to start. Was creating light the obvious first step or did you wonder if something else should come first? In that you create too, support us when we strive to create in our lives. Bless us with the grace to accept our beginnings and our ends, our greatest creations as the scraps we edit away. We ask this in your name, Great Creator. Amen.

Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.

Faithfully,

Ben +

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