I welcome guest writer Fr. Adam Bucko for today’s and tomorrow’s DM. He is the author of Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation. He wrote a powerful essay in his Substack* that includes parts of my recent DM on “Why Meditate on Sainthood in a Time of ICE, Epstein Files, & the Rest?” which I reproduce with permission.
A few years ago, I was in upstate New York co-facilitating a retreat for homeless youth. We were there for a few days of prayer, reflection on our lives, and time spent in the beauty of the surrounding environment….
A young girl named Ebony approached me by the chapel. Painful things from her past were beginning to surface for her during the retreat, and she had difficulty expressing them. Seeing her pain, and how hard it was for her to put words to years of private suffering, I encouraged her to go for a walk around the chapel and find three objects in nature that represented some of what she was feeling. She came back after about twenty minutes, and I asked her to talk about each object and why she had chosen it.
One of Ebony’s objects was a flower that had not yet bloomed. She told me that she felt like this flower, as if there were a gift inside her trying to emerge, but no one knew. Even she had forgotten it. She said, “I am like this flower. From the outside, no one knows that this flower has the potential to be beautiful, to offer fragrance, and to bloom unless they look inside. One day I know I will bloom, but I don’t seem to be able to get there.”
I was struck by the truth in her words. There clearly was beauty, potential, and heartfulness within her, but it was all hidden and guarded by the rigid pain of her past….I suggested that Ebony take her three objects into the chapel and spend some time in prayer and meditation. She went in, closed her eyes, and sat in silence for some time, holding the objects in her hands….
Some time later, I noticed her from a distance running toward me with a big smile. I was not sure what had happened, but I could see that she was radiant with life.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Look at this flower,” she answered. “It is the same flower I showed you earlier,” she said. “I was holding it in my hands while praying with my eyes closed, and I felt something. I felt like all those struggles I was feeling but could not express in words just dissolved, and there was this sense of relief and peace. When I opened my eyes, I was shocked. The flower I had been holding opened and bloomed while I was praying.”
Witnessing her words and her radiant face, I felt that something special had just happened.
Years later, she told me that this little flower meditation, as she called it, was the starting point of a new life for her. It gave her permission to emerge from hiding and to say yes to the gift she was carrying in her heart, the gift that was hers to give to the world.
All of our spiritual traditions insist on this truth: we are sacred and holy. In my own tradition, the creation story in Genesis tells us that we are made in the image and likeness of God. That is not sentimental language. It is defiant language.
It means that in every human being there is something irreducible, something that cannot be erased, slandered, deported, bought, or silenced. We all carry special gifts within us! It is what Ebony sensed in herself on that retreat before she had words for it.
To be continued.
* Adam Bucko, “To Be Human is to Revolt Against Injustice,” in Contemplative Witness with Adam Bucko, February 13, 2026.
Banner Image: Empowerment. Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Adam that the idea of being made in the image and likeness of God is not sentimental, but defiant, and it is applicable to resistance struggles in Minneapolis and beyond?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
3 thoughts on “Wisdom from Adam Bucko: The Image of God as Defiant Language”
Yes! We are all uniquely made in the image and likeness of God. Other names for our sacred uniqueness are the Christ within, our Eternal Souls, our True Heart Selves… Each unique being in Creation, in all physical/nonphysical spiritual dimensions, is interconnected/interrelated in Our Wholeness/Body of Christ/Loving Diverse Oneness with the Eternal Sacred Spirit/Flow of Our Evolving Co-Creation~Cosmos….
I agree that our strength comes from the knowledge that we are created in the image of God — it is in no way sentimental. It is defiant and countercultural and supportive of peaceful responses to oppression because we must acknowledge that all are made in God’s image, even, and especially, those who oppress. Demonizing them is easy, but I for one must sincerely pray for them, for they know not what they do.
Thank you for the story about Ebony and the flower! In fact thank you for all these meditations/contemplation. They resonate with me so much. I admire Matthew Fox so much, and all contributors, ever since I read Original Blessing many years ago.