To be united with Christ in his Passion means to suffer with him. To be united with him, you cannot wield power as most others do. Anger has no place. Controlling others is excluded. Leadership is inverted. The ways of worldly leadership are unmade. You learn to suffer rather than protect yourself, to serve rather than be served, to lose rather than win.

But to what end? Does the "end" even matter? Is not interest in outcomes an invitation to arouse the ego?

To simply live as Jesus does, rather than to live conditionally, calculatingly---this is the center. You are to wield only the power of secret prayer. It is this glorious humiliation of yourself, this holy emptiness, that runs with---not against--the true grain of the universe, the real current of creation's flow.