Fr. Richard Rohr

Fly Specs on a Big Windowpane

2013-04-02T14:18:20-04:00

"The big issue is how do you heal a world which sees net worth and the gathering of creature comforts and powers and possessions as the norm of happiness? How do you get a world like that to say, 'That fellow with a black face, that gay over there, that homeless person, those are your brothers and sisters and we're all one human family.' Birth control, ordination of women, celibacy, these are fly specs on the windowpane compared with that kind of challenge." -- Fr. Richard McBrien, Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame

This quote is a rather perfect statement about the real issue and challenge in the renewal of the Christian Gospel, the human psyche and society itself. It reveals how conservatives, liberals and the media at large, believer and unbeliever both, almost all concentrate on largely symbolic issues, and very few recognize the core and foundational issue of one's underlying (largely unconscious) worldview. Only mystics, saints and various kinds of "dropouts" (who find truth outside the prevailing system of logic) see the underlying lie and illusion of most popular culture and current hot button issues. As Jesus predicted, it is only a minority who go into various "deserts" of clear seeing and come out the other side with an almost scary simplicity. Now we finally have a pope who even sees through many of the trappings and overlays of religion itself!

Most of us deal with mere symbols and symptoms, while the foundational illusion and conceit of life and death remains untouched and unchanged. For conservatives today in the United States, the symbolic issues are usually abortion and security. For liberals, it is now largely various gender issues. Yet both of these groups are invariably enthralled with power, possessions, personal control, the need to think of ourselves as right and, most especially, we are all in love with our own small self that we each want to protect, promote and privilege.

Today, in Christianity, we largely focus on the politically correct issues (celibacy, gay marriage, abortion, contraception, Latin Mass, women priests, etc.) that we can easily take sides on, while we avoid the foundational change of heart that would make us question the underlying system of valuation itself. Fr. Richard McBrien rightly calls these issues "fly specs on the windowpane." They keep us from seeing the much larger horizon, goal and direction of our lives and of culture itself. Most stay at this moralistic level, with nice, dualistic answers, never moving to a broad and true mystical seeing -- which I am convinced is the only point of mature religion.

Could this be what Jesus is referring to when he says that we should clean the inside of the dish, where all "the greed and gluttony lies," and not just our common outside concern for symbolic moral appearance? "Clean the inside of the dish and the outside will take care of itself," he says (Matthew 23:25-26). His call to honesty about intention, motivation and our real agenda is extremely enlightened because it cleanses the lens of perception itself. Only such clear eyed and honest folks can show the integrity and open heartedness that invariably wins the hearts and minds of other sincere seekers, no matter what their religion or ethnicity. Is this not the only possible way to "preach the Gospel to all creation" (Mark 16:15)? Big vision creates and elicits big vision in others. The petty taking of sides only produces more of the same. We need "big soul" people now, not just turf wars.

Today, many of us are seeing that very honesty, big soul and integrity in our miraculously elected Pope Francis. He is presently pleasing the left and displeasing the right, but my guess is that he will soon displease both the left and the right if he is anything like either Francis of Assisi or Jesus of Nazareth. They both lived and preached a big hearted life that put the Great Kingdom of God above all nationalism, churchism, jingoism or any ism at all, and certainly small egoism itself. This is the true revolution and the first and final reform of everything.

Jesus and Francis were not "politically correct" by the standards of either left or right, but stood on the universal circumference of "justice, mercy, and good faith" (Matthew 23:23), as Jesus put it. For Francis, the test case of any decision was simple and clear: "How will this affect the poor, the outsider, and the already rejected?"

That question is what distinguishes something as an actual Gospel question rather than just another tribal boundary marker, which is what religion has favored and fostered for far too long. As Pope Francis has said several times now, the Christian Church has to stop being so "self-referential." We normally call that "narcissism" in individuals, and yet for some sad and strange reason we call small, self-referential morality "self-confidence" and even "courage" when done by groups! It is too often just identity politics. Groups, countries and churches can be quite narcissistic, too, when their corporate worldview has never been undercut and transformed by the upside down message of a God who creates all things in the same divine image, "shows no preferences" (Acts 10:34), and fills all the gaps in our knowledge with a silent and secret love. I am not sure if any group -- as group -- is capable of consistently gazing through such a big windowpane, but those who call themselves "church" should at least try.

Reflections on a New Face

2013-03-15T14:32:49-04:00

As a Franciscan, I was, of course, elated that one of the the first decisions of the new pope was to take a name that has not been taken by a pope before -- "Francisco" -- which in itself says an awful lot. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) is surely the most wonderful example of a joyful "para-church" approach to church reform. He was never a company man. "Don't fight it directly," Francis modeled for us, "just do it very differently yourself." As we say at the Center for Action and Contemplation, "The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better." The Recovery people put it uniquely in their Twelve Traditions: "Grow more by attraction than self-promotion."

For Cardinal Bergoglio to identify himself so clearly with a reformer of Christian lifestyle, instead of a doctrinal apologist, is extremely telling and very hopeful. To quote Pope Paul VI, "The world will no longer believe teachers unless they are first of all witnesses." The simple details of his apartment, his use of mass transit, his visits to wash the feet of AIDS patients, his passion for the poor, cooking his own food, all tell us that this man is about lifestyle Christianity more than perpetual doctrinal food fights, which bear so little real fruit anyway.

Let's look at his non-verbals in the first hours of his papacy, which experts believe are much more truthful than language, anyway. All of Pope Francis' early actions tell me that this man is first of all a man who knows who he is, before he is a churchman, a man fulfilling a role, a celebrity or a man taking an office. Here are some of Pope Francis' early non-verbal give-aways:

According to insiders, he did not ascend the throne to greet the new cardinals who elected him, but stayed at their ground level. This made bowing, groveling and ring kissing very difficult. His self image is grounded, if this is true.
He wore simple white in his first presentation of himself to the world, without a golden cross, red cape or priestly stole. In fact, he wore a plain wooden cross. He accepted the stole for the official blessing, but then, with a reverent kiss, immediately took it off for his personal "good night" to the people. (Any priest knows that this is a calculated decision.) I am told that he is still wearing his ordinary black shoes, having eschewed the three sizes of Prada red that had been crafted to fit any possible papal shoe size.
He immediately called the people "brother and sister," and stood before them without the smiles or exaggerated hand waving of a celebrity. Rather, he presented himself in an almost "Ecce Homo" (John 19:5) way: "Here I am, as I am," it shouted to the world. Not much ego inflation for someone in his first moments of international exposure.
The fact that almost every account of him uses the word "humility" or "humble" to describe him, is indicative of how we pick up people's actual energy much more than their words, clothes or precise actions. It might also reveal how we have not come to expect this from those who hold the papal office. Apparently, most were surprised, and also drawn to, this ordinariness and accessibility. I believe I would go to him for confession.
We hear that the next morning he returned to the hotel where he stayed the previous night to pick up his own luggage and pay his own bill! I wonder how he got away with it. Only by insisting, I would think. This sounds like one who "came to serve and not to be served" (Mark 10:45).
Perhaps most striking to any Catholic who has received many magnanimous blessings from priests and prelates, we have a pope first asking the people to bless him -- and bowing down before them to receive it! He had just asked for a moment of silence, which stunned the crowd into exactly that. Those of us who teach contemplative prayer were given hope that our church might move beyond its largely exclusive use of memorized and recited prayers in public. But even there, he recited the three memorized prayers that every Catholic child first learns: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Doxology to the Trinity (also called the Glory Be). He might just know how to do things "both ways," which is the only way he can be a pontifex, a "bridge builder."

I am sure there will be things we disagree with in this papacy. I have had personal contact with the former Jesuit, now living in Germany, whom he apparently "persecuted." His quoted statements on gay adoption sound highly uninformed and fear-based. But my hope is that his love for the poor and the excluded will win out; now he has no higher-ups to please or placate. Let's hope and pray that this will allow Pope Francis to be a man of the Gospel more than a mere churchman. Then the world will be forever grateful, and grace will flow more freely in what has been a dry stream for some time.

The Prayer of Quiet (VIDEO)

2013-01-31T12:27:53-05:00

I am increasingly convinced that some notion of a "prayer beyond words" is the deepest meaning of prayer, and why Paul tells us that we can pray "always" (1 Thessalonians 5:18 and Ephesians 5:20). Whatever we do, in conscious loving union with God and "what is," is prayer -- and the best prayer, for sure.

The problem, of course, is teaching Western wordy and over-thinking people how not to talk and not to think so much; it is usually not thinking anyway, but reactive commentary, and often narcissistic commentary, on some recent or upcoming situation. Oh, how long it took me to see that! Now it is obvious. This, of course, is very humiliating for people to admit, especially educated people and "proper" clergy persons. We really do like our thinking and our talking. It gives our mind and our mouth a job to do.

I love the quote from our American sage, Wendell Berry: "The mind that is not baffled, is not employed." The spiritual task of the mind is to be perpetually baffled, and baffled into silence, along with occasional utterances that come from such inner silence where there is nothing to oppose, promote or resist.

When Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, tells us to "pray in secret," and "not to babble on as the pagans do, who think that by using many words they will be heard," and to "go to your inner room" (Matthew 6:6-8), we have our first clear hints that Jesus' own prayer, and the prayer he taught to others, was first of all a prayer of quiet, a prayer beyond words, perhaps the attainment of a deep inner silence itself. Note how often Jesus "goes apart" or into nature to pray -- more often than any Temple or social prayer. It is almost culpable blindness not to notice this in the Gospels.

Then, in Luke's rendition of the one spoken prayer he taught, what we call the "Our Father," one could conclude that it is seemingly a concession to his disciples. They want to have a common prayer like the disciples of John the Baptist apparently do (see Luke 11:2). Such recited prayers are really necessary for the cohesion and common vision of most spiritual groups, much as we see in the "Serenity Prayer" of Alcoholics Anonymous and the sung, often religious, national anthems of many countries. Jesus gave them a social prayer they could share, but we have two different versions of that in Matthew and Luke, so apparently the exact words were not that crucial.

We do know that our over-reliance upon words and formulations has caused most of the antagonism and violence in the history of religion, which is especially strange for the Christian religion which believes that "the word became flesh" (John 1:14). We seldom burned people at the stake over correct or incorrect enfleshment (except as an excuse to burn them), but almost always over what they said, wrote or taught, in words.

This is very strange indeed, when Jesus himself never bothered to write anything, allowed the whole New Testament to be written in a language (Greek) other than what he actually said (Aramaic), and even allowed 30-60 years for that to happen! I believe this was all to teach us more humility about words themselves, which are always mere metaphors for reality. Jesus clearly showed a lot of disinterest about us getting his exact words. It is the inner silence that finally matters -- but words do point us there.

Video by Travis Reed and the Work of the People. View on Vimeo.

Adapted from the Foreword to 'Das Ruhegebet einüben' by Peter Dyckhoff, copyright © Verlag Herder GmbH, Freiburg in Breisgau 2011, 2013. All rights reserved. www.herder.de.

Keeping Our Hearts Open in Hell

2012-12-20T14:49:51-05:00

Adapted from Fr. Richard Rohr's homily, "Keeping Our Hearts Open In Hell," delivered on the third Sunday of Advent, Dec. 16, 2012. Copyright © Richard Rohr 2012. To listen to Fr. Richard's homilies please visit the Center for Action and Contemplation.

The first reading for the third Sunday of Advent is "Shout for joy" (1 Zephaniah 3:14-18). And the first word of the second reading is "Rejoice" (Isaiah 12:2-3, 4, 5-6). And, yet, you well know that isn't what most of our country is feeling, perhaps not just at this tragic time, but many moments of our lives. I think it's fair to say we don't live in a healthy culture. Of all the civilized countries, we allow arms and trust in arms more than any. So we bear the fruit -- mass murders and killings, tragedies as we witnessed at Sandy Hook.

Often I think that the very point of faith must be: "How do you keep your heart open in hell?" How do you keep trusting? How do you keep any kind of happy, rejoicing faith when so much of life is, frankly, disappointing, tragic, absurd, evil, wrong? The heart just keeps being assaulted. And as many people get older the heart closes down.

A few years ago I gave a retreat to the Army chaplains from the whole Army Corp in Florida, and we were examining PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. As I studied the real symptoms of this, I wondered if much of humanity in all of history has not had post-traumatic stress disorder. When you read history, you see it has largely been filled with people killing people, war upon war upon war.

God must cry. God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history. You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today. I think that's much of humanity. And without a very real experience of love, God, grace at a deep inner level, you can't fake it. It won't work.

You can't just come to church services and think like everybody else does. Something has to happen that really changes our heart or we become as cynical and as negative as the poor young man who did this to 27 human beings. Yet he wasn't a poor boy. He had it all, physically speaking. And, yet, he didn't have it at all, spiritually speaking.

It's been said through all of history -- there certainly is the problem of evil. Why does evil exist? Why does God allow evil? Why doesn't God just step in and say "Stop it. Now, it's my turn. You've had your turn, and now I'm taking mine"? I guess that's what heaven means, when God can finally say, "Now it's my turn. And, I'm going to turn all of your crucifixions into an eternal resurrection." That's called Christian hope.

And that's why we begin with "Shout for joy," which doesn't make a bit of sense in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook; "Rejoice," which doesn't sound reasonable at all. But we also have to admit, if we're consistent and honest, that, along with the problem of evil, there is the equal problem of good. Why are there so many good people? A lot of you good people are reading this. And you've seen them on TV, I hope.

Perhaps you saw that young father on CNN who gave the account of the loss of his little 6 year old, beautiful daughter. If you haven't, try to hear it. It makes me cry. He's so filled with faith, respect. He can't fake it at that point. And I thought to myself, well, any sermon I give will not come close to the sermon that this father is giving on CNN. He kept his dignity. He kept his positive attitude. He kept his love for life, himself and the world, even after tragically losing his adorable little girl. You can't fake it.

You see, brothers and sisters, you have to do your homework ahead of time because you can't do it in the last minute when the tragedy comes. Your heart has to be prepared ahead of time through faith and prayer and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness so you can keep your heart open in hell, when hell happens.

For more information about Richard Rohr and to read his books, visit the Center for Action and Contemplation.

Preparing for Christmas

2012-12-06T10:58:44-05:00

"Advent is not about a sentimental waiting for the Baby Jesus."

Some years ago I gave a conference on "Preparing for Christmas" that St. Anthony Messenger Press (now Franciscan Media) was kind enough to publish in recorded form. It has continued to sell well for many years, and so they asked me if I would work with them to publish a print version. "Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent" is the result.

In the original lectures I tried to invite people beyond a merely sentimental understanding of Christmas as "waiting for the baby Jesus" to an adult and social appreciation of the message of the Incarnation of God in Christ. We Franciscans have always believed that the Incarnation was already the Redemption, because in Jesus' birth God was already saying that it was good to be human, and God was on our side.

At the original conference, I felt that the need on this earth for adult Christianity and the actual message of Jesus was so urgent that we could not allow this great feast of Christmas, and its preparation in Advent, to be watered down in any way. Twenty years later, I feel this is even more true. Jesus identified his own message with what he called the coming of the "reign of God" or the "kingdom of God," whereas we had often settled for the sweet coming of a baby who asked little of us in terms of surrender, encounter, mutuality, or any studying of the Scriptures or the actual teaching of Jesus. Sentimentality, defined as trumped-up emotions, can be an avoiding of and substitute for an actual relationship, as we see in our human relationships, too.

We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question. The Word of God, however, confronts, converts and consoles us -- in that order. The suffering, injustice and devastation on this planet are too great now to settle for any infantile Jesus. Actually, that has always been true.

"Jesus is Lord!" of all creation! This was the rallying cry of the early church (Philippians 2:11; Acts 2:36; Romans 1:4, etc.). It is to this adult and cosmic Christ that we are saying, "Come, Lord Jesus" (Revelations 22:20), which are the final words of the Bible. This makes our entire lives, and the life of the church, one huge "advent." Remember, Advent is always -- until the end of days.

"Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming" (Matthew 24:42).

"Come Lord Jesus," the Advent mantra, means that all of Christian history has to live out a kind of deliberate emptiness, a kind of chosen non-fulfillment. Perfect fullness is always to come, and we do not need to demand it now. This keeps the field of life wide open and especially open to grace and to a future created by God rather than ourselves. This is exactly what it means to be "awake," as the Gospel urges us! We can also use other a words for Advent: aware, alive, attentive, alert, awake, are all appropriate! Advent is, above else, a call to full consciousness and a forewarning about the high price of consciousness.

When we demand satisfaction of one another, when we demand any completion to history on our terms, when we demand that our anxiety or any dissatisfaction be taken away, saying as it were, "Why weren't you this for me? Why didn't life do that for me?" we are refusing to say, "Come, Lord Jesus." We are refusing to hold out for the full picture that is always given to us by God.

"Come, Lord Jesus" is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves. We are able to trust that he will come again, just has Jesus has come in our past, into our private dilemmas and into our suffering world. Our Christian past then becomes our Christian prologue, and "Come, Lord Jesus" is not a cry of desperation but an assured shout of cosmic hope.

Adapted from the "Introduction" (pp. xiii-xv), and chapter 1, "First Sunday of Advent" (pp. 1-3) of 'Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent' by Richard Rohr. Copyright @ 2008, Richard Rohr. All rights reserved (Franciscan Media). Used with permission of Franciscan Media. Please visit this site to order.

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Gender, God and Spirituality

2012-06-27T11:00:16-04:00

What we are searching for in any authentic male or female spirituality is the good and healthy meaning of maleness or femaleness, each being one half of that mystery of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Is there any essential or cross-cultural nature to the one half of the image of God that we call masculine or feminine? Do men approach spirituality differently than women, have different starting places and different symbols? My studied opinion is that we do have quite different entrance points, but nevertheless end up much the same, because the goal is identical -- union, divine union, where we are being guided by One who is neither male nor female, but "all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Anthropologists suggest that the majority of male initiation rites were concerned with leading the young male on journeys of powerlessness, whereas female fertility and puberty rites had the exact opposite function: to sign the young girl with emblems of power and dignity. The rites gave them both what they needed to get started, but from opposite starting places. The male could not be trusted with power unless he had made journeys of powerlessness; the female would not even know she had power unless she was taught and encouraged to trust it.

This could seem shocking, but read the four Gospels and note Jesus' consistently distinctive attitude toward the two genders. He is invariably calling the woman upward: "Go your way; your faith has restored you to health!" (Luke 8:48) and "Neither do I condemn you" (John 8:11). To a woman who has just spoken "up" and "back" to Jesus, he says, "Woman you have great faith!" (Matthew 15:28).

Conversely, he is steadily calling the males downward: "Zacchaeus, come down!" (Luke 19:5); "If anyone wants to be first, he must be last" to the Twelve (Mark 9:35); and "Get behind me, Satan" to "the prince of the apostles" who wants to avoid suffering (Mark 8:33). Our selective memory is really rather amazing, that we have not noted this clear pattern in the Scriptures. Could that be what we mean by patriarchy?

Agency vs. Relationship

Something that I find intrinsic to a spirituality for men is what is called the agentic (agere = to act or do) character of most males. Men love to move things and experience themselves as "agents" of change. According to social psychologists, most males prefer from childhood to experience themselves as initiators of movement -- fixing, rescuing, building up and tearing down the world. Males like to test their embodiment against the pressures and invitations of reality, and "superheroes" are often their favorite action toys.

Men also don't really trust or admire a process, a group or a religion if it does not ask a lot of them. They like to push, but they also respect being pushed back in the right way. Men are inclined toward a most lovely and beautiful heroism whenever possible and find their power through facing (or creating!) stress. Heroic "sacrifice" creates men at their best and at their worst.

This agentic quality is in counterpoint to the relational preference of most women. Most women prefer circles of sharing to pyramids and hierarchies. They prefer conversation to construction. They will usually choose nurturance and empathy over competition and climbing. They will normally choose connection over simple performance games.

In my opinion, most organized religion does neither agentic service nor relational nurturance very well. It usually gives men little to do, little to move and little to build. It also puts a particular kind of male, educated in philosophy and theology, in charge of the nurturing, relational world of Christianity, asking of them a kind of pastoral work for which they are frequently not gifted. We end up with lots of preaching and very little healing. We end up with the "edifice complex" instead of a house of hospitality. We end up with "worthiness contests" instead of ministries of reconciliation, peacemaking, prison or hospital visitation, bereavement work, etc. If our Trinitarian God is relationship itself, how can we live inside of this Mystery without deep capacities for relatedness, connectivity and mutuality?

Being Precedes Gender

We both lose out, unless there is real Encounter for both genders. At that point God takes over and gives the male or female soul what only God knows it needs. Gender cues and biases are now impediments. In the end, a true spirituality is one that affirms men and women at the level of their deepest identity, their true selves in God, an objective and ontological ground -- actually much deeper than mere gender, which is always in cultural flux. Ironically and paradoxically, this non-gendered and theological foundation is what most deeply affirms them precisely as males or females in the long run. The questions in the second half of life are much more metaphysical, philosophical and cosmological: How am I a part of the whole? How can I connect with The Center? What evokes my sense of primal wonder, awe and humility? "How can I let go?" much more than "How can I hold on?" Gender issues fade into the background, while we ourselves become more androgynous.

A man or woman must first and foundationally know who he or she is "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). Then we can -- almost by accident -- know that it is also good, even wonderful, to be a man or a woman, one gendered half of this larger mystery of God. The category of human is deeper than any cultural definitions of male or female gender. The category of pure holiness is broader than any male or female examples of the same; in fact, they start looking very similar toward the end.

Ironically, calm and secure male and female identity is what makes mature partnership between males and females possible. Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.

The True Self, who we objectively are in God, is prior and superior to any issues of gender, culture or sexuality, which are all "accidental" to one's foundational core as a child of God. This is why it is pure heresy to call a transgendered, gay or lesbian person "intrinsically disordered." (The intrinsic foundation of the human person is given by God and untouchable by any human intervention whatsoever.) Gender is a combination of biology, psychology and personal history, which are all good and necessary entrance points to the temple, but spirituality is learning how to live in the temple itself (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). What makes spirituality precisely "spiritual" is that it connects us with the Core and the Center, not just the circumference; with the essence and not just the accidents.

But What Gets Us There?

This is the unique area of male and female spirituality, as I see it: the differing symbols, stories, images, rituals and metaphors that get us to enter the temple. We must honor the need for action, movement, building, repairing, rescuing and heroic hardship that men love. We must honor the community, relationships, empathy, intimacy, healing and caring that women value. We know, however, that the final spiritual question, and the goal, is to get men and women to love and live both of these.

All things being on course, the genders tend to be much more alike than different by the second half of life. This illustrates much of my lived experience: men start hard and get softer, whereas women start soft and get harder. It can often be a quite difficult dance of missteps, misinterpretation and mutual hurt until we meet somewhere in the middle.

I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating. But the object and goal of all spirituality is finally the same for all genders: union, divine love, inner aliveness, soul abundance, generous service to the neighbor and the world. In these essentials and in the Great Whole "there is no distinction ... between male and female" (Galatians 3:28). Mature Christian spirituality leads us toward universals and essentials.

Gratefully, Christ "holds all things in unity ... the fullness is found in him, and all things are reconciled through him and for him, everything in heaven and on earth" (Colossians 1:17, 19-20) -- including everything sexual that seems to be split in halves.

This article is excerpted from Unitive Consciousness: Beyond Gender by Fr. Richard Rohr, © 2012 Fr. Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation. The unabridged, 3,000 word version is available for purchase at the CAC Mustard Seed Bookstore. www.cac.org.

Lent Is About Transformation

2012-02-22T12:00:37-05:00

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Did you ever notice that Jesus does not tend to give what we would call "inspiring" or "motivational" talks? He is not a football coach, nor does he try to engage your will power as such. Your common Christian sense would deny this until you actually study his recorded Gospel messages, and see that it is factually true! Jesus is much more concerned about shaking your foundations, giving you an utterly alternative self image, world image, and God image, and thus reframing your entire reality. Mere inspiration can never do this.

If you depend on being emotionally inspired or newly motivated, you will need a new fix almost every day. If it is a true Gospel message, it will be more about regrounding, reshaping and redirecting you from your core. Thus the quintessential Lenten reading is Jesus' first public proclamation that we know of. In some ways, it summarizes everything he says: "Now is the time, God's reign is present, change your life, and believe some very good news" (Mark 1:15, my translation).

Yes, we do need an emotional charge to make most decisions, adopt specific behaviors, "give up candy for Lent," or make some changes in our life. But Jesus is not talking about changes. He is talking about change! Many changes might well be good and even needed, and surely some changes will result from any shaking of the foundations, but they are not what we mean by Biblical conversion or transformation ("changing the form itself"). These things do not change the seer as such, but only his or her acceptable self image -- and usually for a short while. It is the old and perennial problem of putting the cart before the horse, or thinking that lots of carts ("changes") will eventually create the horsepower. It never finally works.

Any appeal to will power, or even the presentation of some good new ideas, merely engages YOU, but at your present level of maturity and consciousness. Now YOU (in your old form!) try harder, think more or better, and do something different, but your YOU has not been changed in any substantial way. It is still "You" who try harder, think more or better, or do something different. Maybe this will get you into the right ball park for eventual and actual conversion, but in my experience, most people stay right where they are, and wait for the next motivational spiritual message. This is why so much organized religion is so ineffectual in actually changing people.

As the AA people say, religion usually depends far too much on "promotion instead of attraction." The old self needs constant promotional material to keep it going. The new self "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3) is both attracted and attractive just by being itself. A transformed self engenders life from within, pulls life from without, and channels life in outer directions -- without "trying." The essential religious question is always this: "You must get your WHO right!" Who is the subject here? Who is doing the acting, the loving, the motivating, the repenting? Is "little ol' me" doing this or not doing this? All mature religion is somehow talking about finding your God self, your Christ self, your Buddha self, your Sufi dance. And when it happens, you know it was not a "change" after all, but a wondrous discovery and constant rediscovery of what was always true anyway.

After transformation one realizes that one is a participant! And always has been! It is being done unto me, through me, with me, and for me? Until we realize and act from this larger I AM, there has been no essential transformation, but only an accessorizing of the old outfit. For many of us, this change of form is summed up rather perfectly in Paul's oft quoted line "I live no longer my own life, but the life of Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). Choosing this or that religious form is often nothing more than a delay tactic avoiding our participation in a Ride that is already happening beneath, before, and beyond all of the forms, and this Ride is much larger than ME. Paul again says shortly thereafter, "It does not matter whether one is circumcised or not, what matters is that you become an altogether new creation" (Galatians 6:15).

The big rub is that to surrender my "singularity" (John 12:24) and fall into this "altogether new creation" will always feel like dying. How could it not? It is a dying of the self that we thought we were, but it is the only self that we knew until then. It will indeed be a "revolution of the mind" (Ephesians 4:23). Heart and body will soon follow.

This is the real "try harder" that applies to Lent, and its ultimate irony is that it is not a trying at all, but an ultimate surrendering, dying, and foundational letting go. You will not do it yourself, but it will be done unto you (Luke 1:38) by the events of your life. Such deep allowing is the most humiliating, sacrificial, and daily kind of trying! Pep talks seldom get you there, but the suffering of life and love itself will always get you there. Lent is just magnified and intensified life.

To purchase, Fr. Richard Rohr's books, please visit this website.

Contemplation: Finding Ourselves, Finding God

2011-10-30T07:29:11-04:00

When 'happiness' eludes us -- as, eventually, it always will -- we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again. Through exaggeration, confusion, and distortion, we have allowed our politics, our church and our families to fall out of emotional balance. We can learn to heal our reactive responses by seeking "emotional sobriety," which is really the task that we call contemplation.

Bill Wilson, one of the founders of the 12 Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, said that recovery was not complete until addicts achieved "emotional sobriety." In many ways he was saying the same thing that mystical religion recognized -- authentic spirituality should lead to a total "rewiring" of both our conscious lives and our unconscious programming. It will not just change external behavior, but internal emotions and responses, our entire pattern of thinking.

Contemplation is not first of all about being religious, introverted, or pious -- it is about being emotionally and mentally honest! Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.

Egoic consciousness is the one we all normally operate with, until we are told there is something else! Every culture teaches egoic consciousness in different ways. At that level it is all about me, my preferences, my choices, my needs, my desires and me and my group as the central reference point. It was religion's job to tell us about a different kind of software and the original word for it was simply prayer. But even the concept and practice of prayer became captive to the voracious needs of the ego. Even prayer became a way to get God to do what we wanted.

Thus we use the word contemplation so people might know we are talking about a totally different operating system, different software where the private self is not the center of attention and interpretation. This is the "grain of wheat" that Jesus says must die "or it remains just a grain of wheat." But if it dies, "it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). Mature and contemplative religion has always known that we need a whole new operating system, which Paul called "the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16) or a "spiritual revolution of the mind" (Ephesians 4:23).

Only with this new mind can we also develop a new heart and a new emotional response to the moment. When it is not all about me, I can see from a much deeper and broader set of eyes. In time our responses are much less knee jerk, predictable and self-centered. Only contemplative prayer touches the deep unconscious, where all of our real hurts, motivations and deepest visions lie. Without it, we have what is even worse -- religious egoic consciousness, which is even more defensive and offensive than usual! Now it has God on its side and is surely what Jesus means by the unforgivable "sin against the Holy Spirit." It cannot be forgiven because this small self would never imagine it needs forgiveness. It is smug and self-satisfied.

We must learn and practice this new mind or there will be no real change, no authentic encounter with ourselves, God or anybody else. Find your own practice and learn a new mind. Contemplation really is the change that changes everything.

This article is adapted from "The Change that Changes Everything," by © Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, in the October 2011 edition of The Drumbeat. Used with permission of The Center for Action and Contemplation.

Fr. Richard Rohr will speak on the topic of "Emotional Sobriety: Rewiring Our Programs for Happiness" in an upcoming webcast from the Center for Action and Contemplation.

Religion And Immigration: We Have Not Yet Begun To Love

2011-10-18T12:44:22-04:00

If our love of God does not directly influence, and even change, how we engage in the issues of our time on this earth, I wonder what good religion is. "God talk" becomes an opaque screen in which we see only reflections of ourselves -- instead of any kind of true enlightenment or Light. "Anyone who says she loves God, and hates her brother or sister, is a liar" (1 John 4:20). None of us wants to be a liar, yet the high goals of religion make deceit and denial almost inevitable for all of us. (Read Paul's attempts to describe this paradoxical phenomenon in Rom. 7:7-25). For all o,f us, the daily question is this, "Have I even begun to love?"

Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:38). These two commandments mirror one another. How you love God is how you love your neighbor, and how you love your neighbor is how you love God. In one of his most famous stories, Jesus concretely illustrates this definition of "neighbor," making a Samaritan -- a foreigner -- a living example of one who knows how to be neighborly, even to his own isolationist and un-neighborly religion (Luke 10:29-37). As always, Jesus' teaching is highly subversive to both our private egos and our common cultures.

Most Christian "believers" tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor. From a religion based on a man who was always healing poor people and foreigners, it defies any logical analysis!

One would think that people who insist on being monotheistic would be the first in line to walk across the artificial boundaries created by nation states, class systems, cultures and even religions. But often they are the last! It makes one wonder if they believe what they say they believe. Religion has too often become the way to defend the self instead of the way to "let go of the self" as Jesus forthrightly taught (Luke 9:23).

Christians, in particular, know that Jesus primarily talked about the "Kingdom of God" as his defining world view. Yet, the vast majority of Christians in history have identified with their own much smaller kingdoms for which they were willing to fight, kill, surrender and grant pledges of total allegiance. "Caesar is Lord," has been the rallying cry of most Christians more than the first -- intentionally subversive -- creed: "Jesus is Lord!" (Romans 10:9, 1 Corinthians 12:3). Christian history up to now has been overwhelmingly and adamantly provincial, ethnic and tribal, much more than "catholic" or universal. We have defined ourselves more by exclusion than inclusion. Ironically, World Wars I and II were fought among various "Christian" tribes of Europe. Any reluctance to admit our embarrassing Christian history reveals our immense capacity for avoidance and denial of our own shadow.

National boundaries are simply arbitrary lines and mean little in the eyes of God: "The nations of the earth are like a drop on the rim of a pail, they count as a grain of dust on the scales... All the nations mean nothing in God's eyes. They count as nothing and emptiness" (Isaiah 40:15, 17). The New Testament puts it in a more positive way, "Our true citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20) and "we are mere pilgrims and nomads on this earth" (Hebrews 11:13) -- my father Francis loved to quote this passage from Hebrews to his friars, and how I wish we could hear it spoken with passion in our time.

We, on the other hand, identify with our land, homes and possessions as if ownership and real estate are, in fact, real! In time, we will all hear Jesus' message: "You fool!... This hoard that you have collected, who does it belong to now?" (Luke 12:20). I see little difference in the attitudes of those who consider themselves Christian and those who are openly secular and agnostic. Most Christian citizenship appears to be clearly right here -- on this little bit of very unreal estate.

So let's get real about where our estate is and what is our real estate. Are our security, identity and treasure in our small kingdoms or in the great "Kingdom of God"? As Jesus said, you cannot finally serve both of these demanding masters. (Matthew 6:24).

Finally, I encourage you to read the statistics concerning what immigrants have given this country. Most of our negative opinions of immigrants are not substantiated, but reflect our convenient prejudices. Historically, immigrants have a reputation for a dedicated work ethic and willingness to strive.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), "Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."

"We Have Not Yet Begun to Love: Religion and Immigration" by © Richard Rohr, OFM, Radical Grace, Fall 2011, Vol. 24, No. 4 is used by permission of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Visit Radical Grace to read the current and archived editions of Radical Grace.

Nature and the Soul

2011-08-07T07:00:17-04:00

"Just pay attention, and then patch a few words together, and don't try to make them elaborate. This isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak." --"Praying" by Mary Oliver

We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The fruit for humanity has been rather limited, it seems to me -- especially when I observe every day the extraordinary amount of unhappy and angry people in well educated and "religious" countries. How could this happen? Was salvation for the next world only?

I do not fault any one group, person or explanation, but on all of us together as we failed to pay attention. We removed ourselves from the Circle of Life and ended up talking in circles instead. This is so strange coming from a religion that believed "the word became flesh" (John 1:14), yet we have always seemed to prefer words to enfleshment, for some reason. As my very orthodox Church History professor put it, the church has usually followed Plato (body and soul are enemies of one another) much more than Jesus (body and soul work together as one). Sadly and tragically, that says it in one phrase.

It was a giant misplacement of primal attention to what was right beneath our feet, all around us and flying through the air. Enfleshment, embodiment, physicality -- the material world is the only home we know. Yet, we really "could not see the woods for the trees," and even worse we did not see the woods or the trees, but just our ideas about them and how they could be useful to us. They made paper for our books and shade for our reading, after all!

We all started reading books rather broadly once the printing press was invented (almost 600 years ago), and since then we have largely substituted ideas and words for observation and participation in life itself. Now I am afraid it will become texts, videos and screens that will shield us from reality. This leaves us all at least one step removed from The Real, and we get caught up in a static of ideas instead of the basic and healing symphony of life itself. To use Teresa of Avila's shocking phrase, we find ourselves undefended and alone and become willing to "sell our souls for a sardine"!

Words and ideas work in the short run to get you through school and to impress educators and employers. But they do not work in the long run or in the deep run. We soon find ourselves separate and without wonder. We find ourselves companionless (com-panion = one you share bread with) and lonely in a fully participatory universe, without bread to eat when bread is, in fact, everywhere.

"For what can be known about God is perfectly plain, for God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity is there for the mind to see in all the things that God has created" (Romans 1:20). That is a pretty amazing quote that has not been given the immense importance that it deserves. In fact, read it again! It says the essential message is written everywhere and all the time.

Yes, the natural world is the first and primary Bible. We have not honored it, so how could we, or would we know how to honor and properly use the second Bible, when it was written. We mangled the written word of God for our own group purposes, instead of bringing to it reverence, silence and surrender, which the natural world "naturally" teaches us and also demands of us. If the word surrender scares you, let me tell you that surrender is not giving up, as we usually understand the term. Surrender is entering the present moment, and what is right in front of you, fully and without resistance. In that sense, surrender is almost the exact opposite of giving up. In fact, it allows you to be given to!

For some reason, the whole created world, the animals and the seasons of nature allow us to surrender and trust much more than sermons, words or people do, where we seem to be much more defended, in our heads, and even afraid. Now we are learning that abused children can tell their story if they are touching their dog and those who are autistic and stutter do not hesitate or stutter when they are with their horses or cats. One starts to wonder who is taking care of whom? Who is the healer and who is the healed? Who has soul and who does not? It is not as neat and clear a distinction as humans once presumed.

So I entreat you to trust and learn from the awesome authors in this edition of "Radical Grace," not for their words, but because their words point beyond themselves to what is, to creation itself, to the natural world, to what is all around you -- all the time. The "first Bible" of nature is well written, filled with Mystery and invitation and has all that you need to know God, to know yourself, to know life and even to trust death. Reading reality from inside this circle of creation, and with the eyes of nature, you will inherently know you are already in sacred space, you will know that you belong and you will know that it is OK.

Creation is our first and final cathedral. Nature is the one song of praise that never stops singing. The world is no "contest" any more, but as Mary Oliver says, "the doorway into thanks."

"Nature and the Soul" by Richard Rohr, OFM, copyright © Richard Rohr 2011, Radical Grace, Summer 2011, Vol. 24, No. 3. Used with permission.

Fr. Richard Rohr, the Founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is an international speaker and teacher. The author of numerous books, he is a regular contributor to Radical Grace. Fr. Richard will be presenting together with Bill Plotkin at the CAC-sponsored, 2012 year beginning conference, Nature and the Human Soul. For more information and to register, visit cacradicalgrace.org.

The Great Chain of Being

2011-04-04T22:01:08-04:00

Francis called all creatures, no matter how small by the name of brother and sister; because he knew they had the same source as himself. -- Saint Bonaventure's Life of Francis

By this image the Scholastic theologians tried to communicate a linked and coherent world (q.v. The Great Chain of Being, Arthur Lovejoy, [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936]). The essential and unbreakable links in the chain include the Divine Creator, the angelic heavenly, the human, the animal, the world of plants and vegetation, the waters upon the earth and the planet Earth itself with its minerals. In themselves, and in their union together, they proclaim the glory of God (Psalm 104) and the inherent dignity of all things. This image became the basis for calling anything and everything "sacred."

What some now call creation spirituality, deep ecology or holistic Gospel actually found a much earlier voice in the spirituality of the ancient Celts, the Rhineland mystics and most especially St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226). Women like Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) communicated it through music, art, poetry and community life itself; scholars like St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) created an entire Summa Theologica based on St. Francis' spiritual seeing: "In the soul's journey to God we must present to ourselves the whole material world as the first mirror through which we may pass over to the Supreme (Artisan)" (The Soul's Journey to God, 1, 9 [emphasis added]). The Dominican Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) said the same: "If humankind could have known God without the world, God would never have created the world."

The "Catholic synthesis" of the early Middle Ages was exactly that -- a synthesis that held together, for us, one coherent world, a positive intellectual vision not defined by "againstness" or enemies but by "the clarity and beauty of form." It was a "cosmic egg" of meaning, a vision of Creator and a multitude of creatures that excluded nothing. The great chain of being was the first holistic metaphor for the new seeing offered us by the Incarnation: Jesus as the living icon of integration, "the coincidence of opposites" who "holds all things in unity" within himself (Colossians 1: 15 20). God is One. I am whole and so is everything else.

Sadly we seldom saw the Catholic synthesis move beyond philosophers' books and mystics' prayers. The rest of us Catholics often remained in a fragmented and dualistic world, usually looking for the contaminating element to punish or the unworthy member to expel. While still daring to worship the cosmic Scapegoat -- Jesus -- we scapegoated the other links in the great chain of being. We have been unwilling to see the Divine Image in those we judge to be inferior or unworthy: sinners, heretics, animals, things growing from earth and earth itself. Once the great chain of being was broken, we were soon unable to see the Divine Image in our own species, except for folks just like us. Then it was only a short time before the Enlightenment and modern secularism denied the whole heavenly sphere unknown in any culture except the recent West -- and finally we doubted the Divinity itself!

As the medievalists predicted, once the chain was broken, and one link not honored, the whole vision collapsed. Either we acknowledge that God is in all things or we have lost the basis for seeing God in anything. Once the choice is ours and not God's, it is merely a world of private preferences and prejudices. The cosmic egg is shattered.

Saint Bonaventure, who is called the second founder of the Franciscan Order, took Francis' intuitive genius and made it into an entire philosophy. "The magnitude of things clearly manifests the wisdom and goodness of the triune God, who by power, presence and essence exists uncircumscribed in all things" (The Soul's Journey to God, 1, 14). "God is within all things but not enclosed; outside all things, but not excluded; above all things, but not aloof; below all things but not debased" (V 8). Bonaventure was the first to speak of God as one "whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." Therefore the origin, magnitude, multitude, beauty, fullness, activity and order of all created things are the very "footprints" and "fingerprints" (vestigia) of God.

"Whoever, therefore, is not enlightened by such splendor of created things is blind; whoever is not awakened by such outcries is deaf; whoever does not praise God because of all these effects is dumb; whoever does not discover the First Principle from such clear signs is a fool.

Therefore, open your eyes, alert the ears of your spirit, open your lips and apply your heart so that in all creatures you may see, hear, praise, love and worship, glorify and honor your God, lest the whole world rise against you" (1, 15).

It is hard to imagine how different the last 800 years might have been if this truly catholic vision had formed more Christians. But instead, as Bonaventure feared, "The whole world has now risen [in judgment] against" us. Our seeing has been very partial and usually prejudicial, and often not seeing at all. The individual has always decided and discriminated as to where and if God's image would be honored. Sinners, heretics, witches, Muslims, Jews, Indians, native spiritualities, buffalo and elephants, land and water were the losers. And we dared to call ourselves monotheists ("one God" tends to move a people toward one world) or "Christ like."

The Divine Indwelling (The union of the human and the divine in one), subject to our whimsical seeing, seems to dwell nowhere except in temples of our own choosing. We have always had a "pro choice movement," it seems. It did not start with the abortion debate.

Until we weep over these sins and publicly own our complicity in the destruction of God's creation, we are surely doomed to remain blind. If not, we will likely keep looking for "acceptable" scapegoats. We always think the problem is elsewhere, whereas the Gospel keeps the pressure of conversion on me. As far as the soul is concerned, no one else is your problem. You are your problem. "You be converted, and live" says the biblical tradition (Deuteronomy 31:20; Mark 1:15).

Jesus tried desperately to keep us within and connected to the great chain of being by taking away from us the power to scapegoat and project onto enemies and outsiders. We were not to break the chain by hating, eliminating or expelling the other. He commanded us to love the enemy and gave us himself as Cosmic Victim so we would get the point -- and stop creating victims. But we are transformed into Christ slowly.

Our inclination to break the chain -- to decide who is good and who is bad -- seems to be a basic control mechanism in all of us. We actually are a bit worried about the God that Jesus believes in: "Who causes the sun to rise on bad as well as good, who lets the rain fall on the honest and the dishonest alike" (Matthew 5:45). If we dishonor the so called inferior or unworthy members of creation, we finally destroy ourselves, too. Once we stop seeing, we stop seeing. Like nothing else, spiritual transformation is an all or nothing proposition. Like Jesus' robe, it is a "seamless garment." He wore it and then offered it to us.

Saint Paul did for Jesus exactly what Saint Bonaventure did for Francis. He took the life lived and made it into a philosophy/theology. The seamless garment is still intact in his most quoted analogy of the body:

If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it, if one part is given special honor, all parts enjoy it ... and it is precisely the parts of the body that seem to be the weakest which are the indispensable ones, and it is the least honorable parts of the body that we must clothe with the greatest care (I Corinthians 12:26, 22).

Paul, the former mass murderer Saul, knew well religion's power to create hate and violence toward other people and other links in the great chain of being. He left no room for scapegoating in his teaching: "There is one God and Creator of all, who is over all, who works through all and is within all" (Ephesians 4:6).

For those given sight by the Gospel, there is only one world -- God's world -- and it is all supernatural! We may no longer divide the world into sacred and profane. There is cosmic symbolism in the tearing of the temple veil from top to bottom at the death of Jesus (Matthew 27:51). In the one world liberated by Christ, our need to divide and discriminate has been denied us and frankly, we don't like it. For some reason, we want to retain the right to decide where God is, who we must honor and whom we may hate. A rather clever guise actually, for
I can remain autonomous and violent while thinking of myself as holy. But, as Jesus reminds us, any branch cut off from the vine is useless (John 15:5). We either go to God linked or it seems we don't go at all. How easy it is to avoid the searing and sacramental mystery: "Listen, Israel, the Lord your God is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4).

Jewish monotheism became the basis for one coherent and cosmic world, where truth is one, and there is no basis for rivalry between the arts, science and religion. If it is true it is true, regardless of its source. It is such truth that will set us free (John 8:32).

In his brilliant contemporary synthesis, A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber sounds like a post-modern Thomas Aquinas or Bonaventure. He concludes that "everything is a holon" -- something that is simultaneously
whole within itself and yet also part of something larger. He demonstrates at great length (see Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Shambala, 1995) that everything in the physical, biological, psychic and spiritual universe is a "holon." It really is one connected universe of meaning. And in relation to the arrogance of modernism and the cynicism of post modernism, Wilber only adds that "No epoch is finally privileged. We are all tomorrow's food." Agreeing with the genuinely traditional Catholic, he reminds us that even our moment in time is a holon, a small chain link in something still larger. A "Great Catholic" -- one who embraces the whole Tradition -- would call it the Cosmic Christ, before whom no institution, no moment of time, no attempt at verbalization will be adequate. Virgil's Aeneid ends with Aeneas leaving burning Troy, carrying his father on his shoulders, with his son in one hand and clutching his gods in the other. We all enter the future carrying our only past and with the future and our God in our hands -- or we do not enter the future at all.

Those who continue to look through microscopes and telescopes are surrendering to the mysteries of an infinite, creative spectrum. The chain of being is even longer and bigger than we church folks imagined -- and we had best come to the telescope and microscope with our shoes off and ready to live the emptiness of not knowing. Maybe we are just beginning to see how broad the "communion of saints" might be and whether we really want to believe in it.

Radical Grace, April-May-June 2007, Vol. 20, No. 2.

Life on the Edge: Understanding the Prophetic Position

2011-03-19T11:22:00-04:00

One is struck in the study of saints, angels and gods by a pattern that seems quaint and harmless. Yet, it is so common that I know there must be a deeper meaning. There always seem to be guardians and spirits of doors, bridges, exits and entranceways. I saw it all over Asia. I read about it in Egypt and Mesopotamia. And I am familiar with it in Greek mythology, guardian angels and Catholic saints like St. John Nepomuk, St. Christopher and even St. Peter. What is going on here?

Ancients knew that you need guidance, patronage and protection as you move from one place or state to another, whenever you cross a bridge. You had better know what you are doing when you leave one group or place to join another. There are boundary issues that must be dealt with, dues and respects that must be paid, and you better not enter or leave anything until you know what you are doing. "Don't move your boundary markers before you know the price and you have the right inspiration." Even Charon, who ferried the dead Greeks across the River Styx into Hades, would not do it unless the dead had been properly buried and they
carried his payment in their mouths.

The edge of things is a liminal space -- a very sacred place where guardian angels are especially available and needed. The edge is a holy place, or as the Celts called it, "a thin place" and you have to be taught how to live there. To take your position on the spiritual edge of things is to learn how to move safely in and out, back and forth, across and return. It is a prophetic position, not a rebellious or antisocial one. When you live on the edge of anything with respect and honor, you are in a very auspicious position. You are free from its central
seductions, but also free to hear its core message in very new and creative ways. When you are at the center of something, you usually confuse the essentials with the non-essentials, and get tied down by trivia, loyalty tests and job security. Not much truth can happen there.

To live on the edge of the inside is different than being an insider, a "company man" or a dues paying member. Yes, you have learned the rules and you understand and honor the system as far as it goes, but you do not need to protect it, defend it or promote it. It has served its initial and helpful function. You have learned the rules well enough to know how to "break the rules" without really breaking them at all. "Not to abolish the law but to complete it" as Jesus rightly puts it (Matthew 5:17). A doorkeeper must love both the inside and the outside of his or her group, and know how to move between these two loves.

I am convinced that when Jesus sent his first disciples on the road to preach to "all the nations" (Matthew and Luke) and to "all creation" (Mark), he was also training them to risk leaving their own security systems and yet to be gatekeepers for them. He told them to leave the home office and connect with other worlds. This becomes even clearer in his instruction for them "not to take any baggage" and to submit to the hospitality and even the hostility of others. Jesus says the same of himself in John's Gospel (10:7), where he calls himself "the gate" where people "will go freely in and out, and be sure of finding pasture" (10:9). What an
amazing permission! He sees himself more as a place of entrance and exit than a place of settlement. Funny that we always noticed the "in" but never the "out"!

There is a place and time for being outside, or you never really understand or appreciate the inside. A gatekeeper stewards the doorway in both directions, and knows the right motivation and timing for both. Like a good shepherd, s/he leads to the best pasture at the best time. I remember when a Bishop once told me: "Many of the best Catholics in my diocese left the church for a while -- and then came back for adult and right reasons." One does not hear that kind of wisdom much anymore. Today it is all about being a consummate insider, which now is called "orthodoxy." Jesus clearly was much more concerned with journey, integrity and what we would call "ortho-praxy" (correct practice) more than mere correct ideas or correct group.
Jesus was not teaching or maintaining any purity system (which is to say a "belonging system"), but Jesus used everything, even people's mistakes/impurity, to bring them to God!

Good news for everybody, if they are honest. He was into a process of transformation more than a belonging system. For example, he says lovingly to an inquisitive scribe: "You are not far from the kingdom of God" (Mark 12:34), affirming his particular stage on the journey, without telling him to go all the way right now. He wanted searchers more than settlers, prophets more than priests, honest journeys more than gatherings of the so called healthy. He had been taught well by his own Jewish exodus and exile.

All of these situations are describing the unique and rare position of a Biblical prophet: He or she is always on the edge of the inside. Not an outsider throwing rocks, not a comfortable insider who defends the status quo, but one who lives precariously with two perspectives held tightly together -- the faithful insider and the critical outsider at the same time. Not ensconced safely inside, but not so far outside as to lose compassion or understanding. Like a carpenter's level, the prophet has to balance the small bubble in the glass between here and there, between yes and no, between loyalty and critique. The prophet must hold these perspectives in a loving and necessary creative tension. It is a unique kind of seeing and living, which will largely leave the prophet with "nowhere to lay his head" while easily meriting the "hatred of all" -- who have invariably taken sides in opposing groups (Luke 21:16-17). The prophet speaks for God, and almost no one else, it seems.

People inside of belonging systems are very threatened by those who are not within that group. They are threatened by anyone who has found their citizenship in places they cannot control. Christians called this place "the kingdom of heaven." When one has found their treasure elsewhere, and is utterly grounded in the passion and pathos of a transcendent God (to use Walter Brueggemann's magnificent words), they are both indestructible and uncontrollable by worldly systems. Without it, they will seek their treasure and payoffs inside of each passing kingdom.

If you look at some who have served the prophetic role in modern times, like Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, John XXIII, Simone Weil and Oscar Romero, you will notice that they all hold this exact position. They tend to be, each in their own way, orthodox, conservative, traditional clergy, intellectuals or believers, but that very authentic inner experience and membership allows them to utterly critique the very systems that they are a part of. You might say that their enlightened actions clarified what our mere belief systems really mean. These prophets critiqued Christianity by the very values that they learned from
Christianity. Every one of these men and women was marginalized, fought, excluded, persecuted, or even killed by the illusions that they exposed and the systems they tried to reform. It is the structural fate of a prophet.

You can only truly unlock systems from within, but then you are invariably locked out. When you live on the edge of the inside, you will almost wish you were outside. Then you are merely an enemy, a pagan, a persona non grata, and can largely be ignored or written off. But if you are both inside and outside, you are the ultimate threat, the ultimate reformer and the ultimate invitation.

Radical Grace, April-May-June 2006, Vol.19, No. 2. Used with permission.

Creation as the Body of God

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"Creation is the primary and most perfect revelation of the Divine." -- Thomas Aquinas

"God remains in immediate sustaining attentiveness to everything that exists, precisely in its 'thisness.'" -- John Duns Scotus

The Incarnation of God did not happen in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. That is just when we started taking it seriously. The incarnation actually happened 14.5 billion years ago with a moment that we now call "The Big Bang." That is when God actually decided to materialize and to self expose.

Two thousand years ago was the human incarnation of God in Jesus, but before that there was the first and original incarnation through light, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, trees, fruit, birds, serpents, cattle, fish, and "every kind of wild beast" according to our own creation story (Genesis 1:3-25). This was the "Cosmic Christ" through which God has "let us know the mystery of his purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made from the beginning in Christ" (Ephesians 1:9). Christ is not Jesus' last name, but the title for his life's purpose. Jesus is the very concrete truth revealing and standing in for the universal truth. As Colossians puts it, "He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation" (1:15), he is the one glorious part that names and reveals the even more glorious whole. "The fullness is founded in him ... everything in heaven and everything on earth" (Colossians1:19-20). Christ, for John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) was the very first idea in the mind of God, and God has never stopped thinking, dreaming, and creating the Christ. "The immense diversity and pluriformity of this creation more perfectly represents God than any one creature alone or by itself," adds Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) in his Summa Theologica (47:1).

For most of us, this is a significant shaking of our foundational image of the universe and of our religion. Yet if any group should have come to this quite simply and naturally, it should have been the three groups of believers that call themselves "monotheists". Jews, Christians, and Muslims all believe that the world was created by one God. It would seem to follow therefore that everything, everything without exception, would bear the clear imprint and likeness of the one Creator. Doesn't that seem to follow? How could we miss that? After all, we believed that One God created everything out of nothing.

We must realize what a muddle we have got ourselves into by not taking incarnation and the body of God seriously. It is our only Christian trump card, and we have yet to actually play it! As Sally McFague states so powerfully, "salvation is the direction of all of creation, and creation is the very place of salvation." (The Body of God, p. 287) All is God's place, which is our place, which is the only place and every place.

In the 4th century St. Augustine said that "the church consists in the state of communion of the whole world" (Ecclesiam in totius orbis communione consistere). Wherever we are connected, in right relationship, you might say "in love," there is the Christ, the Body of God, and there is the church. But we whittled that Great Mystery down into something small, exclusive, and manageable too. The church became a Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant private club, and not necessarily with people who were "in communion" with anything else, usually not with the natural world, animals, with non-Christians, or even with other Christians outside their own denomination. It became a very tiny salvation, hardly worthy of the name. God was not very victorious at all.

Our very suffering now, our condensed presence on this common nest that we have fouled, will soon be the one thing that we finally share in common. It might well be the one thing that will bring us together. The earth and its life systems on which we all entirely depend (just like God!) might soon become the very thing that will convert us to a simple Gospel lifestyle, to necessary community, and to an inherent and universal sense of the holy.

I know it is no longer words, doctrines, and mental belief systems that can or will reveal the fullness of this Cosmic Christ. This earth indeed is the very Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God's Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is God's Great Project. One wonders if we humans will be the last to accept this.

"From the beginning until now, the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth, and not only creation, but all of us who possess the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan inwardly, as we wait for our bodies to be set free" (Romans 8:22-23). It seems that St. Paul is saying here that we human ones might be the last ones to jump aboard God's great plan. There is the groaning of growing in all of creation, and the groaning of resisting and "waiting" in us humans.

All of creation, it seems, has been obedient to its destiny, "each mortal thing does one thing and the same ... myself it speaks and spells, crying 'What I do is me, for that I came'" (Gerard Manley Hopkins, When Kingfishers Catch Fire). Wouldn't it be our last and greatest humiliation, surely the "first being last," (Matt. 20:16) if we one day realized that all other creatures have obeyed their destiny unblinkingly and with trustful surrender. Watch the plants and animals!

It is only humans who have resisted "the one great act of giving birth," and in fact have frequently chosen death for themselves and for so many others.

Radical Grace, April-May-June, Volume 23, Number 2, 2010. Used with permission.

Mysticism In Religion: Three Ways to View the Sunset

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Three men stood by the ocean, looking at the same sunset.

One man saw the immense physical beauty and enjoyed the event in itself. This man was the "sensate" type who, like 80 percent of the world, deals with what he can see, feel, touch, move, and fix. This was enough reality for him, for he had little interest in larger ideas, intuitions, or the grand scheme of things. He saw with his first eye, which was good.

A second man saw the sunset. He enjoyed all the beauty that the first man did. Like all lovers of coherent thought, technology, and science, he also enjoyed his power to make sense of the universe and explain what he discovered. He thought about the cyclical rotations of planets and stars. Through imagination, intuition, and reason, he saw with his second eye, which was even better.

The third man saw the sunset, knowing and enjoying all that the first and the second men did. But in his ability to progress from seeing to explaining to "tasting," he also remained in awe before an underlying mystery, coherence, and spaciousness that connected him with everything else. He used his third eye, which is the full goal of all seeing and all knowing. This was the best.

The Urgent Need For Contemplative Seeing

Third-eye seeing is the way the mystics see. They do not reject the first eye; the senses matter to them, but they know there is more. Nor do they reject the second eye; but they know not to confuse knowledge with depth or mere correct information with the transformation of consciousness itself.¹ The mystical gaze builds upon the first two eyes -- and yet goes further. It happens whenever, by some wondrous "coincidence," our heart space, our mind space, and our body awareness are all simultaneously open and nonresistant. I like to call it presence. It is experienced as a moment of deep inner connection, and it always pulls you, intensely satisfied, into the naked and undefended now, which can involve both profound joy and profound sadness. At that point, you either want to write poetry, pray, or be utterly silent.

In the early medieval period, two Christian philosophers at the monastery of St. Victor in Paris had names for these three ways of seeing, and these names had a great influence on scholars and seekers in the Western tradition. Hugh of St. Victor (1078-1141) and Richard of St. Victor (1123-1173) wrote that humanity was given three different sets of eyes, each building on the previous one. The first eye was the eye of the flesh (thought or sight), the second was the eye of reason (meditation or reflection), and the third eye was the eye of true understanding (contemplation).²

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the separation and loss of these three necessary eyes is the basis of much of the short-sight-edness and religious crises of the Western world. Lacking such wisdom, it is very difficult for churches, governments, and leaders to move beyond ego, the desire for control, and public posturing. Everything divides into oppositions such as liberal vs. conservative, with vested interests pulling against one another. Truth is no longer possible at this level of conversation. Even theology becomes more a quest for power than a search for God and Mystery.

One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that "us-and-them" seeing, and the dualistic thinking that results, is the foundation of almost all discontent and violence in the world.³ It allows heads of religion and state to avoid their own founders, their own national ideals, and their own better instincts. Lacking the contemplative gaze, such leaders will remain mere functionaries and technicians, without any big picture to guide them for the long term. The world and the churches are filled with such people, often using God language as a cover for their own lack of certainty or depth.

The third-eye person has always been the saint, the seer, the poet, the metaphysician, or the authentic mystic who grasped the whole picture. There is more to the mystical gaze, however, than having "ecstatic visions." If people have ignored the first and the second eyes, their hold on the third eye is often temporary, shallow, and incapable of being shared with anybody else. We need true mystics who see with all three sets of eyes, not eccentrics, fanatics, or rebels. The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.

What It Means To Be A Mystic

Now do not let the word "mystic" scare you off. It simply means one who has moved from mere belief systems or belonging systems to actual inner experience. All spiritual traditions agree that such a movement is possible, desirable, and available to everyone. In fact, Jesus seems to say that this is the whole point! (See, for example, John 10:19-38.)

Some call this movement conversion, some call it enlightenment, some transformation, and some holiness. It is Paul's "third heaven," where he "heard things that must not and cannot be put into human language" (2 Corinthians 12:2, 4). Consciously or not, far too much organized religion has a vested interest in keeping you in the first or second heaven, where all can be put into proper language and deemed certain. This keeps you coming back to church, and it keeps us clergy in business.

This is not usually the result of ill will on anybody's part; it's just that you can lead people only as far as you yourself have gone. Transformed people transform people. From the way they talk so glibly about what is always Mystery, it's clear that many clergy have never enjoyed the third heaven themselves, and they cannot teach what they do not know. Theological training without spiritual experience is deadly.

We are ready to see and taste the full sunset now and no longer need to prove it or even describe it. We just enjoy it -- and much more!

1. Richard of St. Victor, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), De Sacramentis, I,X,ii, and The Mystical Ark (Benjamin Major), III-IV.

2. See David Berreby, Us and Them: The Science of Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

3. Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York: Harper, 1945), 294-95.

Three Ways to View the Sunset," Chapter Three of The Naked Now: Learning to See as The Mystics See, by Richard Rohr, copyright © Richard Rohr 2009, (The Crossroad Publishing Company 2009), was published in the October-December 2009, Volume 22, Number 4 of 'Radical Grace', with permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.