Center for Action and Contemplation ~ Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation: ”We Live in the Shadowlands” ~ Friday, 1 November 2013

Center for Action and Contemplation ~ Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation: ”We Live in the Shadowlands” ~ Friday, 1 November 2013

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy

Sixth Theme: The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines (Process).

Friday, November 1, 2013
All Saints’ Day

“We Live in the Shadowlands”

Meditation 44 of 51

All God appears to want from us is honesty and humility (and they are finally the same thing). If God is holding out for human perfection, God is going to have a long wait. There is no other way to read Jesus’ stories of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) or the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14). In each story, the one who did wrong ends up being right—simply because he is honest and humble about it. The one who is formally right ends up being terribly wrong because he is proud about his own performance.

How have we been able to miss that important point? I suspect it is because the ego wants to think well of itself and deny any shadow material. Only the soul knows we grow best in the shadowlands. We are blinded inside of either total light or total darkness, but “the light shines on inside the darkness, and it is a light that darkness cannot overcome” (John 1:5). Ironically, it is in darkness that we find and ever long for more light. Mystics like John of the Cross recognized this to be true on the spiritual level first. It seems the inner and outer worlds mirror one another.~~Adapted from Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, p. 33 The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, And . . . .

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Center for Action and Contemplation
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PO Box 12464, Albuquerque, NM 87195-2464 (mailing)
(505) 242-9588
cac.org

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