Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Center for Action and Contemplation - Father Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation "Interior Poverty" for Monday, 24 March 2014

Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Center for Action and Contemplation - Father Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation "Interior Poverty" for Monday, 24 March 2014
When you're trapped inside a social system where you constantly have to work for your superiority and can slip into inferiority in a moment, you are inevitably very insecure. 
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Subverting the Honor/Shame System"
"Interior Poverty"
Monday, 24 March 2014
When you’re trapped inside a social system where you constantly have to work for your own superiority and can slip into inferiority in a moment, you are inevitably very insecure. You cannot draw your life from your own center or from an outer reliable Source. As a Christian, I know that my true value is something that God gives me freely.
You are inherently, objectively, totally, and forever a daughter or son of God. You cannot gain that or lose that by any achievement or failure whatsoever. God doesn’t participate in the honor/shame system. Christianity’s role is always to tell you that you are objectively a child of God! Our primary job is to keep proclaiming the true identity of things, and not to create contests whereby some few can attain their identity—if they are good enough.
But much of religion has bought right back into the honor/shame system. All we did was change the cultural rules to religious rules. Now there was yet another way to be superior—by being pious, publicly religious, and “moral” about one or two things which are usually not central issues. Yet Jesus’ teachings against status-seeking and building up religious reputation tell us again and again, “Don’t go there!” (Examine Matthew 6:1-21 and Luke 18:9-14.)
Ironically, even the Franciscan concept of “poverty” can be turned into self-aggrandizement. In St. Francis’ teachings, “poverty” is really his code word for not seeking status and upward mobility. Poverty for Francis was not about a material end in itself, but a strategy for the relinquishment of all false power. It seems to me that even some Christian radicals have too strongly identified with material poverty as an end in itself (although we could all stand to simplify our lives), and sometimes sought poverty as another form of superiority!
If you don’t have interior poverty, but need to look good and be admired and think well of yourself, then material poverty is not anything admirable at all. It is just another ego stunt. I have met too many rigid radicals and also very comfortable people who are genuinely and completely poor in spirit. The best is to be both simple in lifestyle and fully open-hearted too.
Adapted from Francis: Subverting the Honor/Shame System (CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence: You are precious in my eyes, you are honored, and I love you (Isaiah 43:4). 
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