Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Father Richard Rohr's Meditation "God Is in All Things" for Thursday, 5 February 2015 - Either we acknowledge that God is in all things, or we have lost the basis for seeing God in anything, including ourselves.
"God Is in All Things"
Thursday, 5 February 2015
The whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly and represents it better than any single creature could by itself. [Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 47, 1]
The "Catholic synthesis" of the early Middle Ages was exactly that--a synthesis that held together for its adherents one coherent world, a positive intellectual vision that was not defined by "against-ness" or enemies, but by "the clarity and beauty of form." You see it architecturally in the art forms of the European cathedrals like Salisbury, Cologne, Orvieto, and Vezelay. 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. God is whole, and everything else in creation can now be seen as a holon (a part that mimics, replicates, and somehow includes the whole).
Sadly, we seldom saw the Catholic synthesis move beyond philosophers' books and mystics' prayers and some architecture. The rest of us 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 judged to be inferior or unworthy: sinners, heretics, animals, the poor, the bounty of the Earth, the Earth itself, and often we must admit half of the human species called women. Once the Great Chain of Being was broken or disbelieved, we were soon unable to see the Divine Image in our own species, except for "men" just like us. This was the dominant view called patriarchy that formed most cultures, and in some cultures lasting until today. Of course the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries and modern secularism denied the whole heavenly and divine links altogether--an attitude unknown in all of human history until the recent West and the cultures that we colonized.
As the medieval teachers predicted, once the Great Chain of Being was broken, and any one link not honored and included, the whole vision collapsed. It seems that either we acknowledge that God is in all things or we have lost the basis for seeing God in anything, including ourselves.
Adapted from Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety, page 136
Gateway to Silence: Loving God in creation.
____________________________
Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Father Richard Rohr's Meditation "From the Concrete to the Universal" for Wednesday, 4 February 2015 - God first seems totally beyond and transcendent, fully opposite of (or fully Other than) the outer world of things, nature, animals, and plants. It is the unique capacity of the soul to gather them into one and see them as one.
"From the Concrete to the Universal"
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
The contemplative way, and surely the Franciscan way, is to start with the concrete thing in itself. If you start with mere concepts or ideas, you too often stay right there. The heart is not evoked. Instead you must recognize the Presence in one rock, one flower, one lizard, one tree, and then from loving the concrete thing, you build up to loving everything, and everything in between. That's why St. Francis could love God, animals, his enemies, and Brother Sun and Sister Moon, too. How you do anything is how you do everything. In his first Life of St. Francis, Thomas of Celano wrote that Francis would "meditate within himself and draw external things inside and then this would lift his spirit to higher things." This also has the wonderful side effect of making you at home with yourself, because your inside is alive and content.
So can you see the full circle flow? God first seems totally beyond and transcendent, fully opposite of (or fully Other than) the outer world of things, nature, animals, and plants. It is the unique capacity of the soul to gather them into one and see them as one. The human soul is the mediation point of all creation. Once this divine flow starts, there is no reason for it to stop, unless we stop paying attention, which unfortunately many people do. To keep paying attention, and remain consciously in the flow is to "pray always." To stop the flow is the core and foundational meaning of sin, much more than the individual doing of "bad" things.
Beginning with an early sermon, which was said to be given to a tree full of birds, Francis was always telling creatures that by their very existence they were giving glory to God, so they should just be who they are and do their own unique thing, and that was enough. This undoubtedly allowed Francis to do his own unique thing too (do not understand that in a narcissistic way) and give his one life back to God. What else would God want from us? You cannot give what you are not, nor would God want it. You can only give what you are, warts and all, and it is the very giving back that delights the Creator--not the supposed perfection of the gift.
Each creature "Myself it speaks and spells, crying what I do is me: for that I came," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in "As Kingfishers Catch Fire." At its best, the pure loving consciousness of each individual thing--doing itself--brings us to a rare inner freedom, deep delight, and often a sympathy and solidarity with the "one suffering" of all things; whereas mere abstract or conceptual theories about things will keep you split and apart.
Adapted from The Great Chain of Being: Simplifying Our Lives (MP3 download); and In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation (CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence: Loving God in creation
____________________________
Center for Action and Contemplation
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
2thrumywindow by audrey630
The Great Chain of Being
|
Thursday, 5 February 2015
The whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly and represents it better than any single creature could by itself. [Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 47, 1]
The "Catholic synthesis" of the early Middle Ages was exactly that--a synthesis that held together for its adherents one coherent world, a positive intellectual vision that was not defined by "against-ness" or enemies, but by "the clarity and beauty of form." You see it architecturally in the art forms of the European cathedrals like Salisbury, Cologne, Orvieto, and Vezelay. 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. God is whole, and everything else in creation can now be seen as a holon (a part that mimics, replicates, and somehow includes the whole).
Sadly, we seldom saw the Catholic synthesis move beyond philosophers' books and mystics' prayers and some architecture. The rest of us 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 judged to be inferior or unworthy: sinners, heretics, animals, the poor, the bounty of the Earth, the Earth itself, and often we must admit half of the human species called women. Once the Great Chain of Being was broken or disbelieved, we were soon unable to see the Divine Image in our own species, except for "men" just like us. This was the dominant view called patriarchy that formed most cultures, and in some cultures lasting until today. Of course the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries and modern secularism denied the whole heavenly and divine links altogether--an attitude unknown in all of human history until the recent West and the cultures that we colonized.
As the medieval teachers predicted, once the Great Chain of Being was broken, and any one link not honored and included, the whole vision collapsed. It seems that either we acknowledge that God is in all things or we have lost the basis for seeing God in anything, including ourselves.
Adapted from Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety, page 136
Gateway to Silence: Loving God in creation.
____________________________
Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Father Richard Rohr's Meditation "From the Concrete to the Universal" for Wednesday, 4 February 2015 - God first seems totally beyond and transcendent, fully opposite of (or fully Other than) the outer world of things, nature, animals, and plants. It is the unique capacity of the soul to gather them into one and see them as one.
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
2thrumywindow by audrey630
The Great Chain of Being
|
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
The contemplative way, and surely the Franciscan way, is to start with the concrete thing in itself. If you start with mere concepts or ideas, you too often stay right there. The heart is not evoked. Instead you must recognize the Presence in one rock, one flower, one lizard, one tree, and then from loving the concrete thing, you build up to loving everything, and everything in between. That's why St. Francis could love God, animals, his enemies, and Brother Sun and Sister Moon, too. How you do anything is how you do everything. In his first Life of St. Francis, Thomas of Celano wrote that Francis would "meditate within himself and draw external things inside and then this would lift his spirit to higher things." This also has the wonderful side effect of making you at home with yourself, because your inside is alive and content.
So can you see the full circle flow? God first seems totally beyond and transcendent, fully opposite of (or fully Other than) the outer world of things, nature, animals, and plants. It is the unique capacity of the soul to gather them into one and see them as one. The human soul is the mediation point of all creation. Once this divine flow starts, there is no reason for it to stop, unless we stop paying attention, which unfortunately many people do. To keep paying attention, and remain consciously in the flow is to "pray always." To stop the flow is the core and foundational meaning of sin, much more than the individual doing of "bad" things.
Beginning with an early sermon, which was said to be given to a tree full of birds, Francis was always telling creatures that by their very existence they were giving glory to God, so they should just be who they are and do their own unique thing, and that was enough. This undoubtedly allowed Francis to do his own unique thing too (do not understand that in a narcissistic way) and give his one life back to God. What else would God want from us? You cannot give what you are not, nor would God want it. You can only give what you are, warts and all, and it is the very giving back that delights the Creator--not the supposed perfection of the gift.
Each creature "Myself it speaks and spells, crying what I do is me: for that I came," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in "As Kingfishers Catch Fire." At its best, the pure loving consciousness of each individual thing--doing itself--brings us to a rare inner freedom, deep delight, and often a sympathy and solidarity with the "one suffering" of all things; whereas mere abstract or conceptual theories about things will keep you split and apart.
Adapted from The Great Chain of Being: Simplifying Our Lives (MP3 download); and In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation (CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence: Loving God in creation
____________________________
Center for Action and Contemplation
Albuquerque, NM 87105 United States (physical)
PO Box 12464
Albuquerque, NM 87195-2464 United States (mailing)
(505) 242-9588
cac.org
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment