Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
, Pablo Picasso, 1902-03,
"Twelve-Step Spirituality: Week 3""Step 7: Letting God"
Sunday, November 29, 2015
We humbly asked [God] to remove our shortcomings.[Step 7 of the Twelve Steps]
We can never engineer or guide our own transformation or conversion. If we try, our so-called conversion will be self-centered and well-controlled, with most of our preferences and addictions still fully in place but now well disguised. Any attempts at self-conversion would be like an active alcoholic trying to determine his own rules for sobriety. God has to radically change the central reference point of our lives. We do not even know where to look for another reference point because up to now it has all been about me! Too much "me" can never find "you"--or anything beyond itself.
So Step 7 says that we must "humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings." Don't ever bother to go after your faults yourself because you will usually go after the wrong thing (the real thing remains denied in the unconscious). Or you might actually obstruct your "golden shadow" which is your gift. "If you try to pull out the weeds, you might pull out the wheat along with it," as Jesus puts it (Matthew 13:29).
Instead you have to let God reveal your real faults to you, usually by falling many times, and by other people's opinions of you. You must allow God to remove those faults in God's way and in God's time. If you go after them with an angry stick, you will soon be left with only an angry stick--and the same faults at a deeper level of disguise and denial. Thus most people at early stages in alcoholic recovery just replace one addiction with another. Now it's nicotine, caffeine, shopping, "stinkin' thinkin'," or the angry stick itself, which is supposedly okay because it is a Christian angry stick.
Jesus said, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7). He was telling us to stay in the position of a beggar, a petitioner, a radical dependent. This is always our spiritual posture, if we are honest. To know that you don't know, to know that you are always in need, keeps you situated in right relationship with Life itself. Life is a gift, totally given to you without cost. A daily and chosen "attitude of gratitude" will keep your hands open to allow and receive life at ever-deeper levels of satisfaction. But don't ever think you deserve or have earned it. Humility is foundational. Those who live with such open and humble hands receive life's gifts in abundance and throughout their years, "full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over into their lap" (Luke 6:38).
Gateway to Silence: One day at a time.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps(Franciscan Media: 2011), 62-65.
Mercy as the Resolution of Paradox: A View from the Enneagram
a webcast with Russ Hudson and Richard Rohr
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
5:00-7:00 p.m., US Mountain Standard Time
Globally renowned Enneagram teacher Russ Hudson joins Richard Rohr to share this ancient tool for understanding personality. The Enneagram can help us see ourselves and others more clearly and compassionately, with God's eyes. Through the unique strengths and weaknesses of each number, Mercy draws us toward greater wholeness and maturity.
Whether you are new to or familiar with the Enneagram, we invite you to join us. Register for as little as $1! (Payments above $35 are tax-deductible donations to the Center for Action and Contemplation.)
Visit store.cac.org to learn more.
Registration for the webcast includes access to the video replay,
which will be available shortly after the live broadcast through Sunday, January 31, 2016.
Center for Action and Contemplation
Center for Action and Contemplation
1823 Five Points Road SW (physical)
PO Box 12464 (mailing)
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States
---------------------
---------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment