Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Habit of St. Francis of Assisi (detail), Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy.
"Alternative Orthodoxy: Week 2"
"Summary" for Sunday, February 14-Friday, February 19, 2016
The combination of observation along with love--not with resistance, judgment, analysis, or labeling--just observation with love and reverence, is probably the best definition of contemplation. (Sunday)
Your core, your deepest DNA, is divine; it is the Spirit of Love implanted within you by your Creator at the first moment of your creation. (Monday)
A special request from CAC's Executive Director, Michael Poffenberger (Tuesday)
Once you recognize the Christ as the universal truth of matter and spirit working together as one, then everything is holy. (Wednesday)
In some ways, the Gospel of love is so hard to live because it is so very simple. (Thursday)
Simple living is the foundational social justice teaching of Jesus, Francis, Gandhi, and all hermits, mystics, prophets, and seers since time immemorial. (Friday)
"Practice: Letting Go into God"
It is said that Francis' great prayer, which he would spend whole nights praying, is "Who are you, God? And who am I?" Contemplative prayer helps us to live into these questions.
Who am I? As we observe our minds in contemplation, first we recognize how many of our thoughts are defensive, oppositional, paranoid, self-referential, or in some way violent. Until we recognize how constant that dualistic mind is, we have no motivation to let go of it. We learn to say, "That feeling is not me. I don't need that opinion to define me. I don't need to justify myself or blame someone else."
Gradually, we learn to trust the wounds and the failures of life, which are much better teachers than our supposed successes. It's all a matter of letting go and getting out of the way. Thérèseof Lisieux would call it surrender and gratitude. She said, "It is enough to recognize one's nothingness and to abandon oneself, like a child, into God's arms." Until we discover this "little way," we almost all try to gain moral high ground by obeying laws and thinking we are spiritually advanced.
The non-dual mind can accept and surrender to the mystery that I am to myself; it doesn't need to quickly categorize this mystery as sinful, wrong, and evil or as good, meritorious, and wonderful. It just is. When I can no longer hold myself up, I fall into the Mystery of God and let God hold me. When I no longer name myself right or wrong, I let Someone Else name me. This is the beginning of true spirituality, of the true mutuality of the God/human love affair.
Who is God? When I allow God to keep revealing the deeper Mystery of Mercy and Grace and Love to me, I don't categorize or hold God too easily, too quickly, as if I understand God, as if I've got God in my pocket. Those who allow God to reveal God's Self are the very ones who know that God is Love. They know that God is not a harsh judge or conditional lover.
Those who experience the depths within contemplation know that God's love is an endless sea of mercy and unconditional acceptance. The deeper you go, the more you fall into the Mystery. As you fall into the Mystery of an ever-loving God, you are able to accept the mystery of yourself. And as you accept the mystery of yourself, you fall into the Mystery of God. You don't know--and it doesn't matter--which comes first. People who love God love themselves and everybody else. People who love themselves and everyone else also love God.
You see, love is one. Love is the whole. Love is an endless sea that you fall into. And once you fall into it, you can't fall out. It's not something you do. It's something that is done to you, and all you can do is let go.
Gateway to Silence: A long loving look at the real
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (Sounds True: 2010), disc 4 (CD).
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis(CD)
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
Richard Rohr with Tim Scorer, Embracing an Alternative Orthodoxy (DVDand workbook)
Last chance to register!
Authentic Transformation
a video webcast with Richard Rohr
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
4:30-6:00 p.m. US Mountain Standard Time
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Register no later than 4:00 p.m., US MST, on February 23, 2016, to participate in the live webcast and/or to view the replay. You must register online prior to the webcast to gain access to the replay.* The replay will be made available through Sunday, March 27, 2016, starting shortly after the live broadcast.
*Registration for the webcast must be completed online. CAC is unable to make registrations for webcasts by phone.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "Enoughness Instead of Never Enough" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Friday, 19 February 2016
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Habit of St. Francis of Assisi (detail), Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy
"Alternative Orthodoxy: Week 2"
"Enoughness Instead of Never Enough" for Friday, February 19, 2016
Most of us have grown up with a capitalist worldview, which makes a virtue and goal out of accumulation, consumption, and collecting. Normally we cannot see this as an unsustainable and unhappy trap because all of our rooms are decorated with this same color. It is the only obvious story line that our children see. "I produce therefore I am" and "I consume therefore I am" might be our answer to Descartes' "I think therefore I am." They are all terribly mistaken.
This foundational way of seeing has blinded us, so that we now tend to falsely assume more is better. The course we are on assures us of a predictable future of strained individualism, severe competition as the resources dwindle for a growing population, and surely perpetual war. Our culture ingrains in us the belief that there isn't enough to go around. This determines much if not most of our politics. In the USA there is never enough for health care, for education, for the arts, for basic infrastructure. The only budget that is never questioned is for war and armaments and military gadgets.
Anything you need more and more of is not working--as the people in addiction recovery love to say. That's exactly why we always need more of it. The fact that we need more and more, and better and better--of almost everything except love--tells us that we are in a finally unworkable situation. But there is an alternative worldview, one that has been deemed necessary and important by most spiritual masters. It isn't a win/lose worldview where only a few win and most lose. It's a win/win worldview, which alone makes community, justice, and peace possible.
E. F. Schumacher said years ago, "Small is beautiful," and many other wise people have come to know that less stuff invariably leaves room for more soul. In fact, possessions and soul seem to operate in inverse proportion to one another. Only through simplicity can we find deep contentment instead of perpetually striving and living unsatisfied. Simple living is the foundational social justice teaching of Jesus, Francis, Gandhi, and all hermits, mystics, prophets, and seers since time immemorial. [1]
The Franciscan alternative orthodoxy asks us to let go, to recognize that there is enough to go around and meet everyone's need but not everyone's greed. A worldview of enoughness will predictably emerge in a person as they move to the level of naked being instead of thinking that more of anything or more frenetic doing can fill up our basic restlessness. Francis did not just tolerate or endure such simplicity, he actually loved it and called it poverty--a word which we often view as a bad thing. Francis dove into poverty and found his freedom there. This is hard for most of us to even comprehend. Thank God, people like Dorothy Day and Wendell Berry have illustrated how this is still possible even in our modern world.
Francis was known in his lifetime as the joyful beggar. He communicated happiness, freedom, humor, and joy to everyone around him. Francis and his followers wore ropes for belts to indicate they had no money (at the time, leather belts were used to carry money). Francis wanted people to see that humans could be happy even without money. I have met some poor people and some homeless people who prove to me that this can still be true, although I don't think we need to make it our goal as Francis and Clare did. But we can indeed be happy in mutual interdependence with nature, with the kindness of others, and with our own hard work and creativity, while living in the natural rhythms of life.
Francis knew that just climbing ladders to nowhere would never make us happy nor create peace and justice on this earth. Too many have to stay at the bottom of the ladder so I can be at the top. It is a zero sum victory. I suspect simplicity and a worldview of enoughness will forever be an alternative orthodoxy, if not downright heretical, in most of the "developing" world.
Gateway to Silence: A long loving look at the real
References:
[1] For more on simple living see Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), chapter 3.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (Sounds True: 2010), discs 1 and 2 (CD).
Twice a year we ask for your support of Fr. Richard's free Daily Meditations. If each person reading this note contributed just $1, it would more than cover the cost of producing these emails and help us reach more people.
Please consider making a contribution to the Center for Action and Contemplation (tax-deductible in the United States). Every gift matters, regardless of the amount!
Donate securely online at cac.org/dm-appeal or send a check (USD only) to the address below.
Thank you for joining a movement of peaceful change, grounded in the awareness that we are all one in Love!
Last chance to register!
Authentic Transformation
a video webcast with Richard Rohr
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
4:30-6:00 p.m. US Mountain Standard Time
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Register no later than 4:00 p.m., US MST, on February 23, 2016, to participate in the live webcast and/or to view the replay. You must register prior to the webcast to gain access to the replay. The replay will be made available through Sunday, March 27, 2016, starting shortly after the live broadcast.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "Turning toward the Good" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 18 February 2016
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Habit of St. Francis of Assisi (detail), Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy
"Alternative Orthodoxy: Week 2"
"Turning toward the Good" for Thursday, February 18, 2016
Christianity is not a moral matter; it's a mystical matter. Yet we turned the Gospel into "Monday washing day" and neglected the other days--e.g., "Thursday baking day" and "Sunday feasting day." Humans seem to prefer the six stone cold jars of water for ritual purification to the ecstatic wine of a wedding feast (John 2:1-10). The ego pattern never changes. The mystical mind is the non-dual, spacious, non-counting mind. The ordinary dualistic mind is consumed by counting and measuring how moral I am or you are. It weighs everything up and down--mostly down. The dualistic mind moves toward quick resolution and too easy closure. It is very judgmental. That's why all great spiritual teachers say, "Do not judge." Franciscanism is nothing other than what Francis calls in his Testament "the marrow of the Gospel"--which is love, always choosing the positive over the negative.
Dan O'Grady, a psychologist and Living School student, told me recently that our negative and critical thoughts are like Velcro, they stick and hold; whereas our positive and joyful thoughts are like Teflon, they slide away. We have to deliberately choose to hold onto positive thoughts before they "imprint." Observing my own habits of thought and in counseling others I see this to be profoundly true. The implications are enormous for individuals and for society.
Neuroscience can now demonstrate the brain indeed has a negative bias; the brain prefers to constellate around fearful, negative, or problematic situations. In fact, when a loving, positive, or unproblematic thing comes your way, you have to savor it consciously for at least fifteen seconds before it can harbor and store itself in your "implicit memory;" otherwise it doesn't stick. We must indeed savor the good in order to significantly change our regular attitudes and moods. And we need to strictly monitor all the "Velcro" negative thoughts.
Anything which the dualistic mind doesn't understand, it quickly names as wrong, dangerous, sinful, or heretical. The dualistic mind is responsible for most of the disputes, wars, and violence on earth. The dualistic mind sees most opposition as highly justified and necessary, because it judges one side to be superior and one side to be inferior. It always takes sides! The non-dual, contemplative mind abides in God, the Ultimate Positive. It wants the good, the true, and the beautiful so much that it's willing to leave the field of the moment open and to hold onto all parts of it, the seemingly good and the seemingly negative, and waits for them to fully show themselves.
In some ways, the Gospel of love is so hard to live because it is so very simple. We strangely assume that God has to be complicated. The mind seems to insist on making everything complicated. It wants a job to keep busy. The mind is so biased toward fear and negativity that the common way we try to get control is to descend into some dualistic, right-or-wrong system of morality. We find the perfect excuse for avoiding the wedding banquet that is right in front of us (Luke 14:15f), a reason to not sit at the table with "both good and bad" (Matthew 22:10). We would rather slouch in the corner and criticize, all the while feeling moral and superior.
Franciscanism is sometimes called an alternative orthodoxy because it invites us all to sit at God's One Abundant Table, while much of the Christian tradition has set a scarce table for very few. The Church too often assumed that people were very simple and so we had to make the laws complex to protect them from themselves. Jesus and Francis recognized that people are endlessly diverse, complex and mysterious, and we had best make the law very simple. Just love your neighbor exactly as you love yourself.
Gateway to Silence: A long loving look at the real
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (Sounds True: 2010), disc 4 (CD);
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 155-157;
and Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2012), disc 3 (CD, MP3 download).
Twice a year we ask for your support of Fr. Richard's free Daily Meditations. If each person reading this note contributed just $1, it would more than cover the cost of producing these emails and help us reach more people.
Please consider making a contribution to the Center for Action and Contemplation (tax-deductible in the United States). Every gift matters, regardless of the amount!
Donate securely online at cac.org/dm-appeal or send a check (USD only) to the address below.
Thank you for joining a movement of peaceful change, grounded in the awareness that we are all one in Love!
Last chance to register!
Authentic Transformation
a video webcast with Richard Rohr
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
4:30-6:00 p.m. US Mountain Standard Time
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Register no later than 4:00 p.m., US MST, on February 23, 2016, to participate in the live webcast and/or to view the replay. You must register prior to the webcast to gain access to the replay. The replay will be made available through Sunday, March 27, 2016, starting shortly after the live broadcast.
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Center for Action and Contemplation
Center for Action and Contemplation
Center for Action and Contemplation
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PO Box 12464 (mailing)
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