Richard Rohr's Meditation: "Love Never Fails" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 16 March 2016
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Three Little Girls, Juarez, Mexico, 2009. CAC archives.
"Paul: Week 2"
"Love Never Fails"
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Paul says some pretty extraordinary things in 1 Corinthians 13. Let's look at some of his points carefully.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
This hits close to home for me. Paul points out that I might give a wonderful sermon, but if I don't do it out of God's love for the people right in front of me, it won't be as powerful as when I'm participating in divine love. God will still use even lesser loves, but Paul recognizes that human feelings and preferences are quite unreliable. Our affections are fickle and will finally change and fall short when our conditions or requirements are not met.
If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge;
Among others, Paul is talking to the intellectuals and the academics, the Greeks of his day--and likely to most of us. This is the common temptation to substitute knowledge for actual love or service.
and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Here he's challenging religious people who make a task of religion itself, who try to be moral and "believe" through will power. This often passes for religion, but it is faith without love so it is not true faith. Paul might also be criticizing the common mistake of those we call conservatives or "true believers."
And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Apparently, you can even be a progressive and generous social activist; but if you're just doing it to be holier than thou, or out of oppositional energy, you are still outside of the Big Mystery. Self-proclaiming heroics on the Left can be just as unloving as self-proclaiming religion on the Right.
Then Paul tries to describe the mystery of love, and he finally has to resort to listing almost fifteen descriptions. He talks about love not as simply an isolated virtue, but as the basis for all virtue. It is the underlying, generous energy that gives itself away through those living inside of love.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous;
If I'm jealous, then I'm not in love. When you are inside this mystery of love, you operate differently, and it's not in a guarded, protective way.
love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly [it is never rude]; it does not seek its own[advantage], is not provoked [it does not take offense or store up grievances],
So every time you and I take offense (how many times a day is that?), we're not "in love."
[Love] does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness [in the mistakes of others], but rejoices with the truth;
The Germans have a word for delighting in someone else's misfortune--schadenfreude. Maybe we do not have an English word for it because we take it as normal. I hope not.
[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
And then Paul ends with this: Love never fails. [1]
Paul is touching upon something that's infinite; it can therefore include all and has an endless ability to pour itself out. When you're in love, you're operating from this foundational sense of abundance, not from scarcity or fear. There is an inherent generosity of spirit, of smile, of gesture, of readiness, of initial acceptance that you immediately sense from any person who is standing inside this Flow. Honestly, you can tell the difference between someone "in love" and someone "not in love" in the first five seconds of almost any encounter. The all-important point, however, is that if your primary motivation is to love, there is no such thing as failure--except in your failure to draw love from an ever deeper level.
Gateway to Silence: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.[1 Corinthians 13:7]
References:
[1] 1 Corinthians 13:1-8, NASB (The Lockman Foundation).
Adapted from Richard Rohr, "Today Is a Time for Mercy," December 10, 2015, https://cac.org/richard-rohr-on-mercy-mp3/;
and "Introduction to the 2016 Daily Meditations,"https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/.
Living and Dying in Grace
A webcast with Kathleen Dowling Singh and Richard Rohr
LIVE: Tuesday, April 12, 2016
4:30-6:00 p.m. US Mountain Daylight Time
These masterful teachers speak about the grace in dying--both in our small daily deaths to the false self and in our final breaths.
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Registration for the webcast includes access to the replay, which will be made available through Sunday, May 15, 2016, starting shortly after the live broadcast. Register no later than 4:00 p.m. US MDT, on April 12, 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. Registration for the webcast must be completed online. CAC is unable to make registrations for webcasts by phone.---------------------
Richard Rohr's Meditation: "The Four Loves" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Tuesday, 15 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Three Little Girls, Juarez, Mexico, 2009. CAC archives.
"Paul: Week 2"
"The Four Loves"
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
There are many different kinds of love. Ancient Greeks had multiple distinct words for what we try to cover with our single word "love"; these include philia (friendship), eros(passion), storge (familial love), and agape (infinite or divine love). I sometimes fear that our paucity of words reveals an actual narrowness of experience.
For Paul, agape love is the Great Love that is larger than you. It is the Great Self, the God Self. It's not something you do. It's something that you learn to live inside of even while you already participate in it. Paul's oft used expression for living in love is en Christo or in Christ. This way of being is something you fall into more than you manufacture, just as our wonderful English phrase puts it--falling in love. This love is unconditional, always present, and comes without any stipulations except the falling itself. We will only allow ourselves to fall into love when we give up control, consciously or unconsciously. It will often feel like a falling and a faltering, an ecstatic humiliation.
The ego will resist and say, "Why am I doing this to myself? And yet I long to do it!" Normally, something must lead you to the edge of your present resources so you have to push your reset button to access a power greater than yourself. Most of us just don't go there without a push or a fall or a seduction of some kind.
In 1 Corinthians Chapter 12, Paul explains how we, precisely in our togetherness and participation, are Christ's Body. Yet each of us is a different part of this Great Wholeness. He lists the many differing gifts of the Spirit. In closing, he writes: "Earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I am going to show you the best way of all" (1 Corinthians 12:31). Then, in his attempt to try to describe this agape or divine love, Paul writes his most poetic chapter in all his letters. He seems to run out of adjectives and superlatives to express the fullness of love.
Paul is not describing human friendship (philia), affection of parents for children (storge), or even passionate desire (eros); he is describing what it is like to live inside of an Infinite Source--where all the boundaries change, feelings are hardly helpful at all, and all the gaps are filled in from the other side. So you see why I say that any Valentine's notion of love is totally inadequate and can even send you down an impossible and disappointing road if you try to conjure up such romantic dedication within yourself. We have to take breathing lessons and develop larger lungs to live inside of such a new and open horizon. It does not come naturally until we draw upon it many times, and then it becomes the only natural, the deep natural, the true natural. You have then returned home and can even practice the other kinds of love with much greater ability and joy.
Gateway to Silence: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.[1 Corinthians 13:7]
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media: 2002), discs 7, 9, and 11 (CD);
and "The Most Profound Chapter in the Bible," a homily on January 31, 2016, https://cac.org/the-most-profound-chapter-in-the-bible/.
Living and Dying in Grace
A webcast with Kathleen Dowling Singh and Richard Rohr
LIVE: Tuesday, April 12, 2016
4:30-6:00 p.m. US Mountain Daylight Time
These masterful teachers speak about the grace in dying--both in our small daily deaths to the false self and in our final breaths.
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Registration for the webcast includes access to the replay, which will be made available through Sunday, May 15, 2016, starting shortly after the live broadcast. Register no later than 4:00 p.m. US MDT, on April 12, 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. 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: "God Is Humble Enough to Be Anonymous" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 14 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Three Little Girls, Juarez, Mexico, 2009. CAC archives.
"Paul: Week 2"
"God Is Humble Enough to Be Anonymous"
Monday, March 14, 2016
I think the notion of love has been seriously minimized by today's popular understanding of love, as we see with Valentine's Day. This secular holiday reveals a very unsustainable notion of love as romance, infatuation (ignis fatuus, false fire), impassioned sex, sentimental words, romantic gift giving, etc. It eventually creates cynicism and disillusionment because the promise is so high but incomplete. It is never the whole story. When we experience love as different than culture's portrayal, we wonder what is wrong with us and we try to light the same false fire again and again.
Don't get me wrong, there is an important place for romance. It can often serve as the great invitation. We need to be led to the gate of the temple to know that there is a temple, but mere romantic infatuation is never the temple itself. [1] It doesn't go far enough or deep enough, can never be sustained, and sets us up for a huge letdown. As author Jack Kornfield cleverly titled his book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry! Both Jesus and Paul present a much more enduring, stable, and philosophical notion of love as the very nature of being itself. This love is not at all dependent on changeable feelings.
Paul's supreme masterpiece of poetry, philosophy, and theology--which is read at most weddings--is, of course, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. Paul gets this substantial notion of love, "which alone lasts," from Jesus who makes it into an actual commandment, in fact the commandment. For both Jesus and Paul, if you don't live in love, you just don't live at all. Paul knows that love is the very structure of the universe, and a place where we must learn to rest and abide (John 15:1-5) at all costs. Read 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 slowly and see how Paul treats love as a state of being and an infinite source, from which the entire Christian life can be drawn: "Love is . . .," "Love does not," and "Love never comes to an end." We exist inside of love, and occasionally we realize it and live out of our deepest purpose and identity. Love is not something we do now and then; love is who we are all the time. This is true because we are created "in the image and likeness" (imago et similitudo) of God (Genesis 1:26).
Who is this God? For both Jesus and Paul, God is an Infinite Flow--which we eventually call Trinity. God is much more a verb than a noun. All things exist inside of that Flow, come out from that Flow, and return to that Flow. Only for a while are we allowed to choose to act from within this Flow consciously, freely, and happily; or alternatively, to resist it. The very nature of Being is communion, infinite generosity, and unhindered giving and receiving between three, which then becomes the template for the whole universe, from atoms to galaxies.
It's not that this Being we call God occasionally decides to love; love is the very nature and shape of God, who cannot not love! The Flow is always and forever in one positive direction. We ourselves are already participating in this love, this divine "dance" (perichoresis) of Being, even when we do not know how to enjoy it or consciously join in the dance. We are still dancing anyway. Divine Life knows and sustains us in our deepest being (Acts 17:28), even when we fail to say thank you. This is the humility and anonymity of God.
The surprising emphasis in Paul's work is not, therefore, on "saving" isolated individuals here and there, but much more on naming reality truthfully and completely. The individual is caught up in the corporate Flow, and in fact cannot know himself or herself outside of that one corporate Flow. We surrender to this shared heaven. We do not win it or attain it separately.
Gateway to Silence: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.[1 Corinthians 13:7]
References:
[1] For more on this theme see Richard Rohr, Gate of the Temple: Spirituality and Sexuality (CAC: 1991), CD and MP3 download.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, "Introduction to the 2016 Daily Meditations," https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/;
The Divine Dance: Exploring the Mystery of Trinity (CAC: 2004), disc 1 (CD,MP3 download); and Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media: 2002), disc 9 (CD).
Living and Dying in Grace
A webcast with Kathleen Dowling Singh and Richard Rohr
LIVE: Tuesday, April 12, 2016
4:30-6:00 p.m. US Mountain Daylight Time
These masterful teachers speak about the grace in dying--both in our small daily deaths to the false self and in our final breaths.
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Registration for the webcast includes access to the replay, which will be made available through Sunday, May 15, 2016, starting shortly after the live broadcast. Register no later than 4:00 p.m. US MDT, on April 12, 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. 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: "History Is on an Inevitable Course" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Sunday, 13 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Three Little Girls, Juarez, Mexico, 2009. CAC archives.
"Paul: Week 2"
"History Is on an Inevitable Course"
Sunday, March 13, 2016
As I shared last week, Paul believed that history and all of creation are headed toward a radical union, which he called pleroma, "the fullness" (Colossians 1:19, Ephesians 1:10). But the journey is presented as slow and grueling, as you can sense in his ecstatic and paramount writing in Romans 8:18-39. Read this passage, beautifully paraphrased by Eugene Peterson:
I don't think there is any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. This created world itself can hardly wait for what is coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back now. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment. Meanwhile the joyful anticipation deepens.
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. We are also feeling the birth pangs. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. [This is what I call "negativity capability," or the rubber band pulled back which increases the momentum forward.]
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing [the Godself] to the worst by sending [God's] own Son, is there anything else [God] wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? . . . Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing. . . . None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing--nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable--absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us."[1]
Gateway to Silence: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.[1 Corinthians 13:7]
Reference:
[1] Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (NavPress: 1993), 322-323.
Living and Dying in Grace
A webcast with Kathleen Dowling Singh and Richard Rohr
LIVE: Tuesday, April 12, 2016
4:30-6:00 p.m. US Mountain Daylight Time
These masterful teachers speak about the grace in dying--both in our small daily deaths to the false self and in our final breaths.
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Registration for the webcast includes access to the replay, which will be made available through Sunday, May 15, 2016, starting shortly after the live broadcast. Register no later than 4:00 p.m. US MDT, on April 12, 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. 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: "Paul: Week 1 Summary" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Saturday, 11 March 2013Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Conversion on the Way to Damascus (detail), Caravaggio, 1601. Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, Italy.
"Paul: Week 1"
"Summary"
Sunday, March 6-Friday, March 11, 2016
In the spiritual journey you come to the day when you know you're not just living your own life. You realize that Someone Else is living in you and through you, and that you are part of a much Bigger Mystery. (Sunday)
For Paul, there is a complete, organic, and even ontological union between Christ and those who are loved by him, which he eventually realizes is everyone. (Monday)
True union does not absorb distinction, but actually intensifies it. The more one gives oneself in creative union to any other, the more one becomes oneself. (Tuesday)
God keeps looking at what is good in the human person. What is entirely good in me is called God, and of course, God finds this always and entirely lovable. (Wednesday)
I like to picture the unity of spirit as an energy field, a dynamic force field, created by sharing the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Love. (Thursday)
The twentieth century Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "described the human species in evolution toward the fullness of unity in love."[Ilia Delio] (Friday)
"Practice: Praying through Art"
Paul's prayer in his letter to the Ephesians is perhaps my favorite succinct statement of his wisdom, and it is my prayer for you, as well:
I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that [God] would grant you, according to the riches of [God's] glory, to be strengthened in power through [the] Spirit . . . , so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
Now to [God] who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to [God] be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.[Ephesians 3:14-21, NASB]
I invite you to set aside some quiet time to meditate with this passage through art. Collect whatever materials you wish to use--colored pencils, paint, pictures for a collage, or simply pen and paper.
Reread the prayer slowly and aloud a few times. As in the practice of lectio divina, don't try to analyze the text, but listen deeply to what it has to say to you in this moment. Notice if there's a particular word or phrase that stands out. What images, colors, or shapes do you see?
Begin to fill the blank page with body, heart, and mind fully engaged. Don't judge or critique your creation, but allow it to emerge and evolve without an agenda. The process may lead you in a different direction than you first anticipated. Let it take shape organically. If you become distracted, perhaps return to the passage or focus on the physical sensation of the materials in your hands.
When you are finished--when you feel a sense of completion or when your time has ended, not when you think it is perfect--offer up your artwork with gratitude. Remember that you are a co-creator of Love in this world with God.
Gateway to Silence: My life is not about me. I am about Life.
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, A New Way of Seeing, A New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul(CD, MP3 download)
Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (CD)
Richard Rohr, St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic (CD, MP3 download)
"Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God. . . . The great surprise and irony is that 'you,' or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It's sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn't it? All you can do is nurture it." [Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond]
Nurture your True Self in a self-paced, online course based on Fr. Richard's book.
Immortal Diamond: A Study in Search of the True Self
May 4-July 12, 2016
Learn more and register at cac.org.
Scholarships are available. Registration closes April 20, 2016, or as soon as the course fills, whichever comes first.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "Everything That Rises Will Converge" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Friday, 11 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Conversion on the Way to Damascus (detail), Caravaggio, 1601. Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, Italy.
"Paul: Week 1"
"Everything That Rises Will Converge"
Friday, March 11, 2016
In Romans 8:22, Paul says, "From the beginning until now, the entire creation as we know it has been groaning in one great act of giving birth." Just this one line from Paul should be enough to justify a Christian belief in evolution. Yet to this day, the issue of evolution still divides some Christians, questioning what is rather obvious: that God creates things that create themselves. Wouldn't this be the greatest way that God could create--to give autonomy, freedom, and grace to things to keep self-creating even further? (Uncreative minds tend to not see or allow creativity anywhere else. In fact, that is what makes them so uncreative!)
Healthy parents love their children so much that they want them to keep growing, producing, and performing to their highest potential. Good parents are even excited when their children surpass them, as my uneducated farmer parents were when I went off to higher studies. Mature parents are generative about their children and say, in my paraphrase of Jesus' words: "Don't get too excited about the things that I did. You're going to do even greater things!" (John 14:12). Immature parents only see their children as images and extensions of themselves. Truly loving parents empower and delight in the even larger and independent successes of those they love.
For a long time most people were satisfied with a very static universe. But now we clearly see the universe is unfolding and expanding. It's moving until, as Augustine put it, "In the end there will only be Christ loving himself," or as Paul writes, "There is only Christ, he is everything and he is in everything" (Colossians 3:11). Paul sees history as an ongoing process of ever greater inclusion of every lesser force until in the end, "God will be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28). Christ is our word for the One reality that includes everything and excludes nothing; it is really universal forgiveness in all directions!
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the twentieth century Jesuit, would agree. In Ilia Delio's words, Teilhard "described the human species in evolution toward the fullness of unity in love. . . . [He said] the way forward is a new spirituality by which humans around the globe can unite to become one mind and one heart in love, a new ultrahumanity united only by love." [1] Teilhard believed that "everything that rises must converge." [2]
Gateway to Silence: My life is not about me. I am about Life.
References:
[1] Ilia Delio, Compassion: Living in the Spirit of St. Francis (Franciscan Media: 2011), xiv.
[2] Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (Image Books: 1964), 186.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation(Franciscan Media: 2002), disc 11 (CD);
Christ, Cosmology, and Consciousness (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2010), MP3 download;
and A New Cosmology: Nature as the First Bible (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2009), disc 2 (CD, MP3 download).
"Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God. . . . The great surprise and irony is that 'you,' or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It's sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn't it? All you can do is nurture it."[Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond]
Nurture your True Self in a self-paced, online course based on Fr. Richard's book.
Immortal Diamond: A Study in Search of the True Self
May 4-July 12, 2016
Learn more and register at cac.org.
Scholarships are available. Registration closes April 20, 2016, or as soon as the course fills, whichever comes first.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "Love Is One Body" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 10 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Conversion on the Way to Damascus (detail), Caravaggio, 1601. Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, Italy.
"Paul: Week 1"
"Love Is One Body"
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.[The School of Paul, Ephesians 4:1-7, NASB]
I like to picture the unity of spirit described here as an energy field, a dynamic force field, created by sharing the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Love. Here is how one of the great Pauline scholars, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, explains it:
The church differs from all other human groupings in so far as its unity is not functional but organic. Its members are not merely united by a common purpose, but share a common existence. An autonomous Christian is as impossible as an independent arm or leg. Arms and legs exist only as parts. If they are given the status of an independent whole by amputation, they are no longer an arm or a leg. For a while they may look as if they were, but corruption has begun, and they can neither grasp nor walk. The same is true of believers. Their existence is loving--"without love I am nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2)--which necessarily implies a relationship to another person. To love and be loved is of the essence of Christianity and is constitutive of the being of the believer. They are bound together by what makes them be what they are. Only now does it become clear what Paul tentatively envisaged when he said, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). [1]
For Paul, this is what he means by Christ: the participatory mystery of Jesus continued through space and time in us. As Paul says to the Athenians, "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). This is similar to France's motto of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." Paul is naming what we eventually will call the "communion of saints" in the Apostles Creed. This "energy field" is created by all those who pass love back and forth and is thus an infinitely expanding force field. The "church" was intended to be the group that consciously lived and exemplified this different quality of being. The church's vocation is a privilege, like Israel's itself, to bring God's work to visibility and possibility. But also like Israel we made ourselves into a chosen elite--a country club for the saved--instead of a neon sign pointing beyond ourselves.
When Paul addresses his letters to "the saints" he is clearly not speaking of the later Roman idea of canonized saints. He is speaking of the living communities of love who make up his audio-visual aids all over Greece and Asia Minor. Paul does not make heroes of individuals, but precisely as members of the Body do they "shine like stars" as "perfect children of God among a deceitful and underhanded brood" (Philippians 2:15). Following directly from Jesus, Paul sees his small communities as a certain and effective "leaven" by which God will eventually change the whole debauched Roman Empire. Social scientists now tell us that Paul was unbelievably successful in a mere ten year period largely because he gave people back their dignity and self-esteem by telling them they were equally and fully "children of God." This is still revolutionary, but this wonderful message lost most of its impact when the Church began operating as if some had that dignity and others did not.
Gateway to Silence: My life is not about me. I am about Life.
References:
[1] Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford University Press: 1998), 288.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation(Franciscan Media: 2012), disc 9 (CD).
"Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God. . . . The great surprise and irony is that 'you,' or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It's sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn't it? All you can do is nurture it."[Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond]
Nurture your True Self in a self-paced, online course based on Fr. Richard's book.
Immortal Diamond: A Study in Search of the True Self
May 4-July 12, 2016
Learn more and register at cac.org.
Scholarships are available. Registration closes April 20, 2016, or as soon as the course fills, whichever comes first.
---------------------
Richard Rohr's Meditation: "We Are Two-Way Mirrors" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 9 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Conversion on the Way to Damascus (detail), Caravaggio, 1601. Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, Italy.
"Paul: Week 1"
"We Are Two-Way Mirrors"
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
There is only one thing you must definitely answer for yourself: "Who am I?" Or, restated, "Where do I abide?" If you can get that right, the rest largely takes care of itself. Paul answers the questions directly: "You are hidden with Christ in God, and God is your life" (Colossians 3:3-4). Every time you start hating yourself, ask, "Who am I?" The answer will come, "I am hidden with Christ in God" in every part of my life. I am bearing both the mystery of suffering humanity and God's glory. Maybe right now I must bear the suffering part to be in solidarity with both humanity and "Christ," which is just another word for everything (see 1 Corinthians 3:21-23, 15:20-28, or Colossians 1:15-20).
God keeps looking at what is good in the human person. What is entirely good in me is called God and, of course, God finds this always and entirely lovable. God fixes God's gaze intently where I refuse to look, on my shared, divine nature as God's daughter or son (1 John 3:2). God looks at me and sees Christ. And one day my gaze matches God's gaze. This is what we mean by prayer. At those times I will find God entirely lovable and myself fully lovable at the same time. Why? Because it is the same set of eyes that is doing the looking (2 Corinthians3:18), and we henceforth look out at life together and agree on what we see.
"The eye with which I see God is the same one with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love," said the non-dual teacher Meister Eckhart (c. 1260 - c. 1328). [1] No wonder they called him "Master"! All you have to do is receive the gaze and then return what you have received. It is an entire agenda for your whole life. All you really do is complete the circuit, "love returning love" as my father, Saint Francis, put it. We are two-way mirrors.
We are saved by standing consciously and confidently inside the force field that is Christ, not by getting it right in our private selves. This is too big a truth for the small self to even imagine. We're too tiny, too insecure, too ready to beat ourselves up. We do not need to be correct, but we can always try to remain connected to our Source. The great and, for some, disappointing surprise is that many people who are not correct are the most connected.
All we can do is fall into the Eternal Mercy--into Love--which we can never actually fall out of because "we belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God" (1 Corinthians 3:23) as Paul so beautifully stated. Eventually, we know that we are all saved by mercy in spite of ourselves. The supreme irony is that we are saved much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right! That must be the final humiliation to the ego.
Our holiness is first of all and really only God's holiness, and that is why it's certain and secure. It is a participation in love, a mutual indwelling, not an achievement or performance on our part. "If anyone wants to boast, let him boast in the Lord," Paul shouts at the end of his long argument (1 Corinthians 1:31). Jeremiah said the same long before Paul (Jeremiah 9:22-23).
Gateway to Silence: My life is not about me. I am about Life.
References:
[1] Johannes Eckhart, Meister Eckhart's Sermons, Sermon IV, "True Hearing," http://www.ccel.org/ccel/eckhart/sermons.vii.html, 32-33.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality(Franciscan Media: 2008), 50-51;
and Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media: 2002), disc 5 (CD).
"Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God. . . . The great surprise and irony is that 'you,' or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It's sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn't it? All you can do is nurture it."[Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond]
Nurture your True Self in a self-paced, online course based on Fr. Richard's book.
Immortal Diamond: A Study in Search of the True Self
May 4-July 12, 2016
Learn more and register at cac.org.
Scholarships are available. Registration closes April 20, 2016, or as soon as the course fills, whichever comes first.
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"Living and Dying in Grace" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 9 March 2016
Center for Action and Contemplation
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "Unitive Consciousness" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Tuesday, 8 March 2016
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Conversion on the Way to Damascus (detail), Caravaggio, 1601. Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, Italy.
"Paul: Week 1"
"Unitive Consciousness"
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
After conversion, self-consciousness (in the negative sense) slowly falls away and is replaced by what the mystics call pure consciousness or unitive consciousness--which is love. Self-consciousness implies a dualistic split. There is me over here, judging, analyzing, labeling that or me over there. The mind is largely dualistic before spiritual conversion and even foolishly calls such argumentation "thinking." In true conversion the subject-object split is overcome at least for a moment. You can't maintain this non-dual state twenty-four hours a day; you have to return to dualistic thought regularly to function in this practical world of necessary choices. But now, maybe for the first time, you know there is something more and you will always long to return there. To refuse or resist that invitation might just be the core meaning of biblical "hard heartedness" or sin. Once you've experienced any true union (perhaps at times of peace, acceptance, surrender, prayer, intimate sex, all authentic love), you know that is what you were created for.
Recall what it's like to fall in love. It's an experience of forgetting about yourself and living through another for at least a while. Similarly, having a baby often reorients one's whole life to be completely absorbed and focused on the needs of another. I've watched this happen with so many young parents after they have their first baby. In a very short time they outgrow their youthful narcissism because, perhaps for the first time, their center is outside themselves. Both marriage and parenting are almost perfectly made-to-order to cure you from your self-centeredness. Of course, many are afraid of the cure, whether married, single, or celibate.
Paradoxically, such unitive consciousness (love) doesn't destroy your sense of self; it actually increases it. When you first fell in love you never felt more alive, more a whole person. Yet at the same time you had also lost yourself! You'd given yourself away to another person, and yet you felt more like yourself than you ever did before. True union does not absorb distinction, but actually intensifies it. The more one gives oneself in creative union to any other, the more one becomes oneself. This is wonderfully mirrored for the Christian in the Trinity: perfect giving and perfect receiving among three, and yet they are each utterly and fully themselves.
The more you become yourself, the more capable you are of not over-protecting your false boundaries. After all, you really have nothing to protect. That's the great freedom and the great happiness of truly converted people. There's no longer a little self here to fuss over or pander to. The little self--which you thought you were--has passed away. Paul says of himself, "I live no longer not I" (Galatians 2:20). This is exactly what Jesus meant by "you must lose yourself to find yourself" (Mark 8:35), which he says repeatedly in different settings and formulations.
Gateway to Silence
My life is not about me. I am about Life.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation(Franciscan Media: 2002), disc 1 (CD).
"Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God. . . . The great surprise and irony is that 'you,' or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It's sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn't it? All you can do is nurture it."[Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond]
Nurture your True Self in a self-paced, online course based on Fr. Richard's book.
Immortal Diamond: A Study in Search of the True Self
May 4-July 12, 2016
Learn more and register at cac.org.
Scholarships are available. Registration closes April 20, 2016, or as soon as the course fills, whichever comes first.
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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
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