Richard Rohr's Meditation: "What Is Conversion?" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 7 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"
"What Is Conversion?"
Monday, March 7, 2016
"Suddenly, while he was traveling to Damascus and just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground and then he heard a voice saying, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?' 'Who are you, Lord?' he asked, and the voice answered, 'I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me.'"[Acts 9:3-5, Jerusalem Bible]
I believe that almost all of the great themes of Paul's teaching emerged pivotally around his conversion experience. Something happened to this man that utterly redefined his life. Like all true converts (con-vertere means to turn around) there was a clear before and after. Unless you understand that the world was utterly realigned and redefined for Paul, you cannot appreciate the radicalism of his new vision.
Jesus' choice of words, "Why are you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4) is key. Later, during Paul's retreat in Arabia, he must surely have pondered this question: "Why does he say I was persecuting him, when I was persecuting others?" Paul gradually came to his great doctrine of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12ff.). For him, there was a complete, organic, and even ontological union between Christ and those who are loved by him, which Paul eventually realizes is everyone. This is why Paul is called "the apostle to the nations" (or "gentiles"). This enlightening experience taught Paul non-dual consciousness, which is the same mystical mind that had allowed Jesus to say things like "Whatever you do to the least, you do to me" (Matthew 25:40).
Until grace achieves that victory in your mind and heart, you cannot comprehend most of Jesus and Paul. Before conversion you tend to think of God as almost entirely "out there." After transformation you don't look out at reality as if it is hidden in the distance. You look out from reality! You're in the middle of it now. You're a part of it. Your life is participating in God's Life. Paul is almost obsessed by this idea. It underwrites absolutely everything he says. Paul is the great announcer of what is happening everywhere all the time. You're not writing the story; you're a character inside of a story that is already being written through you. Paul's code word for consciously living within this reality, used numerous times throughout all his letters, is en Christo, or living inside the Christ Mystery.
We all bear the mystery of the suffering of God, the sad woundedness that Jesus visibly shares with humanity. We simultaneously bear the conscious glory of God and even "share in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). We carry both at the same time. This requires non-dual consciousness. You are another wonderful instance of both the agony and ecstasy of God, and all you can do is say yes to both of them. This realization becomes more than enough to fill your life with meaning, vitality, purpose, and wondrous direction. This is what true conversion looks like.
Conversion is not a moral achievement accomplished by good behavior or New Year's resolutions (Paul knew he was a hateful murderer). Conversion is a mystical, unitive knowing that usually comes to people who need it intensely, who realize that only holding one side of life's equation--the glory or the agony--has gotten them nowhere. Holding everything together becomes enlightenment itself.
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.
2016 Daily Meditation Theme
Richard Rohr's meditations this year invite us to discover, experience, and participate in the foundation of our existence--Love. Throughout the year, Fr. Richard's meditations follow the thread of Love through many of his classic teachings in 1-2 week segments. Read previous meditations and view a video introduction at cac.org/category/daily-meditations/.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "Life as Participation" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Sunday, 6 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Conversion on the Way to Damascus (detail), Caravaggio, 1601. Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, Italy.
"Paul: Week 1"
"Life as Participation"
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Saint Paul has always been a hero of mine. Unfortunately, Christians have often misunderstood Paul, seeing him as a moralist rather than a mystic. Yet Paul has so much to teach us. He never knew Jesus in the flesh, so Paul's experience of the Risen Christ is much closer to what our own could be. For the next two weeks we are going to focus especially on Paul's teachings on love, which is the theme for this year's Daily Meditations.
The entire biblical revelation is gradually developing a very different consciousness, a recreated self, and eventually a full "identity transplant" or identity realization, as we see in both Jesus and Paul. The sacred text is inviting you slowly, little by little, into a very different sense of who you are: You are not our own. Your life is not about you; you are about Life! You are gradually "pruned" as a separate vine and re-grafted to the Great Vine of life and love and God. Once you are consciously reconnected to the Source, your life will bear much fruit for the world (John 15:1-5).
Saint Paul seems to understand this well because it happened rather dramatically to him. He writes, "I live no longer not I, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). In the spiritual journey you come to the day when you know you're not just living your own life by yourself. You realize that Someone Else is living in you and through you, and that you are part of a much Bigger Mystery. You realize that you're a mere drop in a Much Bigger Ocean, an ocean of Love. You are a recipient, a conduit, a participant.
No biblical writer had yet named what we now call "Trinity," but Paul has a deep intuitive conviction about the Trinitarian flow passing through him. This will become his profound understanding of love. He comes to know that he is hardly "initiating" anything, but instead it is all happening to him. This is the same transition we all must make. Like the divine conception in Mary, you will eventually realize it is being doneto you much more than you are doing anything. All God needs is your "yes," it seems, which tends to emerge progressively as you grow in inner freedom.
This understanding gives you an utterly different sense of yourself as a person; this person is truly a "sounding through" (per-sonare) much more than an autonomous anything. That is what I mean by an identity transplant, and what we foundationally mean by conversion. It is not about joining a new group or church, but it is coming to know a new and essential self. Just as in Paul's conversion, it takes quite a while for the scales to fall from our eyes (see Acts 9:18), plenty of help from strangers like Ananias (Acts 9:10 ff.), and long quiet retreats in "Arabia" (see Galatians 1:17).
Afterward, though, nothing could stop Paul. Read the full two chapters of 2 Corinthians 11-12[2 Corinthians 11:1 I would like you to bear with me in a little foolishness — please do bear with me! 2 For I am jealous for you with God’s kind of jealousy; since I promised to present you as a pure virgin in marriage to your one husband, the Messiah; 3 and I fear that somehow your minds may be seduced away from simple and pure devotion to the Messiah, just as Havah was deceived by the serpent and his craftiness. 4 For if someone comes and tells you about some other Yeshua than the one we told you about, or if you receive a spirit different from the one you received or accept some so-called “good news” different from the Good News you already accepted, you bear with him well enough! 5 For I don’t consider myself in any way inferior to these “super-emissaries.” 6 I may not be a skilled speaker, but I do have the knowledge; anyhow, we have made this clear to you in every way and in every circumstance.
7 Or did I sin in humbling myself so that you could be exalted, in proclaiming God’s Good News to you free of charge? 8 I robbed other congregations by accepting support from them in order to serve you. 9 And when I was with you and had needs, I did not burden anyone: my needs were met by the brothers who came from Macedonia. In nothing have I been a burden to you, nor will I be. 10 The truthfulness of the Messiah is in me, so that this boast concerning me is not going to be silenced anywhere in Achaia. 11 Why won’t I ever accept your support? Is it that I don’t love you? God knows I do! 12 No, I do it — and will go on doing it — in order to cut the ground from under those who want an excuse to boast that they work the same way we do. 13 The fact is that such men are pseudo-emissaries: they tell lies about their work and masquerade as emissaries of the Messiah. 14 There is nothing surprising in that, for the Adversary himself masquerades as an angel of light; 15 so it’s no great thing if his workers masquerade as servants of righteousness. They will meet the end their deeds deserve.
16 I repeat: don’t let anyone think I am a fool. But even if you do, at least receive me as a fool; so that I too may do a little boasting! 17 What I am saying is not in accordance with the Lord; rather, this conceited boasting is spoken as a fool would speak. 18 Since many people boast in a worldly way, I too will boast this way. 19 For since you yourselves are so wise, you gladly put up with fools! 20 You put up with it if someone makes slaves of you, exploits you, takes you in, puffs himself up, slaps you in the face. 21 To my shame, I must admit that we have been too “weak” to do such things!
But if anyone dares to boast about something — I’m talking like a fool! — I am just as daring. 22 Are they Hebrew-speakers? So am I. Are they of the people of Isra’el? So am I. Are they descendants of Avraham? So am I. 23 Are they servants of the Messiah? (I’m talking like a madman!) I’m a better one! I’ve worked much harder, been imprisoned more often, suffered more beatings, been near death over and over. 24 Five times I received “forty lashes less one” from the Jews. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. 26 In my many travels I have been exposed to danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the desert, danger at sea, danger from false brothers. 27 I have toiled and endured hardship, often not had enough sleep, been hungry and thirsty, frequently gone without food, been cold and naked. 28 And besides these external matters, there is the daily pressure of my anxious concern for all the congregations. 29 Who is weak without my sharing his weakness? Who falls into sin without my burning inside?
30 If I must boast, I will boast about things that show how weak I am. 31 God the Father of the Lord Yeshua — blessed be he forever — knows that I am not lying! 32 When I was in Dalmanuta, the governor under King Aretas had the city of Dalmanuta guarded in order to arrest me; 33 but I was lowered in a basket through an opening in the wall and escaped his clutches.
12:1 I have to boast. There is nothing to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. 2 I know a man in union with the Messiah who fourteen years ago was snatched up to the third heaven; whether he was in the body or outside the body I don’t know, God knows. 3 And I know that such a man — whether in the body or apart from the body I don’t know, God knows — 4 was snatched into Gan-‘Eden and heard things that cannot be put into words, things unlawful for a human being to utter. 5 About such a man I will boast; but about myself I will not boast, except in regard to my weaknesses. 6 If I did want to boast, I would not be foolish; because I would be speaking the truth. But, because of the extraordinary greatness of the revelations, I refrain, so that no one will think more of me than what my words or deeds may warrant. 7 Therefore, to keep me from becoming overly proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from the Adversary to pound away at me, so that I wouldn’t grow conceited. 8 Three times I begged the Lord to take this thing away from me; 9 but he told me, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is brought to perfection in weakness.” Therefore, I am very happy to boast about my weaknesses, in order that the Messiah’s power will rest upon me. 10 Yes, I am well pleased with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties endured on behalf of the Messiah; for it is when I am weak that I am strong.
11 I have behaved like a fool, but you forced me to do it — you who should have been commending me. For I am in no way inferior to the “super-emissaries,” even if I am nothing. 12 The things that prove I am an emissary — signs, wonders and miracles — were done in your presence, despite what I had to endure. 13 Is there any way in which you have been behind any of the other congregations, other than in my not having been a burden to you? For this unfairness, please forgive me!
14 Look, I am ready this third time to come and visit you; and I will not be a burden to you; for it is not what you own that I want, but you! Children are not supposed to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. 15 And as for me, I will most gladly spend everything I have and be spent myself too for your sakes. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?
16 Let it be granted, then, that I was not a burden to you; but, crafty fellow that I am, I took you with trickery! 17 Was it perhaps through someone I sent you 18 that I took advantage of you? I urged Titus to go and sent the brother with him; Titus didn’t take advantage of you, did he? Didn’t we live by the same Spirit and show you the same path?
19 Perhaps you think that all this time we have been defending ourselves before you. No, we have been speaking in the sight of God, as those united with the Messiah should; and, my dear friends, it is all for your upbuilding. 20 For I am afraid of coming and finding you not the way I want you to be, and also of not being found the way you want me to be. I am afraid of finding quarreling and jealousy, anger and rivalry, slander and gossip, arrogance and disorder. 21 I am afraid that when I come again, my God may humiliate me in your presence, and that I will be grieved over many of those who sinned in the past and have not repented of the impurity, fornication and debauchery that they have engaged in.] if you want to see a big human ego (Paul's "I am") that has now surrendered all of its autonomy to the one divine life (the Great "I AM"). Paul is almost giddy to tell you about it, jumping from one idea to the next with incomplete ideas, run-on sentences, and even a bit of bragging. He still has a big ego, but it is now being used for non-egoic purposes.
Gateway to Silence: My life is not about me. I am about Life.Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 49-50.
"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: "Scripture: Week 2 Summary" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Saturday, 5 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Photograph by RoganJosh
"Scripture: Week 2"
"Summary"
Sunday, February 28-Friday, March 4, 2016
The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. The Bible of nature, was written at least 13.8 billion years before the Bible of words, at the moment of the Big Bang. (Sunday)
God simply wants mirroring images of God to live on this earth and to make the divine visible. (Monday)
God does not settle for mandated or fear-based contracts with servants, but rather desires willing and free relationships with "friends" (John 15:15). (Tuesday)
The biblical revelation is about awakening, not accomplishing. It is about realization, not performance. (Wednesday)
The whole Bible is a school of relationship. It is slowly making us capable of entering into co-inherence with God. (Thursday)
The clear goal and direction of the biblical revelation is toward full mutual indwelling, where "the mystery is Christ within you, your hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). (Friday)
"Practice: Midrash"
The Jewish practice of midrash is a way of interpreting Scripture that asks questions more than seeks always certain and unchanging answers. It allows many possibilities, many levels of faith-filled meaning--meaning that is relevant and applicable to you, the reader, and puts you in the subject's shoes to build empathy, understanding, and relationship. It lets the passage first challenge you before it challenges anyone else. To use the text in a spiritual way is to allow it to convert you, to change you, to grow you up. What does this ask of me? How might this apply to my life, to my marriage, to my church, to my neighborhood, to my country?
The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, seemed to grasp the value of this practice applied not only to a sacred text, but to life. He wrote to a young friend, begging him to "have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." [1]
As Jesus modeled so masterfully in his teaching, welcome uncertainty and paradox. Respond to questions with yet more questions, like Jesus did with the lawyer who asked how he might inherit eternal life, but really only to "justify himself" (Luke 10:25-37). Let the wisdom written on your own heart lead you, through experiencing God's love, toward mercy and justice.
Gateway to Silence: "The physical structure of the universe is love."[Teilhard de Chardin]
References:
[1] Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Joan M. Burnham, Letters to a Young Poet(New World Library: 2000), 35.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Hierarchy of Truths: Jesus' Use of Scripture(Center for Action and Contemplation: 2014), CD, MP3 download.
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, New Great Themes of Scripture (CD)
Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality
Richard Rohr, Scripture as Liberation (MP3 download)
The video recordings from CAC's recent conferences are now available in streaming/downloadable MP4 video format.
Francis Factor: How St. Francis and Pope Francis
are changing the world
Featuring Richard Rohr, Ilia Delio, and Shane Claiborne
CONSPIRE 2015: One Reality
Featuring Richard Rohr, Simone Campbell, Chris and Phileena Heuertz, Timothy Shriver, and Mirabai Starr
CONSPIRE 2014: A Benevolent Universe
Featuring Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, and Ilia Delio
Visit store.cac.org to learn more and purchase the videos.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "Divinization" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Friday, 4 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Photograph by RoganJosh.
"Scripture: Week 2"
"Divinization"
Friday, March 4, 2016
If we could glimpse the panoramic view of the biblical revelation and the Big Picture that we're a part of, we'd see how God is forever evolving human consciousness, making us ever more ready for God. The Jewish prophets and many Catholic and Sufi mystics used words like espousal, marriage, or bride and groom to describe this phenomenon. That's what the prophet Isaiah (61:10, 62:5), many of the Psalms, the school of Paul (Ephesians 5:25-32), and the Book of Revelation (19:7-8, 21:2) mean by "preparing a bride to be ready for her husband." The human soul is being gradually readied so that actual espousal and partnership with the Divine are the final result. It's all moving toward a final marriage between God and creation. Note that such salvation is a social and cosmic concept, and not just about isolated individuals "going to heaven." The Church was meant to be the group that first brings this corporate salvation to conscious and visible possibility.
But how could such divine espousals really be God's plan? Isn't this just poetic exaggeration? If this is the agenda, why were most of us presented with an angry deity who needed to be placated and controlled? And why would God even want to "marry" God's creation? If you think I am stretching it here, look for all the times Jesus uses a wedding banquet as his image for eternity, and how he loves to call himself "the bridegroom" (Mark 2:19-20). Why would he choose such metaphors? The very daring, seemingly impossible idea of union with God is still something we're so afraid of that most of us won't allow ourselves to think it, especially in garden variety religion. Only God in you will allow you to imagine such a possibility, which is precisely "the Holy Spirit planted in your heart" (Romans 8:11 and throughout Paul).
The Eastern Fathers of the Church were not afraid of this belief, and called it the process of "divinization" (theosis). In fact, they saw it as the whole point of the Incarnation and the precise meaning of salvation. The much more practical and rational church in the West seldom used the word; it was just too daring for us, despite the rather direct teachings from Peter (1 Peter 1:4-5 and 2 Peter 1:4) and John's Gospel being quite clear about it: "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me" (John 17:20-21). Jesus came to give us the courage to trust and allow our inherent union with God, and he modeled it for us in this world. Union is not merely a place we go to later--if we are good.
Paul makes use of the almost physical language of shared embodiment in his single most used phrase "en Christo." Further Paul offers us the most beautiful teaching on the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12), which takes the form of a meal so we can be reminded frequently of our core identity (1 Corinthians 11:17-26). As Augustine said, "We are what we eat! We are what we drink!" Thus I am quite Catholic and conservative in my belief in very "Real Presence" in the bread and wine, otherwise the Eucharist is just a child's pretend tea party. Transformation must be real for persons, for creation, for all that lives and dies. This is summed up in the literal act and metaphor of humans digesting simple elements that grow from the earth. This is perfect and supreme Wholism.
At the end, what more fitting conclusion could the "Second Coming of Christ" be if not that humanity becomes "a beautiful bride all dressed for her husband" (Revelation 21:2), with Jesus the perfect stand-in for the Divine Bridegroom (Matthew9:15, John 3:29)? Rather than denying evolution, Christians should have paved the way and offered a positive image for the end of the world. Instead we largely emphasized the threatening language of Armageddon and Apocalypse.
Divine union will be finally allowed and enjoyed, despite our human history of resistance and denial. When God wins, God wins! God knows how to do victory. God does not lose. The Day of Yahweh will indeed be the Day of Yahweh, or what Dame Julian called "The Great Deed" that would come at the end of history. Apokatastasis, or "universal restoration" (Revelation 3:20-21), has been promised to us as the real message of the Cosmic Christ, the Alpha and the Omega of all history (Revelation 1:4, 21:6, 22:13). It will be a win/win for God--and surely for humanity! [1] What else would a divine victory be? Surely not an admission that 99% of creation was futile and lost.
The clear goal and direction of the biblical revelation is toward a full mutual indwelling. The movement toward union began with God walking in the garden with naked Adam and Eve and "all the array" of creation" (Genesis 2:1); it continued through inspiration of prophets, teachers, and "secular" history throughout the Jewish Bible. The theme found its shocking climax in the realization that "the mystery is Christ within you, your hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). As John excitedly puts it, "You know him because he is with you and he is in you!" (John14:17). The eternal mystery of incarnation will have finally met its mark, and "the marriage feast of the Lamb will begin" (Revelation 19:7-9). History is no longer meaningless and largely a failure, but has a promised and positive direction. This creates very healthy, happy, hopeful, and generative people; and we surely need some now. All I know for sure is that a good God creates and continues to create an ever good world.
Gateway to Silence: "The physical structure of the universe is love."[Teilhard de Chardin]
References:
[1] For more on universal restoration, see David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: An Alternative to the Traditional View of Divine Judgment(Universal Publishers: 2013). Christians deserve to know how many Fathers of the early Church, particularly in the East, understood cosmic salvation to be the whole point. This is just one more recent and well sourced example of a rediscovered theme in the Christian world.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, New Great Themes of Scripture (Franciscan Media: 1999), disc 1 (CD);
and Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 212.
The video recordings from CAC's recent conferences are now available in streaming/downloadable MP4 video format.
Francis Factor: How St. Francis and Pope Francis
are changing the world
Featuring Richard Rohr, Ilia Delio, and Shane Claiborne
CONSPIRE 2015: One Reality
Featuring Richard Rohr, Simone Campbell, Chris and Phileena Heuertz, Timothy Shriver, and Mirabai Starr
CONSPIRE 2014: A Benevolent Universe
Featuring Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, and Ilia Delio
Visit store.cac.org to learn more and purchase the videos.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "A School of Relationship" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico United States for Thursday, 3 March 2016Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Photograph by RoganJosh.
"Scripture: Week 2"
"A School of Relationship"
Thursday, March 3, 2016
We all fear and avoid intimacy, it seems. It is too powerful and demands that we also "have faces," that is, self-confidence, identity, dignity, and a certain courage to accept our own unique face. Once we accept and love ourselves, we must be willing to share this daring intimacy with another. The brilliant title of C. S. Lewis' book, Till We Have Faces, suggests how central this is; the archetypal myth of Cupid and Psyche reveals the human and divine longing for face-to-face intimacy.
At first the individual is not ready for presence. We settle for tribal customs, laws, and occupations as our identity. Most individuals cannot contain or sustain trust and love by themselves or apart. So God starts by giving the whole group a sense of dignity and identity. Yahweh creates "a chosen people": "You will be my people and I will be your God," God says to Israel (Jeremiah 32:38). Only the Whole can carry the weight of glory and the burden of sin, never the part. Western individualism is a large part of the ineffectiveness of most contemporary Christianity.
It seems the experiences of specialness and of sinfulness are both too heavy to be carried by an individual. One will disbelieve them or abuse them, either through self-hatred or by ego-inflation and conceit. It is almost impossible for a person to stand before the face of God in a perfect balance between extreme humility and perfect dignity. So God begins with a people "consecrated as God's very own" (Deuteronomy 14:2). The group holds the Mystery which the individual cannot carry. This eventually becomes the very meaning of "church" or the Body of Christ. Membership in the sacred group should and can become the gateway to personal encounter and inner experience, though too often it is a substitute for it. Please trust me on this.
We could say, "In the beginning was the relationship" or the original blueprint for everything else that exists. John's word for that was Logos (John 1:1). In other words, the first blueprint for reality was relationality. It is all of one piece. How we relate to God reveals how we eventually relate to just about everything else. And how we relate to the world of "the ten thousand things" is how we are actively relating to God, whether we know it or not (1 John 4:20). How we do anything is how we do everything!
Thus, we must read the whole Bible as a school of relationship. The word trinity, by the way, is never found in the Bible. In time, it became our way to explain how God gradually came to be seen as a communion of persons, a perfect giving and a perfect receiving, an inter-face, a mutual indwelling, or as Charles Williams beautifully called it, "co-inherence." The Bible is slowly making humanity capable of living inside of such lovely co-inherence. As some mystics daringly put it, all creation is in the end drawn and seduced into the Great Co-inherence, and we are in effect "the Fourth Something" inside the Blessed Trinity. "I shall return to take you with me, so that where I am you also may be too," Jesus clearly says (John 14:3). Salvation is giving us a face capable of receiving the dignity of the divine embrace, and then daring to think that we could love God back--and that God would enjoy this, or even care about it. I hope the top of your head just blew open!
Gateway to Silence: "The physical structure of the universe is love."[Teilhard de Chardin]
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality(Franciscan Media: 1999), 56-57.
Selected books now on sale!
Including these and other titles by past conference presenters:
Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne
The Unbearable Wholeness of Being by Ilia Delio
Simple Spirituality by Christopher Heuertz
Pilgrimage of a Soul by Phileena Heuertz
Available while supplies last at store.cac.org
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Center for Action and ContemplationCenter for Action and Contemplation
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