Missionary Renegade: The Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 28 December 2017 "Richard Rohr Meditation: Our Foundation"

Thursday, December 28, 2017

The Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 28 December 2017 "Richard Rohr Meditation: Our Foundation"

The Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 28 December 2017 "Richard Rohr Meditation: Our Foundation"

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"From the Bottom Up: Summary"
"Our Foundation"
Thursday, December 28, 2017

---

If we are going to rebuild Christianity “from the bottom up,” what is the foundation upon which we’re building? Love is our foundation and our destiny. It is where we come from and where we’re headed. As St. Paul famously says, “So faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

St. Augustine (354-430) said, “The church consists in the state of communion of the whole world.” [1] Wherever we are connected, in right relationship—you might say “in love”—there is the Christ, there is the authentic “Body of God” revealed. This body is more a living organism than any formal organization.

My hope, whenever I speak or write, is to help clear away the impediments to receiving, allowing, trusting, and participating in a foundational Love. God’s love is planted inside each of us as the Holy Spirit who, according to Jesus, “will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (John 14:26). Love is who you are.

Only God in you can know God. You cannot know God in an intimate, experiential way with your mind alone. You are going to need full access knowing, which many of us call the contemplative mind, or even the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).

Great religion seeks utter awareness and full consciousness, so that we can, in fact, receive all. Everything belongs and everything can be received. We don’t have to deny, dismiss, defy, or ignore. What is, is the great teacher. The purpose of prayer and religious seeking is to see the truth about reality, to see what is. And at the bottom of what is is always goodness. The foundation is always Love.

Enlightenment is to see and touch the big mystery, the big pattern, the Big Real. Jesus called it the reign of God; Buddha called it enlightenment. Philosophers might call it Truth. Many of us see it as Foundational Love.

The central practice in mature spirituality, therefore, is that we must remain in love (John 15:9). Only when we are eager to love can we see love and goodness in the world around us. We must ourselves remain in peace, and then we will find peace over there. Remain in beauty, and we will honor beauty everywhere. This concept of remaining or abiding (John 15:4-5) moves religion out of any esoteric realm of doctrinal outer space where it has been lost for too long. There is no secret moral command for knowing or pleasing God, or what some call “salvation,” other than becoming a loving person in mind, heart, body, and soul. Then you will see what you need to see. Jesus did not say, “Thou shalt be right”; Jesus said, “This is my commandment, ‘Love one another’” (John 13:34, 15:12; Matthew 22:39).

---

Gateway to Silence: You make all things new.
---
References:

[1] Augustine, “Ecclesiam in totius orbis communione consistere,” from De unitate ecclesiae (On the unity of the Church), XX, 56.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Creation as the Body of God” in Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth: A Collection of Essays, ed. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (The Golden Sufi Center: 2013), 239;
Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 55-57; and
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 9-10.

---

We wish you a joyful Christmas and a peaceful New Year!

The Center for Action and Contemplation offices and visitor center are closed December 23 through January 1.

CAC’s online bookstore, store.cac.org, is open year-round! Due to the holidays and our annual inventory process, fulfillment of orders may be delayed; please allow additional time to receive your purchase.

---
The Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 27 December 2017 "Richard Rohr Meditation: A Great Turning"

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"From the Bottom Up: Summary"
"A Great Turning"
Wednesday, December 27, 2017

---

In her book Christianity After Religion, church historian Diana Butler Bass writes:

Strange as it may seem in this time of cultural anxiety, economic near collapse, terrorist fear, political violence, environmental crisis, and partisan anger, I believe that the United States (and not only the United States) is caught up in the throes of a spiritual awakening, a period of sustained religious and political transformation during which our ways of seeing the world, understanding ourselves, and expressing faith are being, to borrow a phrase, “born again.” Indeed, the shifts around religion contribute to the anxiety, even as anxiety gives rise to new sorts of understandings of God and the spiritual life. Fear and confusion signal change. This transformation is what some hope will be a “Great Turning” toward a global community based on shared human connection, dedicated to the care of our planet, committed to justice and equality, that seeks to raise hundreds of millions from poverty, violence, and oppression. . . .

Exponential change creates exponential fear along with exponential hope. Massive transformation creates the double-edged cultural sword of decline and renewal. Exponential change ends those things that people once assumed and trusted to be true. At the same time, upheaval opens new pathways to the future. Change is about endings and beginnings and the necessary interrelationship between the two. [1]

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul has a marvelous line: “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). In so many places, there are signs of the Holy Spirit working at all levels of society. The church might well have done its work as leaven, because much of this reform, enlightenment, compassion, and healing is outside the bounds of organized religion. Only God is going to get the credit.

The toothpaste is out of the tube. There are enough people who know the big picture of Jesus’ thrilling and alluring vision of the reign of God that this Great Turning cannot be stopped. There are enough people going on solid inner journeys that it is not merely ideological or theoretical. This reformation is happening in a positive, nonviolent way. The changes are not just from the top down, but much more from the bottom up. Not from the outside in, but from the inside out. Not from clergy to laity, but from a unified field where class is of minor importance. The big questions are being answered at a peaceful and foundational level, with no need to oppose, deny, or reject. I sense the urgency of the Holy Spirit, with over seven billion humans now on the planet. There is so much to love and embrace.

I am convinced that the only future of the church, the one Body of Christ, is ecumenical and shared. Each of our traditions have preserved and fostered one or another jewel in the huge crown that is the Cosmic Christ; only together can we make up the unity of the Spirit, as we learn to defer to one another out of love.

---

Gateway to Silence: You make all things new.
---
References:

[1] Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (HarperOne: 2013), 5-6.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press: 2014), 101-102.

---

We wish you a joyful Christmas and a peaceful New Year!

The Center for Action and Contemplation offices and visitor center are closed December 23 through January 1.

---

Center for Action and Contemplation