Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
"Week Seven: Creation"
Summary: Week Seven
Creation
February 11 - February 16, 2018
In the Judeo-Christian story of Genesis 1, God—who is “Creator” in verse 1, “Spirit” in verse 2, and “Word” in verse 3 (foretastes of what we would eventually call Trinity)—creates from an overflowing abundance of love, joy, and creativity! (Sunday)Good religion, art, poetry, and myth point us to the deeper levels of truth that logos (data and facts) can’t fully explain. (Monday)
The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. Thus, nature is the first Bible. (Tuesday)
God is One. God is whole, and everything else in creation can now be seen as a holon (a part that mimics, replicates, and somehow includes the whole). (Wednesday)
The Christ Mystery—the crucified and resurrected Christ—is the template for all creation. Christ reveals the necessary cycle of loss and renewal that keeps all things moving toward ever further life. (Thursday)
Not redemption from sin, but the unification of the world in itself and with God is the ultimate motivating cause for the Incarnation and, as such, the first idea of the Creator, existing in advance of all creation. (Hans Urs von Balthasar) (Friday)
"Practice: The Christ Hymn"I invite you to take all this heady information and experience it at the heart level through music, poetry, and art. Living School alumni Alana Levandoski and Julie Ann Stevens creatively rendered “The Christ Hymn” from Colossians 1:15-20 (Common English Bible):
The Son is the image of the invisible God,
the one who is first over all creation,
Because all things were created by him:
both in the heavens and on the earth,
the things that are visible and the things that are invisible.
Whether they are thrones or powers,
or rulers or authorities,
all things were created through him and for him.
He existed before all things,
and all things are held together in him.
He is the head of the body, the church,
who is the beginning,
the one who is firstborn from among the dead
so that he might occupy the first place in everything.
Because all the fullness of God was pleased to live in him,
and he reconciled all things to himself through him—
whether things on earth or in the heavens.
He brought peace through the blood of his cross.
May these words, images, and music draw us more deeply into the Mystery of Christ.
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“The Christ Hymn,” from the album Behold, I Make All Things New, was composed by Alana Levandoski, alanalevandoski.com. Paintings by Julie Ann Stevens, julieannstevens.com. Poetry contributions were written by Malcolm Guite, Scott Cairns, Joel McKerrow, and Luci Shaw. For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014)
Richard Rohr, Hierarchy of Truths: Jesus’ Use of Scripture (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2013), CD, MP3 download
Richard Rohr and Rob Bell, In the Beginning. . . (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2014), CD, MP3 download
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"It Is Not Just About Us"
Friday, February 16, 2018
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, things visible, things invisible. . . . He is before all things and in him all things hold together. . . . For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God reconciled all things. (Colossians 1:15-17, 19-20)Not redemption from sin, but the unification of the world in itself and with God is the ultimate motivating cause for the Incarnation and, as such, the first idea of the Creator, existing in advance of all creation. (Hans Urs von Balthasar) (1905-1988) [1]
Franciscans have always believed that Christ was Plan A, not a Plan B mop-up effort needed because of Adam and Eve’s sin. Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) believed that the Christ Mystery was the first idea in the mind of God. The manifestation of the inner life of God in a physical universe was God’s plan from the very beginning. So, the Christ is manifest from the very first moment of the Big Bang (Ephesians 1:3,9-10). Jesus is the later personal personification of what was already true from the beginning. Most Christians were never told to make that distinction, and so their Jesus was often far too small because he was not also the Universal Christ.
Duns Scotus saw Jesus as a revelation of this positive, proactive message: “I say that the incarnation of Christ was not foreseen as occasioned by sin, but was immediately foreseen from all eternity by God as a good more proximate to the end.” [2] Contemporary Franciscan professor William Short explains:
The end here refers to God’s purpose or goal for the whole of creation. That goal, according to Scotus, is the sharing of God’s own life, one so fruitful that it constantly seeks expression. The ultimate goal must be sharing the life of the Trinity itself. . . . The Son may be called the heart of, or the way into the Trinity. [3]
This may seem like abstract theology, but without it, we end up with Jesus being a mere problem-solver for sin, appeasing a God who seems to be much less than love. God “the Father” ends up looking quite small, and the Christ has nothing to do for 14 billion years until Jesus appears. This leaves most of known time—before humans appeared—empty of God, the universe not yet a revelation of God. Mainstream Christian theology made humans the whole show; worse, human sin was the engine and motive for everything that God did.Building on St. Francis’ teaching, Duns Scotus laid the theological foundation for a creation that was good, true, whole, and already the glory and freedom of God—before conscious humans even existed. To put it frankly, “salvation” is not just about us! If this ever sinks in, it will be the second Copernican Revolution in decentering this one small planet. The irony, of course, is that this decentered humanity is also even more the glory of God because it can see and say what I just said.
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
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[1] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley (Ignatius Press: 2003), 272.[2] William Short, “St. Francis of Assisi and the Christocentric Character of Franciscan Life and Doctrine,” in Damian McElrath, ed. Franciscan Christology (Franciscan Institute Publications: 1980), 153.
[3] William Short, “The Franciscan Spirit,” in Dawn M. Nothwehr, ed., Franciscan Theology of the Environment: An Introductory Reader (Franciscan Press: 2002), 121-122.
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"Christ Is the Template for Creation"
Thursday, February 15, 2018
The Franciscan philosopher and Doctor of the Church, St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1217-1274) was an exemplary mystic because he so effectively pulled his brilliant mind down into his passionate heart. [1] In Bonaventure’s writings, you will find little or none of the medieval language of fire and brimstone, worthy and unworthy, sin and guilt, merit and demerit, justification and atonement, even the dualistic notions of heaven or hell, which later took over. Etienne Gilson (1884-1978), a noted medieval scholar, said that Bonaventure’s philosophical synthesis might be the most perfect and complete ever created.Bonaventure summed up his entire life’s theology in three central and sacred ideas:
Emanation: We come forth from God bearing the divine image, and thus our inherent identity is grounded in the life of God from the beginning (Genesis 1:26-27).
Exemplarism: Everything in creation is an example, manifestation, and illustration of God in space and time (Romans 1:20). No exceptions.
Consummation: All returns to the Source from which it came (John 14:3). The Omega is the same as the Alpha; this is God’s supreme and final victory.
For Bonaventure, the perfection of God and God’s creation is quite simply a full circle, and to be perfect the circle must and will complete itself. He knows that Alpha and Omega are finally the same. The lynchpin holding it all in unity is the “Christ Mystery,” or the essential unity of matter and spirit, humanity and divinity. The Christ Mystery—the crucified and resurrected Christ—becomes the visible template for the pattern of all creation. Christ reveals the necessary cycle of loss and renewal that keeps all things moving toward ever further life. The death and birth of every star and atom is this same pattern of loss and renewal, yet this pattern is invariably hidden, denied, or avoided, and therefore must be revealed by Jesus—through his passion, death, and resurrection.
Bonaventure’s theology is never about trying to placate a distant or angry God, earn forgiveness, or find some abstract theory of justification. He is all cosmic optimism and hope! Once we lost this kind of mysticism, Christianity became preoccupied with fear, unworthiness, and guilt much more than being included in—and delighting in—God’s positive, all-pervasive plan.
The problem is solved from the beginning in Franciscan theology: “Before the world was made, God chose us in Christ” (Ephesians 1:4). If more of the Church believed St. Francis and Bonaventure, they could have helped us move beyond the inherently negative notion of history being a “fall from grace.” Bonaventure invited us into a positive notion of history as a slow but real emergence/evolution into ever-greater consciousness of a larger and always renewed life (“resurrection”).
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
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[1] For more on Bonaventure, see Simply Bonaventure: An Introduction to His Life, Thought, and Writing (New City Press: 2013) by Ilia Delio, O.S.F.Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi(Franciscan Media: 2014), 162-164; and
exclusive video teaching within the Living School for Action and Contemplation.
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"The Great Nest of Being"
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Ash Wednesday
The “Catholic synthesis” of the early Middle Ages had its limitations, but at its best it held together one coherent world. It was a positive intellectual vision that was not defined by opposition or enemies, but by the clarity and beauty of form. Such coherence is visible architecturally in the European cathedrals in Salisbury, Cologne, Orvieto, and Vézelay. This synthesis was a cosmic egg of meaning, a vision of Creator and a multitude of creatures that excluded nothing.The Great Chain of Being (or The Great Nest of Being, as I prefer to call it, to give an image that doesn’t depend on higher and lower but simply ever greater capacity to include) is a holistic metaphor for the new seeing offered us by the Incarnation: Jesus as the living icon of integration, “the coincidence of opposites” who “holds all things in unity” within himself (Colossians 1:15-20). God is One. God is whole, and everything in creation—from minerals, stones, plants, animals, people, planets, and angels—can be seen as a holon (a part that mimics, replicates, and somehow includes the whole).
Sadly, the Catholic synthesis seldom moved beyond philosophers’ books and mystics’ prayers and some architecture, art, and music. Most Christians remained in a fragmented and dualistic world, usually looking for the contaminating element to punish or the unworthy member to expel. While still daring to worship the cosmic Scapegoat—Jesus—we scapegoated the other links in the great chain We have been unwilling to see the Divine Image in those we judged to be inferior or unworthy: so-called sinners and heretics, women, LGBTQ individuals, people from other races and ethnicities, the poor, those with disabilities, animals, non-Christians, and the Earth itself.
Once the great chain (each level protected and held by its inherent connection to the previous link) was broken or disbelieved, we were soon unable to see the Divine Image in our own species either, except for those who look and think just like us. We were all on our own! The dominant view—“patriarchy” (usually white, educated, or land-owning men)—formed the mentality of most “developed” cultures. It becomes a contest, of sorts, and the patriarchs (in whatever form) decide who is worthy, who is holy, and who is not. Then the strangely named Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and modern secularism denied the heavenly and divine links altogether—an attitude unknown in human history until recently. The coherence fell utterly apart, and this is the disenchanted world you and I live in today. It is hard to trust our own holiness if we are cut off from the Source.
As the medieval teachers predicted, once the Great Chain of Being is broken or denied, and any one link is not honored and included, the whole cosmic vision collapses. It seems that either we acknowledge that God is in all things or we lose the basis for seeing God in anything, including ourselves.
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
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Adapted from Richard Rohr with John Feister, Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (Franciscan Media: 2001), 136.***
"Reconnecting to Our Original Identity"
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
For what can be known about God is plain . . . because God has made it plain. . . . Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible nature, namely, God’s eternal power and deity, have been there for the mind to see in the things that God has made. (Romans 1:20)God always and forever comes as one who is totally hidden and yet perfectly revealed in the same moment or event. The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. Thus, nature is the first Bible, written approximately 14 billion years before the Bible of words. God initially speaks through what is, as the Apostle Paul affirms above, before humans write words about God or from God.
It is interesting that in the biblical account, creation happens developmentally over six days, almost as if there was an ancient intuition of what we would eventually call evolution. Notice that on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, God calls what was created “good” (Genesis 1:9-31); but at the end of the first and second days this statement is missing. The first day is the separation of darkness from light, and the second day is the separation of the heavens above from the earth below (1:3-8). The Bible does not say that God saw that it was good—because their separation was not good! It becomes the very function of religion to put darkness and light, heaven and earth back together in human consciousness. The precise reason that Jesus is the icon of salvation is because he holds these seeming contraries together so beautifully within himself, thus assuring us we can do the same.
Heaven and earth, divinity and humanity, have never really been separate of course, but we think so. The Bible calls this perceived state of separateness “sin”; “naughty” or so-called “bad” actions proceed from this state of consciousness. The essential task of all religion is to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God,” as Paul says (Colossians 3:3). This happens through forgiving and thus loving what first seems to be imperfect, unworthy, excluded, separate, wrong, or sinful. This is how we reunite that which the mind had begun to punish.
The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) described, as only he can, the diversity of our createdness—forgiven and beloved:
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him. [1]
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
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[1] Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty,” Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Poetry, ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford University Press: 1996), 118.Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 15, 29, 32-33.
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"Mythos and Logos"
Monday, February 12, 2018
The Judeo-Christian creation story is told in the form of a cosmic poem (Genesis 1). The realm of myth, art, and poetry can heal and create coherence, connection, and deep trust for the human psyche much better than prose that “tells it like it is.” Rather than orient us toward solving a problem, symbolic language and images turn our focus toward being itself, toward meaning, purpose, and inner life forces. They evoke the depths hidden beneath the practical, self-centered ego, and speak to our personal unconscious—as good therapy does—and our collective unconscious too—as story and myth often do.There are several levels of knowing and interpreting reality—a “hierarchy of truths,” as Pope Francis calls it. [1] Not all truths are of equal importance, which does not mean the lesser ones are untrue. So don’t fight useless battles against them. Something might be true, for example, on a psychological, historical, or mythological level, but not on a universal level. Fundamentalists think the historical level is the “truest” one, yet in many ways literalism is the least important meaning for the soul. Facts may be fascinating, but they seldom change our lives at any deep level. I do believe the “historical-critical” method of interpreting Scripture is a helpful frame [2], without which fundamentalists create a fantasy that looks a lot like their own culture and preferred class perspective.
Scholars since Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) have been making good use of a distinction between logos, or problem-solving language, and mythos. Logos language includes facts, data, evidence, and precise descriptions. Rob Bell describes how “logos language and thinking got us medicine, got us airplanes. . . . For the past three hundred years we have had an explosion of logos language. . . . But the problem is, there are whole dimensions of our existence that require a different way of thinking.”
Bell rightly says, “The Bible is mostly written in mythos language. . . . Good religion traffics in mythos. . . . Mythos language is for that which is more than literally true. . . . Evolutionary science does an excellent job of explaining why I don’t have a tail. It just doesn’t do so well explaining why I find that interesting!” [3] We need mythos language to express the more-than-factual meaning of experiences like falling in love, grief, and death.
Good religion, art, poetry, and myth point us to the deeper levels of truth that logos can’t fully explain. Early Christians knew this; but the Western Church spent the last five centuries trying to prove that the stories in the Bible really happened just as they are described. For some Christians, it’s imperative that the world was created in six literal days, otherwise their entire belief system falls apart. Christianity came to rely heavily on technique, formula, and certitude instead of the more alluring power of story, myth, and narrative. These give room for the soul, mind, and heart to expand. Ironically, from such an open and creative stance, we can actually solve problems much more effectively.
The whole point of Scripture is the transformation of the soul. But when we stopped understanding myth, we stopped understanding how to read and learn from sacred story or Scripture. Children delight in hearing the same fantastical stories over and over again because they are open to awe, mystery, and discovery. Oh that we could all read the creation story with similar childlike wonder and open-heartedness!
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
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[1] Pope Francis reaffirmed this Vatican II teaching (from the Decree on Ecumenism, 11) in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 36, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#_ftn38.[2] Marcus J. Borg gives an overview to this method of Scriptural interpretation in Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but not Literally (HarperSanFrancisco: 2002). For more immediate access, this entry from Encyclopedia Britannica includes links to some general articles on the topic: https://www.britannica.com/topic/historical-criticism-biblical-criticism
[3] Rob Bell, In the Beginning, disc 3 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2014), CD, MP3 download.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Hierarchy of Truths: Jesus’ Use of Scripture (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2013), CD, MP3 download; and
an unpublished talk (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2015).
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"The Story that Defines Us"
Sunday, February 11, 2018
The first book of the Bible, Genesis, is not the Bible’s oldest book. Genesis’ two accounts of creation were compiled in their present form as late as 500 BC. During this period, the Jews were likely in exile in Babylon, where they were exposed to multiple creation stories.Two excellent teacher friends of mine, Walter Wink (1935-2012) and Rob Bell (b. 1970), both describe one of the most popular stories of that time, the Babylonian Enuma Elish. It describes creation happening after a battle between two gods. The male god kills the female god, then tears her body apart and uses half of her to create the heavens and half to create the earth.
Both teachers point out that the driving engine of this story is violence, carnage, and destruction. So, the exiled Jews decided to write down their own oral tradition, surely to stay cohesive as a tribe among all the competing influences from Babylonians and others. In the Judeo-Christian story of Genesis 1, God—who is “Creator” in verse 1, “Spirit” in verse 2, and “Word” in verse 3 (foretastes of what we would eventually call Trinity)—creates from an overflowing abundance of love, joy, and creativity. Humanity’s core question about our origins is whether the engine of creation is violence and destruction or overflowing love, joy, and creativity. Is our starting point love and abundance or is it fear and hatred? How we begin is invariably how we end and how we proceed. Our creation story is important.
The Judeo-Christian creation story says that we were created in the very “image and likeness” of God (Genesis 1:26) out of generative love. The focus is original blessing instead of original sin (which comes two chapters later, in Genesis 3). We are first sent out with cosmic hope rather than a big problem that must be solved. The Holy Spirit holds this divine image within every created thing, and becomes its “soul.” It drives us toward “life, and life more abundantly” (John 10:10). When we start in a positive way instead of with a problem, there is a much greater chance we will remain positive as we move forward. Even the business world today knows that a vision statement must precede and inform the mission statement. As Matthew Fox taught many years ago, Christianity’s contrived “Fall-Redemption” spirituality [1] just keeps digging us into a deeper and deeper hole (my words!). We must return to our original “Creation Spirituality” for the foundational reform of Christianity.
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
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[1] Matthew Fox’s introduction to his book Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality (Tarcher/Putnam: 2000, ©1983) offers detailed overview of this idea.Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 27-28; and
In the Beginning. . . Six Hours with Rob Bell and Richard Rohr on Reclaiming the Original Christian Narrative (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2014), CD, MP3 download.
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"Image and Likeness"
2018 Daily Meditations Theme
God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26)
Richard Rohr explores places in which God’s presence has often been ignored or assumed absent. God’s “image” is our inherent identity in and union with God, an eternal essence that cannot be destroyed. “Likeness” is our personal embodiment of that inner divine image that we have the freedom to develop—or not—throughout our lives. Though we differ in likeness, the imago Dei persists and shines through all created things.
Over the course of this year’s Daily Meditations, discover opportunities to incarnate love in your unique context by unveiling the Image and Likeness of God in all that you see and do.
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God always and forever comes as one who is totally hidden and yet perfectly revealed in the same moment or event. The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. Thus, nature is the first Bible, written approximately 14 billion years before the Bible of words. (Richard Rohr)
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