Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Ten: "The Natural World"
"Living Peacefully on Earth"Friday, March 9, 2018
To live nonviolently—both toward humans and nature—requires that we recognize God’s image in each living thing. We cannot be violent toward someone or something when we see the divine in them. My friend and nonviolent activist John Dear recently published a new book, They Will Inherit the Earth, from which I’d like to share today.
Over the decades, I have witnessed the destruction we humans have done to Mother Earth and her creatures. I’ve read about catastrophic climate change and experienced the changes—the droughts, the strange weather, the extreme fires and tornadoes and rainfall. . . . I grieve for Mother Earth and the creatures who die because of our systemic greed, violence, and destructive habits. But I never made or felt the connection between my vision of nonviolence and the ongoing destruction of Mother Earth. Until now. . . .
“Blessed are the meek,” Jesus says in the Beatitudes. Thomas Merton wrote that “meekness” is the biblical word for nonviolence. “Blessed are the nonviolent,” Jesus is saying. . . . “They will inherit the earth.” . . . A life of nonviolence leads to oneness with creation and her creatures.
A life of violence, of course, leads to an abrupt discord with creation. In a time of permanent warfare, nuclear weapons, and catastrophic climate change, the message couldn’t be clearer. The God of peace, the nonviolent Jesus, and his Holy Spirit call us to practice nonviolence. In that way, we’ll renounce and stop our environmental destruction, tend our Garden of Eden together, and restore creation to its rightful peace. In the process, we will discover peace with one another and all the creatures. . . .
This is the journey we are all called to live, to make the connection between active nonviolence and oneness with creation, so that we all might dwell peacefully in this paradise. . . . I [see] not just the vision of peace and nonviolence, but the vision of a new creation, where we all live as one in peace with one another, Mother Earth and her glorious creatures. It’s that vision of peace, nonviolence, and the new creation, the vision of the promised land before us, the practice of proactive nonviolence, that offers a way out of environmental destruction, as well as permanent war, corporate greed, systemic racism, and extreme poverty.
All we have to do is open our eyes to the reality of creation before us, to be present to it, to take it in and honor it, and welcome its gift of peace—and do so within the boundaries of nonviolence. In that present moment of peace, a new creation is offered to us once again.
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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John Dear, They Will Inherit the Earth: Peace and Nonviolence in a Time of Climate Change (Orbis Books: 2018), 2-3. Join Fr. Dear for a conversation next Tuesday, March 13, on Facebook (see below today’s meditation for details).***
"Created to Love"
Thursday, March 8, 2018
In the fourth century, St. Augustine (354-430), an official “Doctor of the Church” (meaning he can be reliably trusted) in both Eastern and Western churches, said, “the church consists in the state of communion of the whole world.” [1] What an amazing and inclusive line, based on his Trinitarian theology (which lagged in later centuries). Wherever we are connected, in right relationship—you might say “in love”—there is the life of God flowing freely, there is the authentic image or body of God revealed. This body is more a living organism than any formal organization, denomination, or church group. As Jesus puts it, “Do not believe those who say, ‘Look here! or Look there!’” (Luke 17:23) because the Reign of God can never be contained or fully localized in one place.
Non-human creation is invariably obedient and loyal to its destiny. Animals and plants seem to excitedly take their small place in the “circle of life,” in the balance of nature, in the dance of complete interdependence. It is only we humans who have resisted our place in “the one great act of giving birth” (see Romans 8:22), even though we had the role of consciousness. Instead, we have been largely unconscious, senselessly participating in the death of our own and other species. We are, by far, the most destructive of any animal. As St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179, also a Doctor of the Church) writes:
Human beings alone are capable of disobeying God’s laws, because they try to be wiser than God. . . . Other creatures fulfill the commandments of God; they honor [God’s] laws. . . . But human beings rebel against those laws, defying them in word and action. And in doing so they inflict terrible cruelty on the rest of God’s creation. [2]
In poetry, Gerard Manley Hopkins proudly affirms “each mortal thing” as having a soul, not just humans.
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
. . . myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came. [3]
Jesus taught that if we would “first seek God’s Reign” (Matthew 6:33), and obey his command to “love God and love one another” (Matthew 22:37-40), all the rest would take care of itself. We would no longer defy the laws of nature but seek to live in harmony and sustainability with Earth and all her creatures. This radical lifestyle demands a deep sense of the inherent dignity of all things. We cannot pick and choose who has inherent dignity and who does not.We must all firmly know that grace is inherent to creation, not an occasional additive. God’s goodness—not Adam’s sin nor some catastrophic Armageddon—has the first and final word. We thus begin in hope and end in hope, without which history has no purpose, motive, or goal—and love comes with great difficulty.
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] Augustine, “Ecclesiam in totius orbis communion consistere,” from De unitate ecclesiae (On the unity of the Church), XX, 56.[2] Hildegard of Bingen: Devotions, Prayers & Living Wisdom, ed. Mirabai Starr (Read How You Want: 2008), 43-44.
[3] Gerard Manley Hopkins, “When Kingfishers Catch Fire,” Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics: 1985), 51.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Creation as the Body of God,” in Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, ed. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (The Golden Sufi Center: 2013), 2.
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News from the CAC
A Conversation with John Dear
Tuesday, March 13
5:00 p.m. U.S. Mountain Time
Facebook LIVE
Join us as Nobel Peace Prize nominee and longtime friend of the CAC, Fr. John Dear, previews his new book, They Will Inherit the Earth: Peace & Nonviolence in a Time of Climate Change.
The conversation will take place on CAC's Facebook page where a vibrant contemplative community is emerging. We invite you to pose questions for Fr. Dear, share your own inner wisdom, and be companioned by a "communion of saints" in this virtual space. Come find us on Facebook!
Note: You do not need a Facebook account to watch the video, but a Facebook login is required to comment or post a question.
"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.
Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Click the video to learn more about the theme and to find meditations you may have missed.
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Image credit: Two Crabs (detail), by Vincent van Gogh, 1889, Faggionato Fine Arts, London, England.
Every day we have opportunities to reconnect with God through an encounter with nature, whether an ordinary sunrise, a starling on a power line, a tree in a park, or a cloud in the sky. This spirituality doesn’t depend on education or belief. It almost entirely depends on our capacity for simple presence. (Richard Rohr)
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