The Richard Rohr Meditation: "Participating in Creation" The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United for Thursday, 1 March 2018

The Richard Rohr Meditation: "Participating in Creation" The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United for Thursday, 1 March 2018

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Nine: "Evolution"

"Participating in Creation"

Thursday, March 1, 2018

In her book, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World, the little- known but outstanding theologian Beatrice Bruteau (1930-2014) makes some excellent points about why contemplatives ought to embrace evolution:
People who identify themselves as contemplatives may shy away from science for a number of reasons. . . . They may feel that it’s too impersonal, has no human warmth. It’s too technical, too abstract, doesn’t have immediate emotional appeal. . . .
Before we consider whether we are interested in the scientific study of this universe, let us ask whether God is “interested in” the universe, how it is structured, how it works, how it’s developing. If we believe in a Creator-God, who is still in the act of creating this universe, how can we pretend to be interested in God but not interested in what God is doing, in what (presumably) God is interested in? And if we were to attain our contemplative ideal of sharing in the divine life, would we not be sharing in the activity of creating the universe?
The conclusion seems to be that to share in the divine life I must accept the vocation of consciously living in this self-creating universe. . . . [This] means that I need to know something about the whole thing, how it works, how it’s moving, how to take my place in it, make my meaningful contribution to this general improvisation.
Joining in the creative work is really central to the whole contemplative enterprise. Cosmogenesis—the generation of the cosmos—can be seen, as Teilhard de Chardin saw it, as “Christogenesis,” the growth of the “ever greater Christ.” [1] This Christ has been “growing in stature and wisdom” (Luke 2:52; read “complexity and consciousness”) these last dozen or so billion years and is nowhere near finished yet.
So there are two motivations for including some knowledge of science in our contemplative lives: one, we need to understand God’s artistic work in order to appreciate it properly and relate lovingly to the Creator; two, we need to know something of the work in order to join it, to participate in creating the world from here on. This last is the real way of loving, that is, by joining in the life of the beloved.
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] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Letters from a Traveller (Harper & Row: 1962), 133, 305.
Beatrice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 1997), 11-12.
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The Richard Rohr Meditation: "Evolutionary Thinking" The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 28 February 2018

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Nine: "Evolution"

"Evolutionary Thinking"

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

The debate about evolution took center stage in the United States during the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial (The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes). With typical dualistic thinking, science was simplistically pitted against religion, and people took one side or the other, with little clarification of terms, meaning, or purpose.
The Scopes Monkey Trial might symbolize the beginning of the culture wars we still suffer today, with naïve presentations of two seeming opposite positions—neither well-defined, but simply providing banners and loyalty tests for both groups. In my parents’ generation, when many people often had fewer years of formal education, this false dilemma was commonly presented as, “Did we come from monkeys or did God create us?” Good Christians righteously shouted “God!” thinking God needed their support, and scientific-minded people who had a bone to pick with religion shouted “Monkeys!” What a waste of good minds and hearts!
In 1925, there was little knowledge of contemplation and few were teaching or exemplifying non-dual thinking in Western Christianity (though Native Americans, Buddhists, and other traditions were well acquainted with it). We missed out on what could have been decades of fruitful discussion and enlightenment. We had all been trained to argue and prove ourselves right—both believers and scientists—rather than to dialogue with and truly understand each other. For most of the last century, in many Christian circles, the very term evolution was a code word used to expose and condemn enemies and infidels. It was a false test-case.
A little calm, clear, and biblical thinking could have come up with a third response beyond the two false “alternatives.” What if God creates things that continue to create themselves? That seems like Divine Imagination to me! In such a paradigm, God “turns everything to good by working together with all things. . . . The ones God chose so long ago, which God intended to become true images of God’s Son” (Romans 8:28-29).
Contemplative practice allows us to be content and even happy without fully resolving a seeming problem. It allows us to tolerate ambiguity and mystery. How else can we ever know God? Contemplative practice allows something much better and more healing for all concerned. We can learn how to hold a creative tension as we patiently wait for more insight, compassion, scholarship, and a larger or different frame for the question. The contemplative person can observe and love with their mind, heart, and body at the same time. The reduction to purely rational knowing didn’t begin until the seventeenth century. Now science can observe neural activity, revealing that there is a “heart mind” and a “body mind.” [1]
Evolutionary thinking is actually contemplative thinking because it leaves the full field of the future in God’s hands and agrees to humbly hold the present with its current, tentative knowledge. Evolutionary thinking agrees to both knowing and not knowing, at the same time.
Evolutionary thinking sends us on a trajectory, where the ride is itself the destination, and the goal is never clearly in sight. To stay on the ride, to trust the trajectory, to know it is moving somewhere better is just another way to describe the biblical notion of faith. This is the best and truest way to think.
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] See Doc Lew Childre and Howard Martin, with Donna Beech, The HeartMath Solution(HarperSanFrancisco: 1999).
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Evolution Is Another Name for Growth,” “Evolutionary Thinking,” Oneing, vol. 4, no. 2 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2016), 113-116.
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The Richard Rohr Meditation: "An Unfolding Future" The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Tuesday, 27 February 2018
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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Nine: "Evolution"

"An Unfolding Future"

Tuesday, February 27, 2018
To fight the concept of evolution is to fight the core meaning of biblical faith, which is a generous balancing act between knowing and not knowing. Unbelief is to insist on total knowing now—by myself! As people of faith, we believe that God is guiding this mysterious universe, although much is hidden from us, both in the past and the future. “Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and the human heart has not conceived, what God has prepared for those who love God” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Judeo-Christian believers, in particular, should have been the first to understand and promote a philosophy of progress because they had an Absolute Source and Goal to ground the trajectory.
In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) published his findings that revealed the universe was expanding. Many began to imagine that if the biggest frame of reference—the cosmos—was still unfolding, then maybe that is the pattern of everything. The latest evidence shows that this expansion is even happening at an ever-increasing rate! It seems to mirror the increasing rate of change with each new technological and scientific breakthrough. This rapid change is scary and unsettling. I can see why people are panicking and trying to find some solid ground, a fixed point to the turning world. Fundamentalist religion and identity politics seem to be running the show now, and I can even understand that. But God has never “circled the wagons” to regain control and stability. God only moves in every larger spheres and orbits, which is what we mean by calling God infinite, eternal, or almighty.
I have no knowledge of where the universe story might be fully or finally heading, but I can see what it has already revealed with great clarity—that knowledge builds on itself, is cumulative, and is always moving outward toward ever-greater discovery. People who cling to the past and resist change have a hard time participating in God’s and their own future. Perhaps this is an appropriate application of Jesus’ somewhat problematic words, “Anyone who has will be given more . . . but anyone who has not, will lose what little he has” (see Matthew 25:29). This is only true in the realm of spirit and wisdom which increase and evolve with use. Material reality decreases with usage, which is why our consumer worldview is unsustainable.
In the words of Thomas Keating,

There seems to be an intent or a plan in creation to bring into manifestations revelations of the Unknowable One that awaken in us the greater and greater capacity to love. . . . Evolutionary consciousness is extremely important . . . and science has vastly increased the understanding of how the immensity of the universe continues to expand and how its infinitesimal quality continues to unfold.

God is more and more trying to move the human race to the next stage of consciousness beyond the rational, technological, dominating worldview . . . recognizing the truth that there is only one self ultimately and this is God manifesting in us. [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] Thomas Keating with Carl J. Arico, God Is Love: The Heart of All Creation Guidebook (Contemplative Outreach: 2016), 22, https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/product/god-love-%E2%80%93-heart-all-creation-guidebook.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Evolution Is Another Name for Growth,” “Evolutionary Thinking,” Oneing, vol. 4, no. 2 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2016), 111-112.

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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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“If we are created in the image and likeness of God, then whatever good, true, or beautiful things we can say about humanity or creation we can also say of God—but they’re even more true! God is the beauty of creation and humanity multiplied to the infinite power.” (Richard Rohr)

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