Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Summary: Week Twenty-six: "Economy"
June 24 - June 29, 2018
There is no authentic God experience that does not situate you in the world in a different way. You see things differently, and you have the security to be free from your usual loyalties: privilege, position, group, and economy. (Sunday)What is Western culture’s primary frame of reference? Money and power seem to come first. The dominant system in our society is production and consumption. (Monday)
God is bought and sold more than loved, waited for, or surrendered to. This is why Jesus’ anger (and even destruction of property) was aimed at those selling and buying in the temple. (Tuesday)
Contemplative practice helps me hold the tension of suffering with my responsibility to participate in its healing. (Wednesday)
We are faced with a paradox. On the one hand money is properly a token of gratitude and trust, and agent of the meeting of gifts and needs. . . . As such it should make us all richer. Yet it does not. Instead, it has brought insecurity, poverty, and the liquidation of our cultural and natural commons. (Charles Eisenstein) (Thursday)
Jesus invites us to stand in solidarity with the poor. We must come close to real people who are hurting. We then can amplify their authentic stories of suffering and cries for change. (Friday)
"Practice: Solidarity with Suffering"
For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. (Mark 14:7)
This verse is often used as an excuse to do nothing about poverty. In fact, Jesus is calling us to live in solidarity with suffering! My friend Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, explains the context and meaning of this verse.
They are at the dinner table with a leper, and Jesus is making an assumption about his disciples’ continuing proximity to the poor. He is saying, in effect, “Look, you will always have the poor with you” because you are my disciples. You know who we spend our time with, who we share meals with, who listens to our message, who we focus our attention on. You’ve been watching me, and you know what my priorities are. You know who comes first in the kingdom of God. So, you will always be near the poor, you’ll always be with them, and you will always have the opportunity to share with them. . . .
The critical difference between Jesus’s disciples and a middle-class church is precisely this: our lack of proximity to the poor. . . . The middle-class church doesn’t know the poor and they don’t know us. . . . So [we] merely speculate on the reasons for their condition, often placing the blame on the poor themselves. [1]
Jim says that “social location often determines biblical interpretation.” No wonder many well-off Christians miss the emphasis on justice, simplicity, and equality throughout Scripture!Let’s take the meaning of solidarity with suffering even deeper. The outer poverty, injustice, and absurdity we see when we look around us mirrors our own inner poverty, injustice, and absurdity. The poor person outside is an invitation to the poor man or woman inside. As we learn compassion and sympathy for the brokenness of things, when we encounter the visible icon of the painful mystery in “the little ones,” then we’ll learn compassion and sympathy for our own “little one,” the brokenness within.
Each time I was recovering from cancer, I had to sit with my own broken absurdity as I’ve done with others at the jail or hospital or sick bed. The suffering person’s poverty is visible and extraverted; mine is invisible and interior, but just as real. I think that’s why Jesus said we have to recognize Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters. It was for our redemption, our liberation, our healing—not just to “help” others and pad our spiritual resume.
When we see it over there, we become freed in here, and we also become less judgmental. I can’t hate the person on welfare when I realize I’m on God’s welfare. It all becomes one truth; the inner and the outer reflect one another. As compassion and sympathy flow out of us to any marginalized person, wounds are bandaged—both theirs and ours.
***
[1] Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (Harper Collins: 2005, 2006), 210-211.Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, eds. Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books: 2018), 178.
Image Credit: Oil Slick in the Timor Sea, September 2009 (detail), NASA Earth Conservatory, US Government.
For Further Study:
- Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift & Society in the Age of Transition (Evolver Editions: 2011)
- Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability, Revised Edition (Harper Business: 1993, 2010)
- Richard Rohr with John Bookser Feister, Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount (Franciscan Media: 1996)
- The Souls of Poor Folk: Auditing America 50 Years After the Poor People’s Campaign Challenged Racism, Poverty, the War Economy/Militarism and Our National Morality, https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/audit/
- Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (Harper Collins: 2005, 2006)
Thank you for being part of CAC’s contemplative community. You are one of 319,478 readers worldwide (as of June 2018).
News from the CAC
Back in Stock: Just This
This small book of contemplative wisdom and practices by Father Richard has been hard to keep on the shelves! We’re glad to see it finding its way to so many readers. If you’ve been waiting to order Just This for yourself or friends, now’s your chance! Just $10 per copy at store.cac.org.
Summer Break
Note that our offices and Visitor Center will be closed June 30-July 4. The online bookstore will remain open during this period. Admissions to the 2019-2021 Living School program open July 5 (visit cac.org/living-school to learn more).
"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.
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations are made possible through the generosity of CAC's donors. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation.
If you would like to change how often you receive emails from CAC, click here. If you would like to change your email address, click here. Visit our Email Subscription FAQ page for more information. Submit an inquiry here for additional assistance.
Inspiration for this week's banner image:
It was inconceivable that the vast plains and forests . . . could be exhausted, or that the abundant new fuels of coal could produce enough waste to foul the air and the seas, or that the use of oil could eventually lead to global climate change. (Paul Hawken)
© 2018 | Center for Action and Contemplation
Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
***
No comments:
Post a Comment