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Image credit: Fatzael Springs and ancient and modern water system in Fatzael Valley in the west side of Jordan Valley (detail). Photograph by Hanay."Love Summary for the Year: Week 1"
"Heaven: The Home of Love"
Friday, December 23, 2016
Only love can move effectively across boundaries and across cultures. Love is a very real energy, a spiritual life force that is much more powerful than ideas or mere thoughts. Love is endlessly alive, always flowing toward the lower place, and thus life-giving for all, exactly like water. In fact, there is no form of life that does not need water. No wonder water is such a universal spiritual symbol.
When you die, you are precisely the capacity you have developed to give and to receive love. Your recognition of this is your own “final judgment” of yourself, which means you become responsible for what you now see—not shamed or even rewarded, but just deeply responsible. Not surprisingly, this seems to be the universal testimony of people who have gone through near-death experiences—and returned to tell about them.
If you have not received or will not give this gift of love to others, your soul remains tied to a small, empty world which is probably what we mean by hell. God can only give love to those who want it.
If you still need to grow in love and increase your capacity to trust Love, God makes room for immense growth surrounding the death experience itself, which is probably what we mean by purgatory. Time is a mental construct of humans. Why would growth be limited to this part of our lives? God and the soul live in an eternal now.
If you are already at home in love, you will easily and quickly go to the home of love, which is surely what we mean by heaven. There the growth never stops and the wonder never ceases. If life is always change and growth, eternal life must be infinite possibility and growth!
So by all means, every day, and in every way, we must choose to live in love—it is mostly a decision—and even be eager to learn the ever deeper ways of love—which is the unearned grace that follows from the decision!
I can only end with Pope Francis’ plea and question from “The Joy of the Gospel”: “So what are we waiting for?” [1]
Gateway to Silence: Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
References:
[1] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 120.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi(Franciscan Media: 2014), 267-268.-------
Richard Rohr Daily Meditation: "Love: Jesus' Plan" Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 22 December 2016 God can be trusted. Do not be afraid.
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Image credit: Fatzael Springs and ancient and modern water system in Fatzael Valley in the west side of Jordan Valley (detail). Photograph by Hanay."Love Summary for the Year: Week 1"
"Love: Jesus' Plan"
Thursday, December 22, 2016
I’d like to give a simplified summary of what seems to me to be Jesus’ foundational worldview and plan:
God can be trusted. God is like a loving Father or Mother who is involved in our lives and our world. So do not be afraid.
Divine Love has the power to effect lasting and real change. Alignment with such truth is to live under the “Reign of God.” The simple and pure motivation for all morality and religion is simply the imitation of God who is love.
We are transported to this Reign of God through a purifying journey into powerlessness and back. Those who have not gone on such a journey will often misuse divine power. So Jesus taught it directly, walked it through himself, and then invited us to trust this Paschal Mystery in ourselves.
Therefore a disciple needs to learn several lessons:
- To refuse total allegiance (“idolatry”) to all false power, while still working around and with the power structure in service to justice and love.
- To refuse to idealize one’s private self, which props itself up by myths of importance, control, power, money, and wealth.
- To offer ourselves trustfully to a much larger pattern, because our lives are not about us!
Gateway to Silence: Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr with John Bookser Feister, Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount (Franciscan Media: 1996), 170-171.-------
Richard Rohr Daily Meditation: "Love, Our First and Final Home" Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 21 December 2016 Life is not about being correct but about being connected.
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Image credit: Fatzael Springs and ancient and modern water system in Fatzael Valley in the west side of Jordan Valley (detail). Photograph by Hanay."Love Summary for the Year: Week 1"
"Love, Our First and Final Home"
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
(Winter Solstice)Human history is one giant wave of unearned grace, and you are now another wave crashing onto the sands of time, edged forward by the many waves behind you. You are a fully adopted son or daughter in God’s one eternal family. To accept such an objective truth is the only sense in which you need to be a Christian or a believer. It is the best and deepest understanding of how the Risen Christ spreads his forgiving heart through history. It is not a role or office that we are passing on—that is not the meaning of “apostolic succession.” We are passing on the very love of God from age to age. Apostle means one who is “sent,” and we are all sent to advance the history of divine love through space and time.
Saints and mystics such as Francis and Clare of Assisi, Lady Julian of Norwich, and so many others have passed this baton on to those who would receive it. They would not be honored or even interested in us pulling them out of their single place in the eternal divine Flow and making an exception or idol of them. They joined the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) and are most honored by you now getting in line with everybody else, just as they did in their time. We are saved by simply remaining in the one circle of life and love, and not by standing separate or superior.
There is only One Love that will lead and carry you across when you die. If you are already at home with Love here, you will quite readily move into the eternal home of Love, which most of us call heaven. Death is not a changing of worlds, as most imagine, as much as the walls of this world infinitely expanding. If you get love here, you have found the eternal home base and you will easily and naturally live forever.
Life is not about being correct but about being connected. At all costs, stay connected! Our only holiness is by participation and surrender to the Body of Love, not by any private performance contest. This is the joining of hands from generation to generation that can and will change the world. Love is One, and this Love is either shared and passed on or it is not the Great Love at all. The One Love is always eager, and, in fact, such eagerness is precisely the giveaway that we are dealing with something divine and infinite.
Gateway to Silence: Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi(Franciscan Media: 2014), 206-207.-------
Richard Rohr Daily Meditation: "Disciples: Those Who Love Others" Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Tuesday, 20 December 2016 Love is not what you do; it’s how you do it.
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Image credit: Fatzael Springs and ancient and modern water system in Fatzael Valley in the west side of Jordan Valley (detail). Photograph by Hanay."Love Summary for the Year: Week 1"
"Disciples: Those Who Love Others"
Tuesday, December 20, 2016My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. And I’m giving you a new commandment so you’ll know where I am, and who I am: You must love one another.[John 13:33-35 [1]]
Brothers, sisters, it’s not really what we do that matters; it’s the energy with which we do it. To be in love is to be standing in a different space. Love is not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s obvious who’s in love and who isn’t. When you stand in the state of love that Jesus offers, you live inside of a different energy. You’re not entirely self-preoccupied. You try to care for the world. You say, “I have one life and when I leave here, I want to make sure this world is a little better because I was here.” What might happen if we woke up each day with this intention: “How can my existence on this earth increase the quality of life on this planet?”
Jesus says, “I’ll be with you only a little while longer. So I’m going to leave a sign that I’m still here. I’m going to reveal myself in the presence of loving people.” That’s the only way anyone can know God. If you’ve never let anyone love you, if you’ve never let love flow through you—gratuitously, generously, undeservedly—toward other people, you can’t possibly know who God is. God is just a theory or abstraction. But “God is love” (1 John 4:8). And those who live in love live in God and know God experientially. There’s no other way you can know who God is, and who you are, but to love (Genesis 1:26-27). Take that as an absolute!
God is not saying, “I demand this of you.” Rather, God is saying, “I invite you into this mystery of who you already are in me.” Love is not something you decide to do now and then. Love is who you are! Your basic, foundational existence—created in the image of the Trinity—is love. Remember, Trinity is saying that God is not an isolated divine being; God is a quality of relationship itself, an event of communion, an infinite flow of outpouring. God is an action more than a substance, to put it succinctly.
Love, like forgiveness, is a decision. It’s a decision in your mind and in your heart. And you’d better make it early in the day, because once you’re a few hours into resentment, it’s too late. Already you’re angry at your husband or wife, and you’re upset because the paper boy didn’t deliver your newspaper. You see, when you’re not in love, you’ll use any excuse you can to be unhappy. You’ll use any excuse to be irritated. But you were unhappy before your husband or wife did anything or didn’t do anything, before the paperboy came or didn’t come. You were already unhappy, and they just occasioned it. The exact object for your unhappiness is actually arbitrary and illogical. Unhappiness just needs an object—and so does happiness and love. You have to recognize ahead of time when you are not living in love. This is surely why morning prayer is so important.
Gateway to Silence: Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
References:[1] John 13:33-35, Richard Rohr paraphrase.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Love Is Not What as Much as How,” homily, April 24, 2016, https://cac.org/love-not-much/.-------
Richard Rohr Daily Meditation: "Transmitting Love" Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 19 December 2016 Love is caught more than it is taught
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Image credit: Fatzael Springs and ancient and modern water system in Fatzael Valley in the west side of Jordan Valley (detail). Photograph by Hanay."Love Summary for the Year: Week 1"
"Transmitting Love"
Monday, December 19, 2016
Love is not love until you stop expecting something back. The moment you want something in return for your giving, love is weakened and prostituted. This is the nature of the divine energy that transforms: love is always flowing outward, it is inherently contagious, and it is holiness itself.
The contemplative, non-dual mind inherently creates a great “communion of saints,” which is so scattered, hidden, and amorphous that no one can say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” but instead it is always “among you” (Luke 17:21)—invisible and uninteresting to most, but obvious and ecstatic to the few who seek (Matthew 22:14).
From the Trinity to Jesus, the energetic movement begins; from Jesus this communion continues visibly in time through people like Francis and Clare, Bonaventure and Scotus, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and Pope Francis. But the vast majority of unified souls are unknown to history books. We ourselves are part of this one great parade, “partners in God’s triumphal procession,” as Paul calls it, “spreading the knowledge of God like a sweet smell everywhere” (2 Corinthians 2:14). It is much more a transmission of authentic life and love than of correct ideas or doctrines. This is my understanding of “apostolic succession,” much more than bishops laying their hands on one another.
I think the genius of the Dalai Lama and Buddhism is that they do not get lost in metaphysics and argumentation about dogmas and doctrines. As the Dalai Lama writes, “The essence of all religions is love, compassion, and tolerance. Kindness is my true religion.” [1] We could dismiss that as mere lightweight thinking, until we remember that Jesus said the same: “This is my commandment: You must love one another” (John 13:34; 15:12). It is our religion, too, or at least it should have been.
The Dalai Lama is not saying anything we do not already know on some level. Mother Teresa offered simple wisdom; people would go away quoting her, adding that their lives had been changed. Contemplation leads you to have simple, clear eyes, common-sense faith, and loving energy that makes whatever you say quite compelling. Ironically, it also allows you to deal with complex issues with the same simplicity and forthrightness, as we now see in Pope Francis.
It seems we all need to encounter people who are able to operate as an example, a model. The East has always recognized that transmission of spirituality takes place through living models, whom they call gurus, sanyasis, pandits, or avatars. This is why the Catholic and Orthodox traditions honor saints. Love is caught more than it is taught. You cannot learn how to love through concepts, ideas, and commandments. You need to see and feel a living, loving incarnation. “She is doing it. He exemplifies it. It is therefore possible for me, too.” It is almost more a taste, a smell, or a touch than an idea. Recent Christianity has relied far too much on ideas instead of living models. Sincere believers can smell holiness, even when the words might seem unorthodox. They can also smell unholiness from people who seem to do religion perfectly.
Gateway to Silence: Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
References:[1] His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, “Love, Compassion, and Tolerance” in Handbook for the Spirit, eds. Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008, ©1997), 3.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi(Franciscan Media: 2014), 204-205; and
Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation (Franciscan Media: 2014), 67-68.-------
The contemplative-active journey can be a lonely one.
CAC offers self-paced, online courses to connect seekers from around the world through Father Richard Rohr’s teachings.
IMMORTAL DIAMOND: A Study in Search of the True Self
February 1–April 12, 2017
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Center for Action and Contemplation
1823 Five Points Road South West (physical)
PO Box 12464 (mailing)
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States
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1823 Five Points Road South West (physical)
PO Box 12464 (mailing)
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States
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