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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Everything Belongs: Week 1"
"Summary: Sunday, November 27-Friday, December 2, 2016"
To develop a healthy ego, we must differentiate and individuate; we must know we’re special and find a place where we are loved and where we belong without needing to prove ourselves. (Sunday)
The first function of religion is to create “meaning for the separate self.” The second and mature function is to help individuals transcend that very self.(Monday)
God is also another word for everything. God created everything and is in sympathetic union with everything God created. (Tuesday)
Only when we live and see through God’s eyes can “everything belong.” All other systems exclude, expel, punish, and protect to find identity for their members in some kind of ideological perfection or purity. (Wednesday)
As we grow in wisdom, we realize that everything belongs and everything can be received. We see that life and death are not opposites. (Thursday)
When we don’t know love, when we experience only the insecurity and fragility of the small self, we become restless, violent, and hateful. But in contemplation we move to a different space where we see the illusion of separateness. (Friday)
"Practice: Walking Meditation"
Jonathon Stalls, a Living School student and founder of Walk2Connect, writes about learning how “we share a common journey of wanting to love and be loved; that we want to feel safe, comfortable, and connected; that we want to belong—somewhere. . . . We’re afraid of exposure and vulnerability. We’re afraid of the unknown. We’re afraid to be wrong. We’re afraid of abandonment. We’re afraid of weakness, of truly trusting, and the fragility of letting go.” [1]
Stalls offers this wisdom from Thich Nhat Hanh:
When we practice [mindfulness], we are liberated from fear, sorrow, and the fires burning inside of us. When mindfulness embraces our joy, our sadness, and all our other mental formations, sooner or later we will see their deep roots. With every mindful step and every mindful breath, we see the roots of our mental formations. Mindfulness shines its light upon them and helps them to transform. [2]
Stalls continues:
I can’t think of a better way to bring mindfulness practice into our body and into the outside world than through walking, strolling, or rolling at one to three miles an hour. It changes everything. It trains us, both on the inside and the outside, to begin seeing God, the Great Spirit, in ourselves and in others in such foundational ways. This humble posture invites us into the fragile details behind our own breath, the curious creatures high in the trees, and the struggle in being a pedestrian in today’s time. Whether it’s twenty minutes or four hours, mindful walking can invite new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new ways of understanding with every step. [3]
I invite you to step outside and walk mindfully, present to God’s presence in all things.Gateway to Silence: Everything—yes, everything—belongs.
References:[1] Jonathon Stalls, “What Really Frightens Us?” “Evolutionary Thinking,” Oneing, Vol. 4, No. 2 (CAC: 2016), 99-100. Learn more about Jonathon’s work at walk2connect.com.
[2] Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (Berkeley: Broadway Books, 1999), 75.
[3] Stalls, “What Really Frightens Us?”, 100.
For Further Study:Richard Rohr, CONSPIRE 2016: Everything Belongs (CAC: 2016), MP4 download
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003)
Richard Rohr, How Do We Get Everything to Belong? (CAC: 2004), CD, MP3 download
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Contemplative Seeing" Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Friday, 2 December 2016 My life is not about me; it is about God, and God is about love.
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"Everything Belongs: Week 1"
"Contemplative Seeing"
Friday, December 2, 2016
Spirituality is about seeing—seeing things in their wholeness, which can only be done through the lens of our own wholeness. That is the key! It’s about taking responsibility for our way of relating to things rather than aiming for any kind of perfect results or necessary requirements. Once you see skillfully, the rest follows. You don’t need to push the river, because you are already in it. The One Life is living itself within us, and we learn how to say yes to that one shared life, which includes both the good and the bad sides of everything. This Divine Life is so large, deep, and spacious that it even includes its seeming opposite, death. This one, great life does not end, it merely changes. This is true in the entire physical world, and Jesus tells us it is true in the spiritual world too.
My life is not about me; it is about God, and God is about love. When we don’t know love, when we experience only the insecurity and fragility of the small self, we become restless, violent, and hateful. But in contemplation we move to a different space where we see the illusion of separateness. We experience what my recently deceased friend Sister Paula Gonzalez referred to as “a self surrounded by a semipermeable membrane.” There’s a constant flow, in both directions, through that membrane.
The older we get, the more we’ve been betrayed, hurt, and disappointed (and this is “part of the deal,” according to the Buddha!); most of us learn to put up many barriers and resistances to love without even knowing it. This is why the healing work of spiritual practices is so necessary.
Notice how most of Jesus’ ministry is about healing people (yet I grew up in a church that hardly used the word “healing”). Notice also how many of those healings have to do with blindness, chosen blindness (John 9:41), the gradual healing of blindness (Mark 8:22-26), and the distorted worldviews that come from chosen blindness (Luke 6:39-42). Why? Because the contemplative mind is able to see fully and freely, which is to be healed of its hurts, unforgiveness, and agendas which always get in the way.
For years, I would begin my classes on the contemplative mind by repeating the same sentence twice: “Most people do not see things as they are because they see things as they are!” Which is not to see at all. Their many self-created filters keep them from seeing with any clear vision. The whole of life is almost perfectly calibrated to get you out of your own way, which is normally achieved by having to give up control or through a persistent sadness, pain, or fear. Notice how the blind people invariably cry out to Jesus “Lord have pity on me” (Luke 18:39). From our pitiable state, what the recovery movement calls “powerlessness,” we can often recognize that we are our own worst enemy, and from that humiliation, we can learn how to see and love things as they are—and not just as we want them to be.
Gateway to Silence: Everything—yes, everything—belongs
References:
[1] See Richard Rohr’s meditation “All-Inclusive, All-Pervading,” November 1, 2016.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 33-34, 40, 58-59, 80.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: Growing into Belonging from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 1 December 2016 As we grow in wisdom, we realize that everything belongs and everything can be received.
"Everything Belongs: Week 1"
Growing into Belonging
Thursday, December 1, 2016
As we grow spiritually, we discover that we are not as separate as we thought we were. Separation from God, self, and others was a deep and tragic illusion. As we grow into deeper connection and union, the things that once brought meaning and happiness to our small self no longer satisfy us. We tried to create artificial fullness through many kinds of addictive behavior, but still feel empty and nothing, if we are honest. We need much more nutritious food to feed our Bigger Self; mere entertainments, time-fillers, diversions, and distractions will no longer work.
At the more mature stages of life, we are even able to allow the painful and the formerly excluded parts gradually belong to a slowly growing and unified field. This shows itself as a foundational compassion, especially toward all things different and those many people who “never had a chance.” If you have forgiven yourself for being imperfect, you can now do it for everybody else too. If you have not forgiven yourself, I am afraid you will likely pass on your sadness, absurdity, judgment, and futility to others. “What comes around goes around.”
Many who are judgmental and unforgiving seem to have missed out on the joy and clarity of the first childhood simplicity, perhaps avoided the suffering of the mid-life complexity, and thus lost the great freedom and magnanimity of the second simplicity as well. We need to hold together all of the stages of life, and for some strange, wonderful reason, it all becomes quite “simple” as we approach our later years. The great irony is that we must go through a lot of complexity and disorder (another word for necessary suffering) to return to the second simplicity. There is no nonstop flight from first to second naiveté, from initial order to resurrection. We must go through the pain of disorder to grow up and switch our loyalties from self to God. Most people just try to maintain their initial “order” at all costs, even if it is killing them.
As we grow in wisdom, we realize that everything belongs and everything can be received. We see that life and death are not opposites. They do not cancel one another out; neither do goodness and badness. There is now room for everything to belong. A radical, almost nonsensical “okayness” characterizes the mature believer, which is why we are often called “holy fools.” We don’t have to deny, dismiss, defy, or ignore reality anymore. What is, is gradually okay. What is, is the greatest of teachers. At the bottom of all reality is always a deep goodness, or what Merton called “a hidden wholeness.” [1
Gateway to Silence: Everything—yes, everything—belongs.
References:
[1] Thomas Merton, “Hagia Sophia,” Ramparts Magazine (March 1963), 66.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life(Jossey-Bass: 2011), 113-115;
Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 55-56, 61; and
How Do We Get Everything to Belong? disc 3 (CAC: 2004), CD, MP3 download.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "You Belong" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 30 November 2016 Only when we live and see through God’s eyes can “everything belong.”
"Everything Belongs: Week 1"
"You Belong"
Wednesday, November 30, 2016I believe that we have no real access to who we fully are except in God. Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, and much more than we think we are. Only when we live and see through God’s eyes can “everything belong.” All other systems exclude, expel, punish, and protect to find identity for their members in some kind of ideological perfection or purity. The contaminating element always has to be searched out, isolated, and often punished. This wasted effort keeps us from the centrally important task of love and union.
As we read yesterday, St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) had a very positive view of God and the world. In his philosophy and theology we have a coherent and grounded meaning that our world no longer enjoys—yet still longs for. Most people today are not sure where we come from, who we are, and where we are going; and most no longer seem to care about such questions. Some call this postmodernism.
The Cosmic Christ is the blueprint of reality, bringing all of history—from before the Big Bang to the end of time—to wholeness. Paraphrasing Paul’s words to the Colossians (chapter 1), “God made absolute fullness reside in him.” Christ is the distillation and “corporate personality” for all of created reality, the symbolic stand-in for everything, as it were. Paul goes on to say “in Christ, everything is reconciled. God holds all things together in him.” This means there’s no ground for hating or excluding or torturing anyone, because we all belong to God, even our enemies, which is why Jesus tells us we must love them.
When God looks at us, God can only see “Christ” in us. Yet it’s hard—for us!—to be naked and vulnerable and allow ourselves to be seen so deeply. It is hard to simply receive God’s loving and all-accepting gaze. We feel unworthy and ashamed. The very essence of all faith is to trust the gaze and then complete the circuit of mutual friendship. “The eye with which I see God is the same one with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love,” as Meister Eckhart says. [1]
When you go to your place of prayer, don’t try to think too much or manufacture feelings or sensations. Don’t worry about what words you should say or what posture you should take. It’s not about you or what you do. Simply allow Love to look at you—and trust what God sees! God just keeps looking at you and loving you center to center. Hinduism called this darshan, the practice of going to the temple—not to see the deity, but to allow yourself to be fully and lovingly seen. Try reversing the engines. This reversal is the triumph and victory of grace.
Gateway to Silence: Everything—yes, everything—belongs.
References:
[1] Johannes Eckhart, Meister Eckhart’s Sermons, Sermon IV, “True Hearing,” http://www.ccel.org/ccel/eckhart/sermons.vii.html, 32-33.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 26;
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 167; and
How Do We Get Everything to Belong? disc 3 (CAC: 2004), CD, MP3 download.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "God Must Belong Too" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Tuesday, 29 November 2016
"Everything Belongs: Week 1"
"God Must Belong Too"
Tuesday, November 29, 2016All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas [or Richard or Joan or Sam] or the world or life or death or the present or the future. All of them belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.[1 Corinthians 3:22]
God is also another word for everything. God created everything and is in sympathetic union with everything God created. St. Bonaventure (1221-1274), a Doctor of the Church, said that his entire life’s theology could be summed up in three sacred ideas:
- Emanation: We come forth from God bearing the divine image, and thus our DNA is always grounded in the life of God (Genesis 1:26-27).
- Exemplarism: Everything in creation is an example, manifestation, and illustration of God in space and time (Romans 1:20).
- Consummation: All returns to the Source from which it came (John 14:3). The Omega is the same as the Alpha and this is God’s supreme and final victory.
Gateway to Silence: Everything—yes, everything—belongs.
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, CONSPIRE 2016: Everything Belongs, sessions 1 and 2a (CAC: 2016), MP4 download; and
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 166.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Mature Spirituality" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 28 November 2016 The mind of Christ can live with paradox, uncertainty, and mystery.
"Everything Belongs: Week 1"
"Mature Spirituality"
Monday, November 28, 2016As I shared yesterday, Ken Wilber sees religion as having two primary functions. The first is to create “meaning for the separate self.” The second and mature function of religion is to help individuals transcend that very self. [1] Great religion seeks full awareness and expanded consciousness (often called “holiness”) so that we can, in fact, both give and receive in equal measure. For me, this is the simplest sign of emotional and spiritual health. Things can be both received and also let go of—exactly as it is between the three persons of the Trinity. Remember, I believe the Trinity sets the pattern for all creation and all growth into Love. Trinity is the ultimate code breaker!
Although the majority of religions and individuals remain at the first stage of creating meaning for the separate self, I continue to find people inside every religion and profession who are on the true further journey. These are the ones who have “died before they die,” who have let great love, suffering, or prayer lead them beyond their small self into the Big Self. They have let go of who they thought they were, or needed to be, to discover who they always were in God.
The second function and goal of religion, Wilber says, “does not fortify the separate self, but utterly shatters it.” Mature spirituality offers “not consolation but devastation, not entrenchment but emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but revolution.” [2] Rather than bolster our habitual patterns of thinking, it radically transforms our consciousness and gives us what Paul calls “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
The mind of Christ is not binary, either/or thinking. The mind of Christ can live with paradox, uncertainty, and mystery. This way of not knowing, and not even needing to know, is precisely what we mean by Biblical faith. In the first half of our lives (not strictly chronological!), we are largely not ready to understand what faith is, because we still cling to naïve beliefs and false certainties. We need them to get us started! In the first half of life we are still afraid of darkness and “the cross.”
In time, through trials, suffering, and prayer, we will allow ourselves to be broken open to the Larger Knowing that can hold everything in love, grace, and freedom. Only at that point do we move from mere religion to the beginnings of a spiritual journey that will help us and the world.
Gateway to Silence: Everything—yes, everything—belongs.
[1] See Ken Wilber, The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader (Shambhala: 1998), 140-43.
[2] Ibid., 140.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 55, 159; and
How Do We Get Everything to Belong? disc 1 (CAC: 2004), CD, MP3 download.-------
Richard Rohr Meditation: "What Keeps Everything from Belonging?" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Sunday, 27 November 2016 Why are humans so prone to excluding and separating?"Everything Belongs: Week 1"
"What Keeps Everything from Belonging?"
Sunday, November 27, 2016As we’ve explored over the last several weeks—through reflections on the Cosmic Christ, Nature, and the Perennial Tradition—there is no meaningful separation between sacred and secular, physical and psychic, human and divine. They are two sides of one coin. There is within every being an inherent longing for and capacity to experience this union. Everything really does “belong” because all things are finally connected to the same Creator and thus to one another. We bear a family resemblance, as it were!
Why then are humans so prone to excluding and separating? Why do we spend so much time deciding who does not belong in our religious, political, and personal worlds? How can we get everything to belong in our own heads and hearts?
Let’s first understand this: Humans have a deep and legitimate need for an identity inside of this huge cosmos. To develop a healthy ego, we must differentiate and individuate; we must know we’re special and find a place where we are loved and where we belong without needing to prove ourselves. This is our launch pad. [1]
Ken Wilber suggests that religion has two very important and different functions to support human development. First, religion creates meaning for the separate self. [2] It offers myths and rituals that help us make sense of and endure what Shakespeare would call “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” You need to first feel special and chosen to launch beyond yourself. This feels like a paradox, but it really isn’t. It is the nature of all growth.
But if we stop at this level we do not come to higher levels of consciousness, love, or transformation. For that we need the function of mature spirituality (which I’ll discuss tomorrow). Many people stop at this first stage of fortifying the separate self. Being part of a superior group, ethnicity, or class, and having correct religious or moral beliefs often becomes a cover for remaining basically selfish and narcissistic. Such folks end up reenacting the first half of life over and over again, perpetuating exclusion and violence to protect their small field of self.
Some kind of law, structure, loyalty, and a sense of chosenness (very old fashioned virtues) are usually necessary to create a strong ego “container” and this is the appropriate task of “the first half of life.” We see God, for example, forming special covenants with the people of Israel and giving them many laws, which finally show themselves to be quite arbitrary and sometimes even destructive if taken too seriously.
Good parents do everything they can to validate and affirm their child’s specialness, which ideally gives children the dignity and self-confidence to move beyond the need for outer sources of belonging and identity. Now that is a paradox! A good parent (or any leader) eventually puts himself or herself out of a job.
Unfortunately, many people never move beyond the need for more infilling and never get to the outpouring which should be the natural result of a healthy ego. Basically, they never get to love. As long as they remain in this self-enclosed and self-referential position, all “otherness” is a threat to their specialness. They will need to prove and make sure that others do not belong, so they can hold center stage. They spend their whole life protecting their boundaries, which isn’t much of a life. The container becomes the substitute for the contents.
Gateway to Silence: Everything—yes, everything—belongs.
References:[1] See Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass: 2011).
[2] See Ken Wilber, The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader (Shambhala: 1998), 140-143.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, CONSPIRE 2016: Everything Belongs, sessions 1 and 3 (CAC: 2016), MP4 download; and
How Do We Get Everything to Belong? disc 1 (CAC: 2004), CD, MP3 download.
Thank you!
Your donations and participation have helped us reach more people with messages of compassion and love this year. In gratitude, we’re offering a special discount.
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Use coupon code 2016HOLIDAY25 during checkout at store.cac.org.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "The Perennial Tradition Weekly Summary" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Saturday, 26 November 2016 It is all One in the immense and undiscriminating Love that is God.
Image credit: Tree with visible roots in Kiental, between Herrsching and Andechs, Germany, Wikimedia.org.
"The Perennial Tradition"
Summary: Sunday, November 20-Friday, November 25, 2016
The Perennial Tradition recognizes there is a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things; there is in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity, and longing for this Divine Reality; the final goal of existence is union with this Divine Reality. (Sunday)
Jesus didn’t come to create a new or exclusive religion. He came to reform and reinvigorate the very meaning of all religion—and ground it in human nature and creation itself—which is universal. (Monday)
If it is the truth, it is true all the time and everywhere, and sincere lovers of truth will take it wherever it comes from. If it is true, it is common domain, and “there for the mind to see in the things that God has made” (Romans 1:20). (Tuesday)
What we seek is what we are, which is exactly why Jesus says that we will find it (see Matthew 7:7-8). God is never an object to be found or possessed as we find other objects, but the One who shares our own deepest subjectivity—or our “self.” (Wednesday)
“There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all, over all, through all, and within all, and each one of us has been given our own share of grace.” —Ephesians 4:5-7 (Thursday)
“The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person. . . . In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all people and all people are in one person.”[Julian of Norwich](Friday)
"Practice: Giving Thanks"Many cultures and religions have a beautiful tradition of saying a prayer before or after a meal, expressing gratitude and asking for blessing. If we are accustomed to praying over our food, it may become a rote, almost thoughtless gesture. Yet it is another opportunity to intentionally open ourselves to receive and participate in Love. The food is already blessed simply by its existence. God doesn’t require our words of thanks. But it does us good to “say grace,” to verbally acknowledge the giving of life—plant and animal—for our sustenance.
If you have a practice of saying grace, bring greater awareness and presence to it. Find or create a prayer to voice your gratitude. This Hindu blessing, from the Bhagavad Gita, is said before meals:
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spring Within Us: Daily Meditations (CAC: 2016), 150.
For Further Study:Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (2013)
Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley, and Richard Rohr, Returning to Essentials: Teaching an Alternative Orthodoxy (CAC: 2015), CD, MP3 download
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Oneing" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Friday, 25 November 2016 God, and all of creation, is a mystery of relationship!
"The Perennial Tradition
"Oneing"
Friday, November 25, 2016We must finally go back to the ultimate Christian source for our principle—the central doctrine of the Trinity itself. Yes, God is “One,” just as our Jewish ancestors taught us (Deuteronomy 6:4), and yet the further, more subtle level of meaning is that this oneness is actually the radical love union between three completely distinct “persons” of the Trinity. The basic principle and problem of “the one and the many” has been overcome in God’s very nature. God is a mystery of relationship, and in its deepest form this relationship is called love. The three are not uniform at all—but quite distinct—and yet completely oned in mutual self-emptying and infinite outpouring. God, and all of creation, is a mystery of relationship!
We humans are not autonomous beings either; though we are seemingly separate, we are radically one, too, just as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. We really are created in God’s “image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26f), much more than we ever imagined. Trinity is our universal template for the nature of reality and for how to reconcile unity and diversity at every level.
We are not seeking some naïve “everything is one”; rather, we seek much more: the deeper “unity of the Spirit which was given us all to drink” (1 Corinthians 12:13). We must study, pray, wait, reconcile, and work to achieve true unity—not an impossible uniformity, which was the tragic mistake of both the early notion of Christendom and a later notion of Communism.
Julian of Norwich says, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person,” [1] and “In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all people and all people are in one person.” [2]
This is not some 21st century flabby fabrication. This is not pantheism or mere New Age optimism. This is the whole point; it was, indeed, supposed to usher in a “new age” (Matthew 19:28)—and it still can, and will. This is the Perennial Tradition. Our job is not to discover it, but only to retrieve what has been discovered—and lost—and rediscovered again and again, in the mystics and seers, and prophets of all religions.
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:
[1] Julian of Norwich, Showings, 65.
[2] Ibid., 51.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 13-14. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Unity, Not Uniformity" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 24 November 2016 Unity is the reconciliation of differences; those differences must be maintained!
"The Perennial Tradition"
"Unity, Not Uniformity"
Thursday, November 24, 2016If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.[Huston Smith] [1]
For those of us living in the 21st century—an age of globalization, mass migrations, and increasingly multi-religious and multi-ethnic societies—mutual understanding and respect, based on religious pluralism rather than religious exclusivism, are extremely critical to our survival. The insights from the perennial tradition have much to contribute in developing and strengthening multi-faith relations. Its insights help to combat religious discrimination and conflicts between and within religious traditions, and to develop more pluralistic paths of religious spirituality. Today . . . we see scholars and spiritual teachers forging new, more inclusive spiritual paths that recognize other religious traditions as sources of insight and wisdom. They are informed by the teachings and spiritual practices (meditation and contemplation) of multiple religious traditions.[John L. Esposito [2]]
The divisions, dichotomies, and dualisms of the world can only be overcome by a unitive consciousness at every level: personal, relational, social, political, cultural, inter-religious dialogue, and spirituality in particular. This is the unique and central job of healthy religion (remember that re-ligio means to re-ligament!).
Many teachers have made the central but oft-missed point that unity is not the same as uniformity. Unity, in fact, is the reconciliation of differences, and those differences must be maintained—and yet overcome! You must actually distinguish things and separate them before you can spiritually unite them, but usually at cost to yourself (see Ephesians 2:14-16). And this is probably the rub! If only Christianity and other religions had made that simple clarification, so many problems—and overemphasized, separate identities—could have moved to a much higher level of love and service.
Paul made this universal principle very clear in several of his letters. For example, “There is a variety of gifts, but it is always the same Spirit. There are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord, working in all sorts of different ways in different people. It is the same God working in all of them” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). The community at Ephesus was taught in Paul’s tradition: “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all, over all, through all, and within all, and each one of us has been given our own share of grace” (Ephesians 4:5-7).
Even our central template of Trinity maintains the clear distinction of “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” while at the same time insisting they are One. Divine Unity absolutely maintains and yet radically overcomes seeming distinctions.How different history could have been if we had only believed that at ever broader levels. I will develop this important theme more tomorrow.
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:
[1] Huston Smith, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, PBS television series in 5 parts (1996; New York: WNET), DVD. This phrase introduced each episode.
[2] John L. Esposito, PhD, “The Perennial Tradition in an Age of Globalization,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 34.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 12-13. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "What We Are Looking For Is Doing the Looking" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 23 November 2016 What we seek is what we are.
"The Perennial Tradition"
"What We Are Looking For Is Doing the Looking"
Wednesday, November 23, 2016I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through,
listen to this music.[Hafiz (c. 1320-1389)] [1]
Aldous Huxley’s definition of “the perennial philosophy” is an adequate definition of my own understanding of the same:
I believe the Christ is the archetypal True Self offered to history, where matter and spirit finally operate as one, where divine and human are held in one container, where the psychic and the physical are two sides of the same coin, and “where there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female” (Galatians 3:28). The Christ Self fully allows and enjoys the human-divine exchange. The small self thinks about whether it could be true and usually ends up saying no.
David Benner writes in CAC’s journal Oneing:
References:
[1] Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, “The Christ’s Breath,” Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, rendered by Daniel Ladinsky (Penguin Compass: 2002), 153.
[2] Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), vi.
[3] David G. Benner, “Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 28. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazonand iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), xii-xiii.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Truth is One" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Tuesday, 22 November 2016 Big Truth is written in reality itself before it was ever written in books.
"The Perennial Tradition"
"Truth Is One"
Tuesday, November 22, 2016Science is no longer, nor should it ever have been, our enemy; instead quantum physics, biology, and other academic disciplines are revealing that science is our new and excellent partner, much better than philosophy ever was. Truth is One. If something is spiritually true, it will also be true in the physical world, and all disciplines and all religions will somehow be looking at this “one truth” from different angles, goals, assumptions, and vocabulary. If we are really convinced that we have the Big Truth, then we should also be able to trust that others will see it from their different angles—or it is not the Big Truth.
No one wants to be our enemy unless they assume that we ourselves have chosen to live in our own small tent and cannot or do not want to talk to them on their terms. Christians have too often assumed ill will and been far too eager to create enemies instead of realizing that others often enjoyed very similar “good news” inside of different packaging.
As my colleague and fellow Living School teacher Cynthia Bourgeault says, “We begin to discover that our Buddhist and Jewish and Islamic and Hindu friends are not competitors. Religion is not a survival of the fittest. There is a deep understanding that we all swim together or we sink together. Each religious tradition reveals a color of the heart of God that is precious.” [1]
Big Truth is written in reality itself before it was ever written in books. If you say yes to Reality, to “what is,” you will recognize the same truth when it shows itself in anyone’s sacred scriptures. If you do not respond to the “good, the true, and the beautiful” (the three qualities of being) in daily reality, I doubt if you will ever see it in the best Bible translation in the world. If it is the truth, it is true all the time and everywhere, and sincere lovers of truth will take it from wherever it comes. If it is true, it is common domain, and “there for the mind to see in the things that God has made” (Romans 1:20). Or, as Aquinas was fond of saying, quoting Ambrose (another Doctor of the Church), “If it’s true, it is always from the one Holy Spirit.” [2] The important question is not, “Who said it?” but, “Is it true?”
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, Returning to Essentials: Teaching an Alternative Orthodoxy, disc 1 (CAC: 2015), CD, MP3 download.
[2] Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 1, a. 8. Also Summa Theologia I-II, q. 109, a. 1, ad 1. The statement “Omne verum, a quocumque dicatur, a Spiritu Sancto est” is recorded in Patres Latini, 17, 245; today, the unknown author is called Ambrosiaster.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 135-136.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Whole-Making" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 21 November 2016 Become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love.
"The Perennial Tradition"
"Whole-Making"
Monday, November 21, 2016The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) stated that seminarians should “base themselves on a philosophy which is perennially valid,” and it encouraged the study of the entire history of philosophy and also “recent scientific progress.” [1] This sent willing Catholics in a new direction that is still unfolding.
In the authentic search for God, the field keeps expanding and never tightening. As does the universe itself, we move toward an ever-greater aliveness, a greater consciousness, a deeper union. The Jesuit scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), called this a divine allurement which is drawing the universe forward until a truly cosmic “Christ comes to full stature” (Ephesians 4:13). [2] For Teilhard, this was the Omega Point of all history, just as Duns Scotus had seen the Christ as the Alpha Point or the “first idea in the mind of God.” This made the entire universe and all of history unified, meaningful, and also hopeful! There is a trajectory and direction to it all, which is what both Jews and Christians were supposed to believe.
Few people put together science, philosophy, mysticism, and poetry as brilliantly as does Teilhard de Chardin. Ilia Delio, Franciscan sister and theologian, writes:
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:[1] Optatam Totius, October 28, 1965, #15.
[2] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 107. It is hard to ever be small again after you have read Teilhard de Chardin.
[3] Ilia Delio, “Love at the Heart of the Universe,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 21-22. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 134-135.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Universal Wisdom" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Sunday, 20 November 2016 The final goal of existence is union with Divine Reality.
"The Perennial Tradition"
"Universal Wisdom"
Sunday, November 20, 2016The Perennial Wisdom Tradition . . . offers ancient wisdom for contemporary living that is relevant to all of us, not just to a few.[David G. Benner [1]]
The Perennial Tradition encompasses the constantly recurring themes in all of the world’s religions and philosophies that continue to say:
In many ways, the Perennial Tradition was affirmed at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) in forward-looking documents on ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) and non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate). These affirm that there are some constant themes, truths, and recurrences in all of the world religions.
In Nostra Aetate, for example, the Council Fathers begin by saying that “All peoples comprise a single community and have a single origin [created by one and the same Creator God]. . . . And one also is their final goal: God. . . . The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions.” [2] Then the document goes on to praise Native religions, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam as “reflecting a ray of that truth which enlightens all people.” [3] You have got to realize what courage and brilliance it took to write that in 1965, when very few people in any religion thought that way. In fact, most still don’t think that way today.
One early exception was St. Augustine (354-430), a Doctor of the Church, who wrote: “The very thing which is now called the Christian religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh. After that time, the true religion, which had always existed, began to be called ‘Christian.’” [4] St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Leo the Great all held similar understandings before Christianity turned to the later defensive (and offensive!) modes of heresy hunting, anti-Semitism, and various crusades. When any religion becomes proud, it also becomes dualistic and oppositional.
In some crucial ways, we have actually gone backward from the deep thinkers and writings of the Perennial Tradition. As Ken Wilber often repeats, good religion is made to order to serve as a “conveyor belt” forward through all the stages of human consciousness. How sad when we get stymied at one self-serving stage.
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:[1] David G. Benner, “Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 24.
[2] Nostra Aetate, Vatican II, 1965, #1, 2.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Augustine of Hippo, Retractions, 1:13.3, emphasis mine.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 11-12. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
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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 what it only tentatively knows for sure. Evolutionary thinking agrees to both knowing and not knowing, at the same time. To stay on the ride, to trust the trajectory, to know it is moving, and moving somewhere always better, is just another way to describe faith. We are all in evolution all the time, it seems to me. It is the best, the truest, way to think. —Richard Rohr, “Evolutionary Thinking”
Order this issue of Oneing at store.cac.org.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Nature: Week 2 Summary" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Saturday, 19 November 2016
"Nature: Week 2"
Summary: Sunday, November 13-Friday, November 18, 2016
We either honor God in all things or we soon lose the basis for seeing God in anything. (Sunday)
Bonaventure saw all things as likenesses of God, fingerprints and footprints (vestigia Dei) that reveal the divine DNA underlying all living links in creation. (Monday)
Creation itself—not ritual or spaces constructed by human hands—was Francis’ primary cathedral. Good ritual, like art, merely imitates nature. (Tuesday)
Nature itself is the primary Bible. As Paul says in Romans 1:20, “What can be known about God is perfectly plain, for God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity is there for the mind to see in all the things that God has created.” (Wednesday)
From the beginning of the Bible to the end, it is clear that a loving God includes all of creation in God’s Kingdom. (Thursday)
“We are summoned to become fully human. We must mature into people who are, first and foremost, citizens of Earth and residents of the universe, and our identity and core values must be recast accordingly.”[Bill Plotkin] (Friday)
"Practice: Staying Grounded"
There are lists upon lists of things you can do to help the environment. I’m sure you’ve read and perhaps tried many of them: reducing, reusing, recycling; walking, biking, or taking public transportation; using less water and energy; eating less meat. I hope you’ll continue to find ways to live more simply as an individual and in community, and that you’ll encourage your church and government to protect the environment.
As you do this vital work, you may be discouraged and disheartened to see progress come slowly or seemingly not at all. You may be tempted to give up or to give in to easy excess. You may feel hate toward the “enemy” that is destroying creation.
I suggest three practices to keep you grounded, loving, and hopeful:
Stay close to nature. Reconnect with creatures and plants, whether in an animal shelter, your garden, a city park, or the wilderness. Actually touch the living soil with your bare hands and feet. Feel the breeze and listen to the birds.
Lament the suffering and loss you see. Let yourself truly grieve for extinct species, for people touched by hurricanes, famine, and disease. Cry and wail aloud. Beat a drum. Tear a piece of cloth. Create and bury a litany of loss.
Celebrate the beauty and mystery of our universe. Write a poem, chant a psalm, paint a picture. Say thanks for the abundance of air, water, food, and shelter you receive every day. Praise the Creator who is gradually bringing all of creation to fullness and wholeness, through your participation.
Gateway to Silence: Praised be You, my Lord, through all your creatures.[Francis of Assisi]
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, A New Cosmology: Nature as the First Bible (2009), CD, MP3 download
Richard Rohr, In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation (2010) CD, MP3 download
Richard Rohr and Bill Plotkin, Soul Centering through Nature: Becoming a True Human Adult (2012), CD, MP3 download
Richard Rohr, The Soul, the Natural World, and What Is (2009) MP3 download-------
Center for Action and Contemplation
1823 Five Points Road South West (physical)
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Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "The Perennial Tradition Weekly Summary" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Saturday, 26 November 2016 It is all One in the immense and undiscriminating Love that is God.
Image credit: Tree with visible roots in Kiental, between Herrsching and Andechs, Germany, Wikimedia.org.
"The Perennial Tradition"
Summary: Sunday, November 20-Friday, November 25, 2016
The Perennial Tradition recognizes there is a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things; there is in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity, and longing for this Divine Reality; the final goal of existence is union with this Divine Reality. (Sunday)
Jesus didn’t come to create a new or exclusive religion. He came to reform and reinvigorate the very meaning of all religion—and ground it in human nature and creation itself—which is universal. (Monday)
If it is the truth, it is true all the time and everywhere, and sincere lovers of truth will take it wherever it comes from. If it is true, it is common domain, and “there for the mind to see in the things that God has made” (Romans 1:20). (Tuesday)
What we seek is what we are, which is exactly why Jesus says that we will find it (see Matthew 7:7-8). God is never an object to be found or possessed as we find other objects, but the One who shares our own deepest subjectivity—or our “self.” (Wednesday)
“There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all, over all, through all, and within all, and each one of us has been given our own share of grace.” —Ephesians 4:5-7 (Thursday)
“The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person. . . . In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all people and all people are in one person.”[Julian of Norwich](Friday)
"Practice: Giving Thanks"Many cultures and religions have a beautiful tradition of saying a prayer before or after a meal, expressing gratitude and asking for blessing. If we are accustomed to praying over our food, it may become a rote, almost thoughtless gesture. Yet it is another opportunity to intentionally open ourselves to receive and participate in Love. The food is already blessed simply by its existence. God doesn’t require our words of thanks. But it does us good to “say grace,” to verbally acknowledge the giving of life—plant and animal—for our sustenance.
If you have a practice of saying grace, bring greater awareness and presence to it. Find or create a prayer to voice your gratitude. This Hindu blessing, from the Bhagavad Gita, is said before meals:
This ritual is One. The food is One. We who offer the food are One. The fire of hunger is also One. All action is One. We who understand this are One.
Indeed, it is all One in the immense and undiscriminating Love that is God.Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spring Within Us: Daily Meditations (CAC: 2016), 150.
For Further Study:Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (2013)
Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley, and Richard Rohr, Returning to Essentials: Teaching an Alternative Orthodoxy (CAC: 2015), CD, MP3 download
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Oneing" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Friday, 25 November 2016 God, and all of creation, is a mystery of relationship!
"The Perennial Tradition
"Oneing"
Friday, November 25, 2016We must finally go back to the ultimate Christian source for our principle—the central doctrine of the Trinity itself. Yes, God is “One,” just as our Jewish ancestors taught us (Deuteronomy 6:4), and yet the further, more subtle level of meaning is that this oneness is actually the radical love union between three completely distinct “persons” of the Trinity. The basic principle and problem of “the one and the many” has been overcome in God’s very nature. God is a mystery of relationship, and in its deepest form this relationship is called love. The three are not uniform at all—but quite distinct—and yet completely oned in mutual self-emptying and infinite outpouring. God, and all of creation, is a mystery of relationship!
We humans are not autonomous beings either; though we are seemingly separate, we are radically one, too, just as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. We really are created in God’s “image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26f), much more than we ever imagined. Trinity is our universal template for the nature of reality and for how to reconcile unity and diversity at every level.
We are not seeking some naïve “everything is one”; rather, we seek much more: the deeper “unity of the Spirit which was given us all to drink” (1 Corinthians 12:13). We must study, pray, wait, reconcile, and work to achieve true unity—not an impossible uniformity, which was the tragic mistake of both the early notion of Christendom and a later notion of Communism.
Julian of Norwich says, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person,” [1] and “In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all people and all people are in one person.” [2]
This is not some 21st century flabby fabrication. This is not pantheism or mere New Age optimism. This is the whole point; it was, indeed, supposed to usher in a “new age” (Matthew 19:28)—and it still can, and will. This is the Perennial Tradition. Our job is not to discover it, but only to retrieve what has been discovered—and lost—and rediscovered again and again, in the mystics and seers, and prophets of all religions.
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:
[1] Julian of Norwich, Showings, 65.
[2] Ibid., 51.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 13-14. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Unity, Not Uniformity" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 24 November 2016 Unity is the reconciliation of differences; those differences must be maintained!
"The Perennial Tradition"
"Unity, Not Uniformity"
Thursday, November 24, 2016If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.[Huston Smith] [1]
For those of us living in the 21st century—an age of globalization, mass migrations, and increasingly multi-religious and multi-ethnic societies—mutual understanding and respect, based on religious pluralism rather than religious exclusivism, are extremely critical to our survival. The insights from the perennial tradition have much to contribute in developing and strengthening multi-faith relations. Its insights help to combat religious discrimination and conflicts between and within religious traditions, and to develop more pluralistic paths of religious spirituality. Today . . . we see scholars and spiritual teachers forging new, more inclusive spiritual paths that recognize other religious traditions as sources of insight and wisdom. They are informed by the teachings and spiritual practices (meditation and contemplation) of multiple religious traditions.[John L. Esposito [2]]
The divisions, dichotomies, and dualisms of the world can only be overcome by a unitive consciousness at every level: personal, relational, social, political, cultural, inter-religious dialogue, and spirituality in particular. This is the unique and central job of healthy religion (remember that re-ligio means to re-ligament!).
Many teachers have made the central but oft-missed point that unity is not the same as uniformity. Unity, in fact, is the reconciliation of differences, and those differences must be maintained—and yet overcome! You must actually distinguish things and separate them before you can spiritually unite them, but usually at cost to yourself (see Ephesians 2:14-16). And this is probably the rub! If only Christianity and other religions had made that simple clarification, so many problems—and overemphasized, separate identities—could have moved to a much higher level of love and service.
Paul made this universal principle very clear in several of his letters. For example, “There is a variety of gifts, but it is always the same Spirit. There are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord, working in all sorts of different ways in different people. It is the same God working in all of them” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). The community at Ephesus was taught in Paul’s tradition: “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all, over all, through all, and within all, and each one of us has been given our own share of grace” (Ephesians 4:5-7).
Even our central template of Trinity maintains the clear distinction of “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” while at the same time insisting they are One. Divine Unity absolutely maintains and yet radically overcomes seeming distinctions.How different history could have been if we had only believed that at ever broader levels. I will develop this important theme more tomorrow.
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:
[1] Huston Smith, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, PBS television series in 5 parts (1996; New York: WNET), DVD. This phrase introduced each episode.
[2] John L. Esposito, PhD, “The Perennial Tradition in an Age of Globalization,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 34.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 12-13. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "What We Are Looking For Is Doing the Looking" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 23 November 2016 What we seek is what we are.
"The Perennial Tradition"
"What We Are Looking For Is Doing the Looking"
Wednesday, November 23, 2016I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through,
listen to this music.[Hafiz (c. 1320-1389)] [1]
Aldous Huxley’s definition of “the perennial philosophy” is an adequate definition of my own understanding of the same:
The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality, and the ethic that places man’s [sic] final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being. This is immemorial and universal. [2]
Thus, the Perennial Tradition says that there is a capacity, a similarity, and a desire for divine reality inside all humans. What we seek is what we are, which is exactly why Jesus says that we will find it (see Matthew 7:7-8). The Perennial Tradition invariably concludes that you initially cannot see what you are looking for because what you are looking for is doing the looking. The seeker becomes the seen. God is never an object to be found or possessed as we find other objects, but the One who shares our own deepest subjectivity—or our “self.” Merely physical things can be known subject to object; spiritual knowing is to know things subject to subject, center to center (see 1 Corinthians 2:10-13). This is how the soul knows. Not surprisingly, the soul recognizes soul in whatever it sees: soil, waters, trees, animals, and fellow humans. Only such a depth of seeing can enter into a fruitful and mutual exchange with God. To objectify God in any way is not to know God.I believe the Christ is the archetypal True Self offered to history, where matter and spirit finally operate as one, where divine and human are held in one container, where the psychic and the physical are two sides of the same coin, and “where there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female” (Galatians 3:28). The Christ Self fully allows and enjoys the human-divine exchange. The small self thinks about whether it could be true and usually ends up saying no.
David Benner writes in CAC’s journal Oneing:
The moral of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition is, “Don’t settle for less than the truth of your Christ-self.” The ego-self, with which we are all familiar, is a small cramped place when compared with the spaciousness of our true self-in-Christ. This is the self that is not only at one within itself; it is at one with the world, and with all others who share it as their world. It is, therefore, one with Ultimate Reality. [3]
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.References:
[1] Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, “The Christ’s Breath,” Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, rendered by Daniel Ladinsky (Penguin Compass: 2002), 153.
[2] Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), vi.
[3] David G. Benner, “Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 28. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazonand iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), xii-xiii.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Truth is One" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Tuesday, 22 November 2016 Big Truth is written in reality itself before it was ever written in books.
"The Perennial Tradition"
"Truth Is One"
Tuesday, November 22, 2016Science is no longer, nor should it ever have been, our enemy; instead quantum physics, biology, and other academic disciplines are revealing that science is our new and excellent partner, much better than philosophy ever was. Truth is One. If something is spiritually true, it will also be true in the physical world, and all disciplines and all religions will somehow be looking at this “one truth” from different angles, goals, assumptions, and vocabulary. If we are really convinced that we have the Big Truth, then we should also be able to trust that others will see it from their different angles—or it is not the Big Truth.
No one wants to be our enemy unless they assume that we ourselves have chosen to live in our own small tent and cannot or do not want to talk to them on their terms. Christians have too often assumed ill will and been far too eager to create enemies instead of realizing that others often enjoyed very similar “good news” inside of different packaging.
As my colleague and fellow Living School teacher Cynthia Bourgeault says, “We begin to discover that our Buddhist and Jewish and Islamic and Hindu friends are not competitors. Religion is not a survival of the fittest. There is a deep understanding that we all swim together or we sink together. Each religious tradition reveals a color of the heart of God that is precious.” [1]
Big Truth is written in reality itself before it was ever written in books. If you say yes to Reality, to “what is,” you will recognize the same truth when it shows itself in anyone’s sacred scriptures. If you do not respond to the “good, the true, and the beautiful” (the three qualities of being) in daily reality, I doubt if you will ever see it in the best Bible translation in the world. If it is the truth, it is true all the time and everywhere, and sincere lovers of truth will take it from wherever it comes. If it is true, it is common domain, and “there for the mind to see in the things that God has made” (Romans 1:20). Or, as Aquinas was fond of saying, quoting Ambrose (another Doctor of the Church), “If it’s true, it is always from the one Holy Spirit.” [2] The important question is not, “Who said it?” but, “Is it true?”
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, Returning to Essentials: Teaching an Alternative Orthodoxy, disc 1 (CAC: 2015), CD, MP3 download.
[2] Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 1, a. 8. Also Summa Theologia I-II, q. 109, a. 1, ad 1. The statement “Omne verum, a quocumque dicatur, a Spiritu Sancto est” is recorded in Patres Latini, 17, 245; today, the unknown author is called Ambrosiaster.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 135-136.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Whole-Making" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 21 November 2016 Become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love.
"The Perennial Tradition"
"Whole-Making"
Monday, November 21, 2016The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) stated that seminarians should “base themselves on a philosophy which is perennially valid,” and it encouraged the study of the entire history of philosophy and also “recent scientific progress.” [1] This sent willing Catholics in a new direction that is still unfolding.
In the authentic search for God, the field keeps expanding and never tightening. As does the universe itself, we move toward an ever-greater aliveness, a greater consciousness, a deeper union. The Jesuit scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), called this a divine allurement which is drawing the universe forward until a truly cosmic “Christ comes to full stature” (Ephesians 4:13). [2] For Teilhard, this was the Omega Point of all history, just as Duns Scotus had seen the Christ as the Alpha Point or the “first idea in the mind of God.” This made the entire universe and all of history unified, meaningful, and also hopeful! There is a trajectory and direction to it all, which is what both Jews and Christians were supposed to believe.
Few people put together science, philosophy, mysticism, and poetry as brilliantly as does Teilhard de Chardin. Ilia Delio, Franciscan sister and theologian, writes:
Teilhard spent his life trying to show that evolution is not only the universe coming to be, but it is God who is coming to be. Divine Love, poured into space-time, rises in consciousness and erupts in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, becoming the pledge of our future in the risen Christ: “I am with you always until the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20). We can read the history of our 13.7 billion year old universe as the rising up of Divine Love incarnate, which bursts forth in the person of Jesus, who reveals Love’s urge toward wholeness through reconciliation, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. Jesus is the love of God incarnate, the whole maker who shows the way of evolution toward unity in love. In Jesus, God breaks through and points us in a new direction; not one of chance or blindness but one of ever-deepening wholeness in love. In Jesus, God comes to us from the future to be our future. Those who follow Jesus are to become whole makers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love. [3]
Carl Jung viewed the archetype of God as the instinct toward wholeness, and I think he is exactly right. I’ve always said that Jesus didn’t come to create a new or exclusive religion. He came to reform and reinvigorate the very meaning of all religion—and ground it in human nature and creation itself—which is universal. Indeed, we are called “to become whole makers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love.”Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:[1] Optatam Totius, October 28, 1965, #15.
[2] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 107. It is hard to ever be small again after you have read Teilhard de Chardin.
[3] Ilia Delio, “Love at the Heart of the Universe,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 21-22. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 134-135.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Universal Wisdom" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Sunday, 20 November 2016 The final goal of existence is union with Divine Reality.
"The Perennial Tradition"
"Universal Wisdom"
Sunday, November 20, 2016The Perennial Wisdom Tradition . . . offers ancient wisdom for contemporary living that is relevant to all of us, not just to a few.[David G. Benner [1]]
The Perennial Tradition encompasses the constantly recurring themes in all of the world’s religions and philosophies that continue to say:
There is a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things;
There is in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity, and longing for this Divine Reality;
The final goal of existence is union with this Divine Reality.
The “perennial philosophy” or “perennial tradition” is a term that has come in and out of popularity in Western and religious history, but has never been dismissed by the Universal Church. I was trained in Catholic systematic theology and Franciscan alternative orthodoxy; these and the whole Judeo-Christian tradition taught me to honor the visibility and revelation of God in all the world traditions and not just my own.In many ways, the Perennial Tradition was affirmed at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) in forward-looking documents on ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) and non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate). These affirm that there are some constant themes, truths, and recurrences in all of the world religions.
In Nostra Aetate, for example, the Council Fathers begin by saying that “All peoples comprise a single community and have a single origin [created by one and the same Creator God]. . . . And one also is their final goal: God. . . . The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions.” [2] Then the document goes on to praise Native religions, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam as “reflecting a ray of that truth which enlightens all people.” [3] You have got to realize what courage and brilliance it took to write that in 1965, when very few people in any religion thought that way. In fact, most still don’t think that way today.
One early exception was St. Augustine (354-430), a Doctor of the Church, who wrote: “The very thing which is now called the Christian religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh. After that time, the true religion, which had always existed, began to be called ‘Christian.’” [4] St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Leo the Great all held similar understandings before Christianity turned to the later defensive (and offensive!) modes of heresy hunting, anti-Semitism, and various crusades. When any religion becomes proud, it also becomes dualistic and oppositional.
In some crucial ways, we have actually gone backward from the deep thinkers and writings of the Perennial Tradition. As Ken Wilber often repeats, good religion is made to order to serve as a “conveyor belt” forward through all the stages of human consciousness. How sad when we get stymied at one self-serving stage.
Gateway to Silence: All truth is one.
References:[1] David G. Benner, “Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 24.
[2] Nostra Aetate, Vatican II, 1965, #1, 2.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Augustine of Hippo, Retractions, 1:13.3, emphasis mine.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 11-12. (This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
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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 what it only tentatively knows for sure. Evolutionary thinking agrees to both knowing and not knowing, at the same time. To stay on the ride, to trust the trajectory, to know it is moving, and moving somewhere always better, is just another way to describe faith. We are all in evolution all the time, it seems to me. It is the best, the truest, way to think. —Richard Rohr, “Evolutionary Thinking”
Order this issue of Oneing at store.cac.org.
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Richard Rohr Meditation: "Nature: Week 2 Summary" from Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Saturday, 19 November 2016
"Nature: Week 2"
Summary: Sunday, November 13-Friday, November 18, 2016
We either honor God in all things or we soon lose the basis for seeing God in anything. (Sunday)
Bonaventure saw all things as likenesses of God, fingerprints and footprints (vestigia Dei) that reveal the divine DNA underlying all living links in creation. (Monday)
Creation itself—not ritual or spaces constructed by human hands—was Francis’ primary cathedral. Good ritual, like art, merely imitates nature. (Tuesday)
Nature itself is the primary Bible. As Paul says in Romans 1:20, “What can be known about God is perfectly plain, for God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity is there for the mind to see in all the things that God has created.” (Wednesday)
From the beginning of the Bible to the end, it is clear that a loving God includes all of creation in God’s Kingdom. (Thursday)
“We are summoned to become fully human. We must mature into people who are, first and foremost, citizens of Earth and residents of the universe, and our identity and core values must be recast accordingly.”[Bill Plotkin] (Friday)
"Practice: Staying Grounded"
There are lists upon lists of things you can do to help the environment. I’m sure you’ve read and perhaps tried many of them: reducing, reusing, recycling; walking, biking, or taking public transportation; using less water and energy; eating less meat. I hope you’ll continue to find ways to live more simply as an individual and in community, and that you’ll encourage your church and government to protect the environment.
As you do this vital work, you may be discouraged and disheartened to see progress come slowly or seemingly not at all. You may be tempted to give up or to give in to easy excess. You may feel hate toward the “enemy” that is destroying creation.
I suggest three practices to keep you grounded, loving, and hopeful:
Stay close to nature. Reconnect with creatures and plants, whether in an animal shelter, your garden, a city park, or the wilderness. Actually touch the living soil with your bare hands and feet. Feel the breeze and listen to the birds.
Lament the suffering and loss you see. Let yourself truly grieve for extinct species, for people touched by hurricanes, famine, and disease. Cry and wail aloud. Beat a drum. Tear a piece of cloth. Create and bury a litany of loss.
Celebrate the beauty and mystery of our universe. Write a poem, chant a psalm, paint a picture. Say thanks for the abundance of air, water, food, and shelter you receive every day. Praise the Creator who is gradually bringing all of creation to fullness and wholeness, through your participation.
Gateway to Silence: Praised be You, my Lord, through all your creatures.[Francis of Assisi]
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, A New Cosmology: Nature as the First Bible (2009), CD, MP3 download
Richard Rohr, In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation (2010) CD, MP3 download
Richard Rohr and Bill Plotkin, Soul Centering through Nature: Becoming a True Human Adult (2012), CD, MP3 download
Richard Rohr, The Soul, the Natural World, and What Is (2009) MP3 download-------
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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