Richard Rohr Daily Meditation: "Creating the I-Thou Relationship" Living School for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Sunday, 5 February 2017 We cannot have a private contemplative practice without engaged community.

Richard Rohr Daily Meditation: "Creating the I-Thou Relationship" Living School for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Sunday, 5 February 2017 We cannot have a private contemplative practice without engaged community.
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"Contemplation"
"Creating the I-Thou Relationship"
Sunday, February 5, 2017
The gift of contemplative prayer is not a way of thinking or speaking. It’s much more a way of not thinking and not talking. It is more about naked presence. It finally moves beyond words into silence, into awareness of the Mystery that is too deep for words. Our awareness of God’s presence is outside of and beyond our power to express in any words or conceive in any thought.
While our prayer of words is an attempt to express to ourselves our relationship with the Great Mystery, the prayer of silence is not so much to express but to experience that mutuality. We acknowledge and rejoice that we are the beloved. We sit and wait until we know this truth in our body and in our memory. Silence leads to resting in the Beloved’s arms, reveling in the quiet that follows making love. There is simply an awareness that “It is very good,” as it says in our Creation Story (Genesis 1:31).
This experience of belovedness is the primary gift that Jesus came to give us, much more than the mystery of the church. In fact, this is the foundational experience that alone creates all healthy and happy “church” or spiritual family. Lacking such safety and wisdom, it is hard for churches, governments, and leaders to move beyond ego, the deep desire for control, and public posturing. Everything divides into oppositions such as liberal versus conservative. Even theology becomes more a quest for power than a search for God and Mystery.
In the Buddhist tradition, we must have three things to keep growing: the practice, the teaching, and the community. Without these three, there is no Buddhism. The Christian tradition can affirm the same. We need the experience of contemplation (the “practice”), mature theology and use of Scripture, and some kind of community. Many Catholics thought that all they had to have were the second two: the teaching and the community. We didn’t necessarily have to experience the Holy One in prayer. The result has been an often dry, ineffectual, and disappointing Christianity.
Some form of spiritual community is the testing ground, showing whether we are actually growing in love, service, and faithfulness. We must not withdraw to a private, isolated spirituality in which we do our contemplative sit each day and ignore the school of relationship. Private or individualistic prayer is no prayer at all, in fact it is not possible, because prayer is precisely plugging into a shared field of knowing, feeling, and loving. St. John Cassian called any attempt at “private prayer” pax perniciosa, dangerous peace, because it keeps us feeling separate and superior instead of connected and compassionate.
We’ll spend the next three weeks exploring the deeper meanings and methods of contemplative prayer. It is indeed “the pearl of great price” (Matthew 13:46).
Gateway to Silence: Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
[Philippians 2:5]
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 28-29, 149-151.

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Registration is now open!
CONSPIRE 2017
Friday, July 7–Sunday, July 9
Albuquerque, New Mexico OR Online Webcast
Richard Rohr, angel Kyodo williams, Mirabai Starr, Ken Wilber (via video)
This is the fifth conference in the CONSPIRE seven-year series. Whether or not you’ve participated previously, you are welcome! CAC’s conferences gather over 1,000 compassionate and engaged individuals. Together we hear inspiring teaching, experience contemplative practice, and reflect individually and in small groups.
Join us for a transformative weekend!
Scholarships and a student rate are available.
Register at cac.org/conspire-2017-overview/.-------

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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