Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Hope in the Darkness"
"Entering the Dark Wood"
Monday, September 4, 2017
The mystics of all the great religions, along with classic literature like Homer’s Odyssey, intuited that life was a journey involving completion of a first half and transition to a second half, sometimes called “a further journey.” Yet most of us were given the impression that life was a matter of learning and obeying the rules; and those who obeyed them won. Many of our pastoral problems and the foundational alienation from religion in Europe and North America stem from the lack of initiation and depth. Mainline Christianity does not seem to be giving people access to God, to the soul, or to the joy and freedom promised in the Scriptures. Christianity is not doing its primary job well—moving people from the first to the second half of life.At some point along the journey, if you’re honest and open, you will realize there’s more to life. This experience is hardly inviting or encouraging, and so many of us turn back. Dante describes the human experience: “In the middle of life, I found myself in a dark wood.” [1] If you’re letting life happen to you, you will be led to the dark wood where you have to ask: “What does it all mean? Why am I doing this? Why don’t I feel fully alive or that my life has meaning? What am I doing wrong?” Most of us have bouts of immense self-doubt and even sometimes self-hatred at this point.
This is why Jesus says, “By faith you will be saved” (Luke 7:50, 18:42). It is only by a foundational trust in the midst of suffering, some ability to bear darkness and uncertainty, and learning to be comfortable with paradox and mystery, that you move from the first half of life to the second half.
Novelist Robertson Davies wrote, “One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.” [2] The word innocent comes from the Latin for unwounded or not harmed. The innocent one hasn’t yet learned from his or her wounds, and therefore doesn’t know his or her full reality yet. Human life only develops in the shadowlands, never inside of pure light or total darkness.
When you’ve stumbled—and the guilt, loneliness, and fear come to assault you—if you don’t have at least one good friend, or if you have not developed a prayer life where you know how to find yourself in God instead of in your own feelings, you will simply retrench and reassert your correctness. You’ll learn nothing and remain in the first half of life, maintaining your container and supposed identity. This explains why most people are stuck in the first half of life. This is especially true for people who are highly successful or have been able to avoid all suffering. If you only move from success to success, or you never live in solidarity with the suffering of others, you normally know very little about your own soul.
Gateway to Silence: The night shines like the day.
References:
[1] Dante, “The Inferno: Canto 1,” The Divine Comedy.
[2] Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (Penguin Classics: 2001), 245.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, discs 1 and 3 (Franciscan Media: 2004), CD.
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The Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Richard Rohr Meditation for Sunday, 3 September 2017: "Seeing through Shadows"
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Hope in the Darkness"
"Seeing through Shadows"
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Spiritual transformation is often thought of as movement from darkness to light. In one sense that is true, while in another sense, this image fails to show the whole picture.Darkness is always present alongside the light. Pure light blinds; shadows are required for our seeing. We know the light most fully in contrast with its opposite—the dark. There is something that can only be known by going through “the night sea journey” into the belly of the whale, from which we are spit up on an utterly new shore.
Western civilization as a whole does not know how to hold darkness. Rather than teach a path of descent, Christianity in the West preached a system of winners and losers, a “prosperity Gospel.” Few Christians have been taught to hold the paschal mystery of both death and resurrection and how to acknowledge and address the dark side of the Church (for example, sexism, persecution of outsiders, pedophilia—to name a few). As a result, many people who formerly called themselves Christians have “thrown out the baby with the bathwater,” rejecting Christianity with the same dualistic, all-or-nothing thinking that immature religion taught them in the first place.
In many ways, this struggle with darkness has been the Church’s constant dilemma. It wants to exist in perfect light, where God alone lives (see James 1:17). It does not like the shadowland of our human reality. In Christian history, we see Eastern Orthodox churches creating heavenly liturgies with little sense of social justice; Luther’s abhorrence of his own darkness; the Swiss Reformers outlawing darkness; the Puritans repressing darkness; the Roman Church consistently unable and unwilling to see its own darkness; the typical believer afraid of darkness; fundamentalists splitting darkness off into a preoccupation with Satan. Then comes postmodernism, with a predictable pendulum swing, seemingly in love with darkness! We are hardwired to avoid the human mystery—that we are all a mixture of darkness and light—instead of learning how to carry it patiently through to resurrection.
There are no perfect institutions and no perfect people. There is only the struggle to be whole. It is Christ’s passion (patior, the “suffering of reality”) that will save the world. Jesus says, “Your patient endurance will win you your lives” (Luke 21:19). He shows us the way of redemptive suffering instead of redemptive violence. Patience comes from our attempts to hold together an always-mixed reality. Perfectionism only makes us resentful and judgmental. Grateful people emerge in a world rightly defined, where even darkness is no surprise but an opportunity.
Gateway to Silence: The night shines like the day.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr with John Feister, Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (St. Anthony Messenger Press: 2001), 163-164.
On behalf of Illuman, we invite all men!
Soularize 2017—Raising Up Elders:Men Transforming Men
Thursday October 26–Sunday October 29, 2017
Hyatt Regency Tamaya, New Mexico
To be an elder is not just about growing older. It is a much deeper, more profound soul learning. How does it happen? Who can guide us along this journey?
Soularize brings men together to explore these questions through council, time on the land by the Rio Grande, sharing from Illuman leaders, reflection, and prayer. Friday evening Fr. Richard Rohr will present his vision of what it means to be an elder.
Learn more and register at illuman.org/soularize2017.
Please note: As co-sponsor of Soularize, the Center for Action and Contemplation is unable to assist you with questions about this event. Visit illuman.org or email administrator@illuman.org for more details.
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The Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Richard Rohr Meditation for Saturday, 2 September 2017: "Forgiveness: Weekly Summary"
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Image credit: The Return of the Prodigal Son (drawing detail), 1642, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn,
Teylers Museum Haarlem, The Netherlands.
"Forgiveness"
Summary: Sunday, August 27-Friday, September 1, 2017Let’s ask for the grace to let go of those grudges and hurts we hold on to, and let’s do it now and not wait until later. (Sunday)
Nothing new happens without forgiveness. (Monday)
God does not love us if we change; God loves us so that we can change. (Tuesday)
To accept reality is to forgive reality for being what it is. (Wednesday)
Forgiveness is the only way to free ourselves from the entrapment of the past. (Thursday)
The genius of the biblical revelation is that it refuses to deny the dark side of things, but forgives failure and integrates falling to achieve wholeness. (Friday)
"Practice: The Welcoming Prayer"
I’d like to offer you a form of contemplation—a practice of forgiving reality for being what it is—called The Welcoming Prayer.
First, identify a hurt or an offense in your life. Remember the feelings you first experienced with this hurt and feel them the way you first felt them. Notice how this shows up in your body. Paying attention to your body’s sensations keeps you from jumping into the mind and its dualistic games of good guy/bad guy, win/lose, either/or.
After you can identify the hurt and feel it in your body, welcome it. Stop fighting it. Stop splitting and blaming. Welcome the grief. Welcome the anger. It’s hard to do, but for some reason, when we name it, feel it, and welcome it, transformation can begin.
Don’t lose presence to the moment. Any kind of analysis will lead you back into attachment to your ego self. The reason a bird sitting on a hot wire is not electrocuted is quite simply because it does not touch the ground to give the electricity a pathway. Hold the creative tension, but don’t ground it by thinking about it, critiquing it, or analyzing it.
When you’re able to welcome your own pain, you will in some way feel the pain of the whole world. This is what it means to be human—and also what it means to be divine. You can hold this immense pain because you too are being held by the very One who went through this process on the cross. Jesus was holding all the pain of the world; though the world had come to hate him, he refused to hate it back.
Now hand all of this pain—yours and the world’s—over to God. Let it go. Ask for the grace of forgiveness for the person who hurt you, for the event that offended you, for the reality of suffering in each life.
I can’t promise the pain will leave easily or quickly. To forgive is not to forget. But letting go frees up a great amount of soul-energy that liberates a level of life you didn’t know existed. It leads you to your True Self.
Gateway to Silence: Create in me a clean heart. [Psalm 51:10]
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis, disc 6 (Sounds True: 2010), CD.
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (Franciscan Media: 2011)
Richard Rohr with John Feister, Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (Franciscan Media: 2001)
Last chance to participate this year!
Immortal Diamond: A Study in Search of the True SelfSeptember 13-November 22, 2017
This media-rich, self-paced online course is based on Richard Rohr’s book, Immortal Diamond. Rediscover your forgotten self that can never be destroyed, but can be transformed to live in eternal love.
Learn more and register today at cac.org.
Registration closes September 4 or when the course fills, whichever comes first.
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The Center for Action and Contemplation
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PO Box 12464 (mailing)
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