Healthy Spirituality (Richard Rohr)

The Gist of Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: the Gift of Contemplative Prayer (Crossroad 2003).

(For a fuller summary of this brilliant book, see the article http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/15480.htm on our website)

[1] CENTER AND CIRCUMFERENCE

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity (W B Yeats).

The two great paths of transformation:

· suffering (which gets our attention) and

· love and prayer (to get to our heart and passion).

'Everything belongs' - even that which is broken and poor

The poor and uneducated may love God more than the theologian or ecclesiastic - St. Bonaventura

Move beyond either-or thinking and learn to live with paradox, unanswered questions, inner contradictions

The 'Christ' of the insecure tends to be tribal - 'just like them'

Centred people, however, have their security and identity in God

The problem of all of Carl Jung's patients in the second half of life might have been solved by contact with 'the numinous' (God).

[2] VISION OF ENCHANTMENT

'If prayer isn't simple by the time you have finished reading this I will have failed'

We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God who is choosing us, now and now and now.

All the great religious teachers tell us that human beings do not naturally see: we have to be taught how to see.

Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a way of living in the Presence

God can most easily be lost by being thought found: We must never presume we see (Pharisees see sin everywhere except in themselves). Try to say 'I don't know anything' ('tabula rasa' in Latin). (Jesus' parables are almost always subversive with regard to conventional wisdom and so-called common sense)

Spirituality is about true seeing - you don't have to push

the river, because you are in it.

Liminality or liminal space (Latin 'limen' = threshold) is a good metaphor for transformation. Eg. Initiation rites, where the boy learns the way of tears, learns to 'let go' to become a man. The two greatest liminal experiences are birth and death.

It's metanoia (Greek - 'moving beyond the mind') - turning around, repentance. Our society produces 'liminoid' experiences - substitutes, diversionary - the bottom line, meritocracy, exchange rates.

So repeat throughout the day:

God's life is living itself in me.

I am aware of life living itself in me.

Or St. Patrick:

God beneath you

God in front of you

God behind you

God above you

God within you.

Jesus invites us to love and recognize the divine image even in our enemies. Either we see the divine image in all created things, or we don't see it at all. If the world is a temple, then our enemies are sacred too. And the ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing.

[3] EGO AND SOUL

The contemplative secret? Live in the now ('the sacrament of the present moment')

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I am

Be still and know

Be still

Be

The 'judging mode' ranks people/ideas (higher/lower, superior/ inferior) and is into control, comparison, competition - and all this blinds us to love. Julian of Norwich: 'The Lord looks on his servants with pity and not with blame.'

Jesus' crucifixion - seemingly a time of utter powerlessness - was actually his moment of greatest power.

Is the Universe Friendly? (Einstein). Babies under 2/3 years experience 'kinesthetic knowing' - and we always live out of that knowing. 'Be not afraid' is the most common single line in the Bible.

Bernham ('Coming to Our Senses') says the proliferation from about 1500 of mirrors was a historical watershed, leading to a split within the self, and a desire for 'physical perfection', a lack of contact with reality ('ontological moorings'). We must break the material world's hold on us, and enjoy the freedom of living as they did before mirrors and photos!

The price we've paid for technologies? Our soul, which now doesn't know itself because of comparison/differentiation.

The Priority of Contemplation.

Most revolutions fail because the demon of power (from left or right) has never been exorcised. We need less reformation and more transformation.

Most people spend their entire lives trying to be smart, good-looking, successful, clever, rather than living in the primal 'I' that is already good in God's eyes. When we are nothing, we are in a fine position to receive everything from God - poverty (Franciscans), nothingness (Carmelites), emptiness (Buddhists), the desert/closet (Jesus) - 'in Christ, hidden in God' (Paul, Colossians 3:3).

Inside and Outside

Contemplation, returning to the naked self, helps us let go of this 'I' fixation. The child, says Jesus, with its beginner's mind has no ego identity to prove, project, protect.

The problem with religion is that it clings to a small part of the whole - spinning the prayer wheel right, engaging in rituals, affirming dogma (group-think is often a substitute for God-think), obeying laws. Techniques, rituals and spiritual disciplines are just 'fingers pointing to the moon'. Institutional religion is the least mature manifestation of the living presence of Christ.

If you understand it, things are just as they are; if you don't understand it, things are just as they are.

The Enlightenment: I think therefore I am. Moderns: I choose therefore I am.

[4] CLEANSING THE LENS

Prayer is not 'one of ten thousand things'. It's that by which we see ten thousand things.

Aquinas did not ask where it came from, but if it is true: 'If it is true, it is of the Holy Spirit.'

God refuses to be known except by love (John of the Cross)

Wiping the Mirror

The wounds to our ego are our teachers and must be welcomed ('our trials and disturbances come from our not understanding ourselves' Teresa of Avila)

Prayer is not finally self-observation, but 'falling into the hands of the living God' (Hebrews 10:31)

The Power of Free Will

In politics we demonize the other side (it's all driven by illusion, self-interest, power and fear - especially the fear of not being re-elected). 'Fear not' - the most common one-liner in the Bible. We live too much in reaction to others - they're wrong, I'm right. It's scapegoating - projecting the problem 'over there'. Rather: 'we have found the enemy and it is us!'

Kohlberg's schema on moral development would place Jesus as a sixth-level person - a very small minority of humans (but mystical Judaism, Islam and Buddhism also agree.)

Prayer and Suffering

We all need art, music and solitude. Prayer and suffering lead to our emotional depths (they both help us become dependent on God): they are the two primary paths of transformation and we connect with the suffering and injustice of the world (com-passion = 'feeling with').

Humility and honesty lead to truth, not just information, according to the wisdom traditions: we grow by subtraction more than by addition. The twentieth century has added nothing to the wisdom of the soul: it was all there already.

We can choose fear/illusion/self-protection - or love. FEAR = false evidence appearing real.

[5] DON'T PUSH THE RIVER

The holy fool knows that he doesn't know ('If you can explain it, it's not true'). (Protestants' theology is mostly in their head).

'God comes to us disguised as our life' (Paul D'Arcy). Meister Eckhart: 'God is closer to me than I am to myself'. Everything belongs; God uses everything; there are no dead-ends; there is no wasted energy. Everything is recycled. Sin-history and salvation-history are two sides of the one coin. The Gospel is all about the mystery of forgiveness. The people who know God well - the mystics, the hermits, those who risk everything to find God - always meet a lover, not a dictator.

(Two-thirds of Jesus' teachings and one third of his parables are about forgiveness)

Your life is not about 'you'. It's part of a much larger stream called God.

Personal Prayer and Social Prayer

When a church isn't teaching people how to pray, it's lost the reason for its existence. For most churches what is all-important is attendance at a service where the clergy happen to be in charge. Church = individuals coming for their spiritual fix hen leaving.

Weeping is the opposite of blaming, and also the opposite of denying. The freedom to cry is a clear sign you've actually experienced God. The man who cannot cry is a savage; the old man who cannot laugh is a fool. The person of prayer is a person who can cry from the heart and laugh from the belly.

We are all naked underneath our clothes, more alike than different.

[6] RETURN TO THE SACRED

All transformation takes place in 'sacred space', 'threshold place' (liminality). Prophets lead us into sacred space by showing us the insufficiency of the old order (priests help us live in the new realm).

In mature religion the secular becomes sacred. The temple veil is rent ('pro' + 'fanum' --- profane, ie. outside the temple.

Embracing the Shadow

In the first half of life winning is very important ('the character lie' - Ernest Becker). Most problems are psychological; most solutions are spiritual. The burden of the second half of life is often the reclaiming of what we have denied, feared and rejected.

Our shadow is failure itself. We scorn powerlessness and poverty, the fear of being 'ordinary' (which is failure in a success-driven culture). Francis: 'Here is where I will rejoice. I will delight in nonpower, nonaggression, nondomination, nonpleasure, nonwealth, nonsuccess.' That is freedom!

The fear of death is the existential terror about losing what you've never found. For Jesus life and love are eternal; we enter into it now. It's heaven all the way to heaven (or hell all the way to hell). Not later, but now.

Augustine: 'In my deepest wound I see your glory and it dazzles me!' Julian: 'God sees the wounds and sees them not as scars but as honors.' Most of us do not thank God for our wounds - and then, not until the second half of life.

Walking the Third Way

The religion of Jesus is about attachment, falling in love, risking pain, suffering - not Zen-like detachment - 'the Third Way', the middle way between fight and flight ('everything is beautiful'), the contemplative stance, the way of wisdom.

Liberals are into 'fight' - 'fix it and change it'; conservatives flight - denying massive institutional evils. Liberals deny the vertical arm of the cross (transcendence); conservatives the horizontal (breadth and inclusivity).

Prophets see in themselves good and bad (it's not 'over there'). The divine image honors the good in both myself and my would-be opponent.

CONCLUSION: A CONTEMPLATIVE SEEING OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE CROSS

I believe

· God is in all things - even and especially painful things. The crucifixion of the God-man is he best thing in human history

· Human existence is neither perfectly consistent nor is it incoherent chaos

· The price we pay for holding together these opposites is always some form of crucifixion

· The 'paschal mystery'- true life comes only through death and rebirth wherein we learn who God is for us

· We should not be surprised by the sinful and the tragic. Do what you can to 'be peace' and to do justice but never expect or demand perfection on this earth

· Resist all utopian ideologies and heroic idealisms that are not tempered by patience and taught by all that is broken, flawed, sinful and poor

· Following Jesus is not a salvation scheme for individuals or society but sharing the fate of God for the life of the world

· God is calling everyone and everything to himself

· Institutional religion is the necessary but immature manifestation of the 'hidden mystery' by which God is saving the world. It is never an end in itself but an uncertain trumpet of the message

· Many live this mystery who do not belong to he church - Gandhi, Simone Weil, Nelson Mandela

· Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected is he vulnerable face of God

· The Cosmic Christ is no threat to anything but separateness, illusion, domination

· The contemplative mind is the only way of seeing all this. The calculative mind creates dualisms, win/lose scenarios, imperial egos and necessary victims

· 'No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it' (Einstein)

GUIDE FOR REFLECTION

· What is the circumference/centre for you?

· 'Too many words' - why?

· 'We are born again and again and again'

· Playful prayer involves surrender and gratitude

· Why is it easier to be against than for?

· How do you relate God to things?

· How do you relate sexually to other people?

· 'Part of us always has to die'. What part, for you?

This book may be ordered from Ridley College Bookshop - http://bookshop.ridley.unimelb.edu.au/bookweb/

Shalom! Rowland Croucher July 2005.