"Grandfather Energy"

Today, we have an interesting passage that talks about living. During our life, we learn about the many obstacles and problems life has. We learn that our health needs nurture; we learn about our day-to-day survival, we learn about unity. We learn about True Friendship and the absence of it. We are in a constant learning mode. We are always deciding how to react. In my opinion, those are the decisions that give us the experience. That life and death decision that we recognize when the eyes of those with experience identify.

Enjoy


"Grandfather Energy"
A man of deep male energy is a truster of life. To be trusting is not to be naïve; it is to make judgments, recognizing what is life and what is death. Once you clarify what is life and what is death, you will be able to trust both of them. People who can’t distinguish between death and life can’t trust reality.
Trust is not making a virtuous decision; it’s not a leap of faith without any evidence. It’s recognizing that every human situation is a mixture of both life and death, that the big truths usually are complicated truths. We are a mixture of darkness and light, life and death. Every action we perform has some quality of life to it, yet some quality of fear and self-protection. When we can accept that there is no perfect anything, we can find peace in this world. As Jesus put it, “God alone is good” (Mark 10:18).
It takes a monumental act of courage and a tremendous humility to accept a paradoxical world. I think that is what “grand” fathers (and “grand” mothers!) can do. You probably don’t come to this full balance much before fifty years of age.
from A Man’s Approach to God by Richard Rohr

"The Liberation of Men"

"The Liberation of Men"

Our liberation as men is different from feminine liberation. What our sisters are fighting – patriarchal culture – has oppressed women in so many ways, but men didn’t realize it because we were on top. We must stand at our sisters’ side to begin to understand their struggle. Yet men have their own liberation agenda, too.

Western men need liberation from the whole set of expectations that culture puts upon us and we put upon ourselves: to be overachievers, competitive, focused and necessarily unfeeling, successful, hard-and-strong cannon fodder for wars. That pressure is instilled from boyhood, both by women and other men. Both men and women profit from it; both men and women suffer from it.

Our liberation is to recognize and counter these voices inside us that give us false definitions of success. That may be even a more difficult form of liberation than women’s. I think that is why men are behind in the process of liberation. One is more trapped at the top. At least that’s what the gospel says.

In family after family, the woman has moved in her masculine journey farther than most of us men have moved into our feminine journey. A lot of men intuitively recognize that their wife is stronger in many ways than they are. In many families she knows how to organize life or get things done better than her husband. That becomes the pattern of the family. She becomes an androgynous person, really in her own way much more liberated than the man. The man stands on the side, earning money to support the whole system and losing the respect of his children, his wife, and often himself.

It has been much harder, culturally, for men to journey into their feminine side than for women to integrate their masculine. We need our sisters to recognize our entrapment.

from A Man’s Approach to God

"What God Has to Work With"

"What God Has to Work With"

The Lord cares, despite all of our silliness. We are the kind of being God loves. God’s love doesn’t depend on our doing nice or right things. Yet it’s an illusion to think that any of us would operate totally beyond self-interest. Realistically, every action of our life is filled with self. That’s human nature, and it’s probably OK as long as we’re honest about it.

For example, I have become tired of giving talks. As it does for everyone, my gift has become my curse. But at the same time I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I gain some kind of ego satisfaction: I stand in front of crowds, and it makes me feel good. That’s OK as long as I recognize my mixed motives and self-interest. That’s the only way God gets anyone to do anything! It’s legitimate and probably necessary self-interest.

What concerns me is when we say we’re doing it all for Jesus, or purely for love, or for our spouse or children, or for the Church. That’s usually a delusion. We’re doing it in part for ourselves, and God, in great love and humility, says, “That’s what I work with. That’s all I work with!” It’s the mustard seed with which God does great things. Thank God!

True recognition of our basic egotism is a humbling experience, but a liberating one too.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Beatitudes People"

"Beatitudes People"



How blessed are the poor in spirit: the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Blessed are the gentile: they shall have the earth as inheritance.

Blessed are those who mourn: they shall be comforted.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for uprightness: they shall have their fill.

Blessed are the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them.

Blessed are the pure in heart: they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be recognized as children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness: the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you. (Matthew 5:3-12, NJB).

(Recorded at Lourdes) Something is happening at Lourdes. And God wants to give us the eyes to see it and the ground to receive it. What are all these crippled and handicapped people telling us? What is the witness of all these nurses and life-bearers? It seems God wants us to live a vulnerable life, a life dependent on other people, a life that is unafraid to cry.

“Happy are those who hunger and thirst for justice,” Jesus says.

The little ones are able to see what is happening. These are the ones who, when there is something more, will be ready. Because the numb do not notice. The sophisticated will not suffer. The comfortable need not complain. But Jesus teaches us, in effect, how to suffer graciously. He actually increases our ability to suffer graciously. He actually increases our capacity for pain. This is the central message of the eight Beatitudes.

What kind of God is this? It is a God who increases our capacity to feel the pain of being human, a God who allows deformities and tragedies so we can all be bound together in a sisterhood of need, a brotherhood of need.

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr

Sharing a Pig

"Sharing the Pig"

I had an experience in Guatemala similar to many others I’ve had in other Third World countries: As soon as you come to the village, in a very short time you will hear the squeal of a pig or the squawk of a chicken. They’re killing it for you. They’ve been saving it for you. And sometimes you find out afterward that it was the last pig or chicken. The poor are so generous.

Hoarding traps you in a kind of scarcity mentality. But when you have a little, for some reason you’re willing to give it away and make a day of it. Saving and preserving is not your way of life. “This is it, the last pig. But Father came to town and we’re going to celebrate,” the people say. So they kill the pig, and then you sit there in that house for hours while they’re cleaning and cooking the pig.

After you’re finished eating with the people who were originally invited to the meal, there’s lots left over. What would we do in our country? We have Tupperware and refrigerators. To save it would be a good, responsible thing to do: Don’t waste food is our commandment. And we have the technology to do just that.

Here’s a perfect example of how technology has a good side and a bad side. What have we lost by our refrigerators and freezers? Guatemalans immediately have to share the pig, the chicken with other people. Bringing food from one house to the next, which creates family, is a daily experience. It creates community and interdependence.

We North Americans don’t need to do that because we can store it for ourselves. So it keeps us more and more inside our houses where everything is mine, and it needs to be protected from you. Our politics of scarcity and individual responsibility leads us to become more and more isolated, independent and competitive. The poor have an amazing politics of abundance precisely because they can rely upon the group and are not as tempted to securing for the future. Our biases see this as irresponsibility, but the poor actually are closer to faith, community and the Kingdom of God.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Checkbook Storytime"

"Checkbook Storytime"

There is a couple I know who earn very good money, and yet they live simply, without any status symbols or luxuries, with money set aside for charity. It’s a trimmed-down life for them and their six children.

Every month the mother gathers the six children around the checkbook. For each check that she writes to whomever it might be, to whatever cause or charity, she tells them a story: “This is why these people need it more than we need it.” And so those kids actually know where the family money is going and that it isn’t there in the bank account for them to buy a new toy.

The parents themselves are making choices not to have always new, better, more things. When the parents share those choices, the children are more willing to buy into them. They begin a process of solidarity (not without struggle, however!). At this point they are some of the most mature and responsible – and yet alive and real – children I’m aware of in their community.

I think the mother’s check-writing process is probably the best form of religious education. The rubber has met the road. It’s not highly metaphysical and spiritual; it’s “Jesus means this. Commitment means this. Love means this.” That’s religious education.

Our checkbooks are probably our best theological statement about our real values. Jesus said, similarly, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21, JB).

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

Too Much Access

"Too Much Access"

With so many time-saving devices, it doesn’t make sense that people are so rushed. People seem to have so little time to do what they want. We’ve created tremendous accessibility to one another through the telephone, the car, mass transit, telegrams, postal service.

When I moved to Albuquerque, I got a phone-answering machine because I’m gone so much. I said, I must be crazy to be doing this! Now I’ll go home and everybody I was able to get away from will still be able to get at me. Earlier generations didn’t – and other cultures still don’t – have that access to one another. Sometimes, within the same day, I am speaking in two different parts of the world that in any former age would have required weeks to travel between them. It must be taking a toll on the psyche, on what is real, on our spiritual home. It is friendship and wisdom that seem to suffer.

Material affluence, ironically, creates scarcity of non-material things. Pope John Paul II said that very well when he first spoke to the United Nations. In a culture of affluence, he said, you will predictably see a decrease of spiritual values: time, knowledge, wisdom, love and friendship. Those decrease almost in mathematical proportion as you move toward materialism.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Respecting Our Experience"

"Respecting Our American Experience"

The cultural experience of each country has to be respected and listened to, for God has spoken through the minds and hearts of each people. Each, I believe, holds different parts of the Great Mystery in special awareness.

If we’re going to listen to the experience of our brothers and sisters in the Third World, I think, in fairness, we have to grant the same privilege to ourselves. We have to respect and listen to the only experience that we Americans have had. We have to trust it, we have to say, somehow there’s some truth in it.

We must recognize the good in our society before we can eliminate the bad because good and evil are two sides of one coin. You can’t recognize evil without recognizing good. You can’t accept the one without, to some degree, accepting or at least understanding the other.

What is the American experience? What is our experience of life, for good and for ill? It’s the only experience you and I have. I would list the essentially good values of American culture as: personalism, freedom and self-determination, pluralism, up-front honesty, democratic self-criticism, a not-so-bad emphasis on productivity and practical effect, and a natural egalitarianism that disdains caste systems in any form. These are all potentially gospel and part of the cosmic mystery of the Body of Christ.

The American experience has formed our psyche. God is willing to use these values. We must be willing to work with them, too, recognizing both their gift and their temptation.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"The Baths at Lourdes"

"The Baths at Lourdes"

(Recorded at Lourdes) Being lowered into the baths at Lourdes is an act of humiliation and trust, an act of faith. Your mind wants to say, Why do this? What does this mean? What is this going to do? It seems everything in our life has to have an immediate, visible effect, or it hasn’t “worked.”

That attitude is a terrible enemy of faith because faith is not in the realm of the practical; faith means entering into the world of mystery, where deeper energies are at work, where transformation takes place even though nothing appears to change.

If we can enter into a deeper surrender in faith, like a child who can rejoice entertaining itself before its mother, then we can truly experience prayer together. We have to let go of our working ideas to play before the Lord, and in this shrine of Lourdes, to play before Mary. Only our humble, goal-less inner child can understand that.

[In fact, I was healed of seven years of severe hypoglycemia at Lourdes the day this was recorded, October 2, 1980. God is good!]

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr

"The Third Temptation of Christ (Control)"

"The Third Temptation of Christ (Control)"

After the need to be successful and the need to think well of the self, the third human addiction is the need for control or power. So the devil tells Jesus to bow down before the systems of this world: “All of them you can have” (Matthew 4:8). Just buy them. Believe in them. Jesus refuses to bow down before the little kingdoms of this world, the corporations and the nation-states, the security systems, the idols of militarism. The price of this love of power is to “fall at Satan’s feet and worship him!” (Matthew4:9). That’s a very heavy judgement on “all the kingdoms of the world.” In all these systems, self-interest has to dominate. For Kingdom people, self-interest cannot dominate.

Simply put, the third temptation is the need to be in control, to be aligned with power and money. The three temptations that Jesus faces, in a certain sense, all become one: the addictive system, the great lie, the untouchable mythology, “the sin of the world” (John 1:29) that must be unmasked and dethroned. And I know nothing strong enough to break the mythology – not ideology, not liberalism, not conservatism – except the upside-down gospel of Jesus. You must re-found your life on a new foundation, the foundation, the foundation of your experienced union with God.

Jesus tells Satan,” ‘You must worship the Lord your God, and serve God alone.’ And the devil left him” (Matthew 4:10-11). When you have faced these three “biggies,” Satan doesn’t have a chance.

from Preparing for Christmas With Richard Rohr

"The Second Temptation of Christ (Righteousness)"

"The Second Temptation of Christ (Righteousness)"

The second temptation of Jesus: Satan takes him up to the pinnacle of the temple, symbolizing the religious world, and tells him to play righteousness games with God. “Throw yourself off and he’ll catch you” (Matthew 4:6). It’s the only time when the devil quotes Scripture. The second temptation is the need to be right and to think of the self as saved, superior, the moral elite standing on God and religion, and quoting arguable Scriptures for your own purpose.

More evil has come into the world by people of righteous ignorance than by people who’ve intentionally sinned: Being convinced that one has the whole truth and has God wrapped up in my denomination, my dogmas, and my right response (I am baptized, I made a personal decision for Jesus, I go to church).

It’s not wrong to be “right.” Once in a while if something works out, that’s sure nice. The spiritual problem is the need to be right. We are called to do the truth and then let go of the consequences. One stops asking the question of spiritual success, which is the egocentrism of the rich young man: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). Jesus refused to answer him because it is the wrong question. It is again “the devil” quoting Scripture and not really wanting an answer, only affirmation.

As Mother Teresa loves to say, “We were not created to be successful [even spiritually successful!] but to be obedient.” True obedience to God won’t always make us look or feel right. Faith is dangerous business!

from Preparing for Christmas With Richard Rohr

"The First Temptation of Christ (Success)"

"The First Temptation of Christ (Success)"

I believe that all would-be ministers must face the same three temptations as Jesus before they really can minister. The first temptation of Christ, to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:3), is the need to be effective, successful, relevant, to make things happen. You’ve done something and people say, “Wow! Good job! You did it right. You’re OK.” When the crowds approve, it’s hard not to believe that we have done a good thing, and probably God’s will.

Usually when you buy into that too quickly, you’re feeding the false self and the system, which tells you what it immediately wants and seldom knows what it really needs. You can be a very popular and successful minister operating at that level. That is why Jesus has to face that temptation first, to move us beyond what we want to what we really need. In refusing to be relevant, in refusing to respond to people’s immediate requests, Jesus says, Go deeper. What’s the real question? What are you really after? What does the heart really hunger for? What do you really desire? “It’s not by bread alone that we live” (Matthew 4:4).

from Preparing for Christmas With Richard Rohr

"The Divine Pickpocket"

"The Divine Pickpocket"

We can only dare to let go of evil in the presence of a perfect love. Don Quixote steals the shame of Aldonza by his continual respect for her. Love makes sin unnecessary and takes it away.

What do you think happens when God forgives your sin? Is it God changing suddenly, reassessing you? Is it God deciding to waive some eternal and required punishment? No! Nothing happens in God. God is a perfect given-ness, totally and always given, literally fore-given: ahead of time, before our act of faith.

God does not change; we change. Here is what’s happening in the experience of forgiveness: When God’s arms are tight enough around you, when for a moment you can believe in love, when you let God gaze into your eyes deeply enough and are ready to believe it, than you’re able to let God rob you of your sin. God pulls it out of your pocket while holding you in her gaze!

from Days of Renewal

"Child of the 60’s"

"Child of the 60’s"

I do not know if it was an advantage or disadvantage to grow up in the 60’s. Vision, hope, optimism and positive social change were the mood of the times. It was easy to believe that the Age of Aquarius was indeed upon us with its apex being a Vatican II Church and an enlightened America that would surely be the threshold of the coming Kingdom. Idealism seemed almost unchecked, open-ended and wonderful. All we had to do was get everyone educated and converted, and that was just a matter of time.

Now in 1992, that five hundredth anniversary of the European invasion of the Americas, things look different. It is hard to believe that the world could appear so changed in one lifetime. The values that we thought were roundly accepted are now roundly denied: racism is chic, war is a substitute for worship, materialism is the watertight myth, the poor are blamed for their condition, and religion, largely, is unimportant.

Were we wrong, or is this the price that one pays for false innocence? Is there such a thing as social progress? Must we take two steps back for each step forward? As you probably suspect, I now answer each of these with a humble yes. But I am very happy that I was formed in the lens-opening 60’s, especially when I see the later alternatives. These alternatives threaten to close that lens through cynicism, discouragement, anger and darkness.

from Radical Grace, “A Transitional Generation”

"Transformation and Change"

"Transformation and Change"

There is a difference between change and transformation. Change happens when something old dies and something new begins. I am told that planned change is as troublesome to the psyche as unplanned change, often more so. We feel manipulated, forced, and impute it to some evil authorities, the change agents! But change might or might not be accompanied by transformation of soul. I’m afraid it is usually not. If change does not invite personal transformation, we lose our souls. Such is the modern malaise. We mass-produce neurotics and narcissists because there are so few medicine men and healing women and Spirit guides to walk us through transformation.

At times of change, the agents of transformation must work overtime, even through few will hear them. The ego would sooner play victim or too-quick victor than take the ambiguous road of transformation. We change-agents need a simple virtue: faith. It still is the rarest of commodities because it feels like nothing, at least nothing that satisfies our need to know, to fix, to manage, to understand. Faith goes against the grain.

Transformation in times of change is the exception, but it is also the norm. Deutero-Isaiah was written in exile; Francis of Assisi emerged as the first clocks turned time into money; and the martyrs of El Salvador spilled their blood during the last gasps of colonial and economic oppression. Nothing new seems to happen except when the old dies. But the old does not die gracefully: It always takes hostages. These have the potential of building bridges to the next coming of Christ.

from Radical Grace, “A Transitional Generation”

"Your Name-place"

"Your Name-place"

God gives you two names: yours and God’s. Listen for that place deep within where God has given you God’s own name, that name lovers reveal to one another in intimate moments, where God has told you who God is for you. Who is God for you? It’s unlike anybody else. You reflect a part of God that no one else will ever reflect. You reflect back to God a part of the mystery that no one else will understand.

Where God has given you God’s intimate name, you also have been given your own name. It takes awhile; it takes some listening, some silence, some suffering, probably. It takes some waiting, desiring; it takes some hoping. But finally we discover that place where we know who we are; we know what God said.

That place-where-the-names-are-One, God’s name and your name, that’s the place of inner authority. That’s the place where the Spirit is able to be heard and received. It’s the only place big enough and grand enough to be able to believe the daring gospel of Christ.

I hope someone has given you freedom and permission to trust your own experience, to listen, and believe your name. It speaks and evokes you and no one else.

from The Passion of God and the Passion Within

"A Week of Prayers: Jesus Is Our Love"

"A Week of Prayers: Jesus Is Our Love"

God of life, bless our days. Keep us alive and in love. Keep us listening. Keep us growing, Mother-God. Keep drawing us closer to you. Help our words, Father-God, not get in the way of your Spirit. Help the words we use not become too many or too confusing. Our faith, Holy One, is in you and not in any words or in any teaching. We just want these words to open us up to you and to your Spirit among us.

Help us not to be afraid of Jesus, the companion you have given us for our journey toward you. As St. Bernard prayed, “Jesus, our Lord, you are honey in our mouth. You are music in our ear. You are a leap of joy in our heart.”

from The Price of Peoplehood and Days of Renewal

"A Week of Prayers: Make Us Signs of Hope"

"A Week of Prayers: Make Us Signs of Hope"

Spirit of God, Lord, again we come as sons and we need you; we come as daughters and we ask for your life. You are our God. You are our creator. You have made us something out of nothing. Free us so we no longer complain about what is not given. We know, God, what is given and we can no longer deny it. Make signs of hope, Jesus, for this world, so that the world will not destroy itself. Give us faith to believe, Father, not in just some new, happy life, not in some good fortune in the future, but give us faith in the now that seems so empty.

Give us hope that you are what we suspect you should be: love as we understand it. Mother, perhaps there is something else giving on here. We dare to want to see it and want to believe it. Perhaps there is graciousness here. All we know is that we who were once nothing are now something, and you, God of life, have made it so. We are so grateful.

from Days of Renewal

"A Week of Prayers: You Are Lord"

"A Week of Prayers: You Are Lord"

Lord Christ, we salute you. We salute the love we do not understand. We wait for a love that we do not yet know. Help us, Lord, to stand under the cross and finally to understand. Give us, Lord, through the experiences of human life, the hearts to understand. We praise you. You are the loving Lord of history, and our knees will bend at your name, for you have created us out of nothing, loved us and saved us.

from Days of Renewal

"A Week of Prayers: Help Us to Be Universal"

"A Week of Prayers: Help Us to Be Universal"

Loving Creator, we want to be your people. We want to be your universal people, your catholic people. We want to be brothers and sisters to all of our brothers and sisters who eat of the same bread and drink of the same cup that we enjoy. Teach us how, Holy Spirit. Help us not to get in the way of this always-bigger thing that you are doing. Help us, teach us how to be ready to be Catholic. We trust in you, Lord Christ, that you are the Lord of our history and the Lord of our lives. We pray, trusting that you are both hearing and creating this prayer. We pray in the name of Jesus, whose Body we are. Amen.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"A Week of Prayers: Teach Us to Pray"

"A Week of Prayers: Teach Us to Pray"

Loving God, give us the gift of prayer. We want you to find us, and we want to find you. Teach us how to pray, Holy Spirit, and how not to be afraid of prayer. Give us the courage to reveal ourselves, because, Lord, you have not been afraid to reveal yourself. We need and want to expose our deepest heart to you, just as you have exposed your heart to us.

Free us from our fears. Put your arms around us and call us each by name. Call us daughter and son. Call us to yourself. Tell us it’s OK, because we’re so afraid, and we feel so bad about who we are. We long to be found out, Lord. Discover us, Lord. We want to reveal ourselves to you. And we want you to take us into your embrace. We pray together as your sons and daughters and we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"Prayer Advice"

"Prayer Advice"

In order to discover the right rhythm of prayer for us, the prayer that works with our temperament, we must listen to the ways that God speaks to us. How do you best slow down and enter in to the dialogue of revelation and response? It’s different for each of us.

You may need a holy spot, perhaps a place where God has spoken to you before. Maybe it’s out in nature, maybe it’s a certain chair or before the Blessed Sacrament. Maybe it’s in the last pew in church. It’s that place where you can return to and sort of settle back and seek God’s face. That’s the simplest form of prayer: Each day simply seek, for a moment, if possible, the face of God. Know that you’ve looked at God eyeball to eyeball, and you’ve let God look at you.

If you’re more the thinking type, ideas will lead you into that revelation-and-faith-dialogue. Use a book, if that’s your style. But don’t think that reading the book is itself the dialogue. You’ve got to end by talking to God from your heart, person-to-person, with ordinary words like you’d talk to everybody else. Speak out of what you’re really feeling, not what you think you’re supposed to be feeling. If you’re feeling depression, failure, competition, that’s what you bring to God. Everything is data. There are no such things as distractions.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"Weeds and Wheat"

"Weeds and Wheat"

“The servants came to the owner of the field, and said, “There did the weeds come from?” “An enemy has done this to us,” he answered. And the servant said, “Do you want us to go and weed it out?” But he said, “No, because if you pull out the weeds, you will pull out the wheat with it. Let them both grow until the harvest, and at harvest time I will separate the two.” (Matthew 13:28-30)

This passage has to be one of the most overlooked, least influential, yet most needed of Jesus’ direct teachings. It presents the ambiguous character of reality in a way that we were not ready for, it seems. The image of the weeds and the wheat has had almost no effect on the development of our moral theology, our self-understanding, or our patience with all institutions and with one another. Folks now chase after the yin and yang of Eastern religions as if they are a new, honest teaching. As usual, Jesus already said it: We just didn’t hear.

We did, at least, speak of the “Paschal Mystery” as the mystery of faith, and the new liturgy proclaims, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” But even there, we don’t often translate mythic language into the human patterns that myths point to. Maybe it never computed into “Half will be dark, half will be light, again and again.” Or, “No matter where, when or what, life will be both agony and ecstasy.”

The field contains both weeds and wheat, and we must let them grow together. How much time I have wasted in trying to pull out my weeds! You cannot really pull them out, but don’t ever doubt that they are there! Thus, the Sacrament of Penance is not the sacrament of the annihilation of sin, or even getting rid of sin. It is more reconciliation with and forgiveness of those dang weeds in the field.

(from unpublished sermon notes)

"Freedom Versus Fear"

"Freedom Versus Fear"

You can never bring about the Kingdom of God by means of fear (see Romans 14:16-17). It is not the Kingdom of God if it is brought about by fear or coercion. God allows and respects the freedom of creatures, even to the point of rebellion and blasphemy! The realm of freedom is a prerequisite of virtue, just as it is of sin. It is God’s great risk.

The freedom to fall is also the freedom to rise. It’s precisely in our failure, our experience of poverty, weakness, emptiness that we come to experience God’s restoration and healing love. You can say, Oh, that’s dangerous, it sounds like you’re justifying sin. But I’m just trying to be the ultimate realist. Salvation is sin overturned and outdone, as God expands and educates our true freedom. Free will and freedom of conscience are at the heart of the doctrine of grace and at the center of Christian morality.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"Render Unto Rome"

"Render Unto Rome"

Don’t give Rome more authority than it was ever intended to have. Jesus told Peter to preserve the brothers in faith (see Luke 22:31-32). Jesus didn’t say anything to Peter about preserving them in love or hope. The role of the bishop of Rome is to keep us united in the tradition of faith. We are preserved in love by the example of the suffering people of the world. Hope is given to us by prophets – prophetic movements and communities. When we put all of that on Rome we asked to be disappointed.

Once I was able to accept Rome’s central, visible and important gift, while also realizing Rome does not have all the gifts, I didn’t need to get so angry and disappointed with the Vatican. I go ahead with my Christian life. I hope I’m free to say yes and give them a due hearing. However, I also have my own prayer life. I have my conscience; I have my own study of the Scripture that I’ve done together with my Franciscan community, scholars and my lay community. I have to trust these hearings. I have to trust my inner authority as a complement to that outer authority. As Cardinal Newman put it, “I toast the pope, but I toast human conscience first.”

My prayer is that they overlap as much as possible. But when they don’t, I have to go back to prayer and back to other wise people. That’s why we need wise and authentically obedient people like Charles Curran, Dorothy Day, and Archbishop Hunthausen – to help us form our consciences. The first principle of traditional Catholic morality is that “one must follow one’s conscience.”

from Catholic Agitator, “Creative Dissent”

"Positive Passion"

"Positive Passion"

We live a long time in order to become lovers. God is like a good parent, refusing to do our homework for us. We must learn through trial and error. We have to do our homework ourselves, the homework of suffering, desiring, winning and losing, hundreds of times.

Loss is one of the greatest occasions of passionate feeling, and it’s one that is socially acceptable. When we lose a beloved friend, wife, husband, child, parent, or maybe a possession or a job, we feel OK to be passionate. But we must broaden that. We’ve got to get to a passion that is also experienced when we have it, not just when we’re losing it. And we have it all the time. Don’t wait for loss to feel, suffer, enjoy deeply.

from The Passion of God and the Passion Within

"Real Vacations"

"Real Vacations"

There are two types of passivity. First, there’s laziness. That is largely avoidance, an aimless kind of moving around and saying, “I gotta rest.” Why is it that so much recreation we take is not really re-creation? It does not really renew our spirit. A lot that people call a vacation is simply diversion, or distraction from a life that is already one big distraction. It’s finding another kind of stimulation we have. We say, I’m not gonna do anything, I’m on vacation. But that isn’t the true recreation that re-creates, the true vacation that vacates the overstuffed apartment.

A real vacation should encourage real inner passivity. True leisure, true emptiness, is, in fact, a vigilance, a listening, a waiting. It’s a strong inner activity. And the irony is, this kind of passivity is the most disciplined activity. Thus the contemplatives were often the greatest activists.

Freedom comes when you can be and let be. Then you appear to be passive, but in fact you’re operating out of a strong inner activity. On the other hand, some people who are really moving and achieving are not really active people at all. They’re extremely passive people, following the collective herd of trends and dictated fashions, deaf and dumb inside.

from The Price of Peoplehood by Richard Rohr

"We Are Deeply Hurt People"

"We Are Deeply Hurt People"

If there’s one teaching of the Church that I’ve grown to appreciate, it’s the concept of Original Sin. I have less and less doubt that all of us are infected with some kind of tragic flaw, that all of us are deeply wounded at the core.

I never really used to think that way. I came out of the very optimistic, Chardinian worldview. Now after seven years building community, I’ve seen too many jolly, fine, together people come on the scene and think they were perfect people. After three months, I’d see they’re just like all the rest of us. There hasn’t been an exception in seven years.

We all are deeply hurt people, and we’ve all been infected. People are not whole and yet they constantly long for holiness, for wholeness. That’s why Jesus’ call to holiness is paralleled by the healing ministry. In fact, you could say that’s almost all Jesus does: preach and heal, preach and heal, preach and heal. For the mature ones, the preaching is already healing and the healing is its own sermon.

from The Price of Peoplehood by Richard Rohr