"Real Prayer"

Lets read Richard Rohr passage for today.

The most simple rule for good prayer is honestly and humility. One can never go wrong with those two. Talk honestly to God. Don't give God the self you think you're supposed to be. Give God yourself in your nakedness, who you really are, even if that means giving God your anger or distractions. We used to try to avoid distractions. But it's much better to use our distractions. If you're obsessed with a thought all afternoon, that's what you give to God. Lord, why am I so caught up in this fantasy? Why am I so caught up in this preoccupation? Why am I so worried about this bill or this mortgage or whatever it might be? Make that the subject of your prayer instead of trying to avoid it and getting into some spiritual or theological world. That's the meaning of integrated, incarnational prayer. St. Paul speaks of unceasing prayer. He's not talking about us spending time thinking spiritual thoughts or even spending time thinking about God. Prayer is seeing what is in front of us in all its fullness. This is a truly secular, biblical, Hebrew form of prayer. It's responding to life in a holistic way in the ways it comes to us. Instead of our life being a self-centered monologue, our life becomes a God-centered dialogue. Are your control needs, your fears, your guilt, your worries, your success needs in charge? Is Jesus your natural reference point so that he reigns over your life? Then you've accepted the lordship of Jesus. It's not a matter of having words, but of having a Center beyond yourself.

from The Passion of God and the Passion Within

"Spirituality of Subtraction"

from Richard Rohr's "Price of Peoplehood "



The notion of a spirituality of subtraction comes from Meister Eckhart, the medieval Dominican mystic. He said the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition. Yet I think Christians today are involved in great part in a spirituality of addition. The capitalist worldview is the only world most of us have ever known. We see reality, experiences, events, other people, things - in fact, everything - as objects for consumption. The nature of the capitalist mind is that things (and often people!) are there for me. Finally, even God becomes an object for our consumption. Remember the bumper sticker "I found it"? The Holy One becomes "it," a pronoun, a thing. Even the Lord becomes a consumer object that I can privately possess. Now that is surely heresy in any religion. You almost wonder if true spirituality is even possible in this culture. Everything gets turned around so that we're in the driver's sear: God, the Bible, the sacraments, the Church, people and prayer. Everything is there to foster my own ego and its need to feel good about itself.

"The Self-revelation of God"

Interesting passage from Richard Rohr book "the Price of Peoplehood"
enjoy.

"The Self-revelation of God"

The dialogue between God and humanity is the give-and-take of self-revelation and response. That's what's happening in every relationship. If you don't understand self-disclosure or the rules of relationship, you can't understand the rules of prayer. In prayer God is gradually disclosing himself, revealing herself. So revelation and faith are correlative: There cannot be faith without revelation. We cannot believe in a person who has not shared himself or herself with us. To the degree that person has shared with us, we can believe in that person. It's the same way with God. When we waste time with the Lord and listen, we're allowing God to reveal not information but self. This is what's symbolized on the cross: God is totally disclosed, God is the totally given God. But it takes us a lot of scraping and converting to open ourselves up to that disclosure. If we are filled with ourselves, there is, quite simply, no room for the other, and surely not The Other.