hints & guesses

Centrifugal Flight into the Void

2011-09-05T06:53:00.000-07:00

Trail Ridge Road has been called Highway to the Sky, and when I took this photo, I wasn't thinking at all about Thomas Merton. Then again, God usually gets my attention via misdirection, from something in my peripheral vision.

My mind has been burdened by the debate in our community about a proposed law to punish local businesses for hiring undocumented workers. I've been surprised how some have seen this issue as black and white, open and shut, about 'illegal aliens' robbing jobs from local law abiding citizens, about upholding the law and somehow not about racial profiling or systemic racism. I guess my surprise is in expecting more from people who regard themselves as Christian who don't see something more within this debate. Something Richard Rohr wrote puts this in perspective:

It seems that until you are excluded from any system, you are not able to recognize the idolatries, lies or shadow side of that system. There seems to be a 'structural blindness' for people who are content and satisfied on the inside of groups. It is important to know that people can be personally well-intentioned and sincere, but structurally they cannot see certain things.' (from Things Hidden - Scripture as Spirituality, 2008)

Then last night I was flipping through some writings by Thomas Merton and, without really looking for insight about this issue, or really trying to sort out what I think or feel about the debate, about reducing people to their 'legal' or 'illegal' status, I read this:

Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. For them, there is no escape even in imagination. They cannot identify with the power structure of a crowded humanity which seeks to project itself outward, anywhere, in a centrifugal flight into the void, to get 'out there' where there is no God, no man, no name, no identity, no weight, no self, nothing but the bright self-directed, perfectly obedient and infinitely expensive machine. (from Raids on the Unspeakable, 1966)

It seems that Christ and his followers are always messing with the machine.

A Dream in the Ozarks

2011-08-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

This Sunday will be the 48th anniversary of Martin Luther King's visit to Washington D.C. to share his dream and to 'cash a check.' Speaking truth to power, he chose his words carefully. With the world watching, standing under a sweltering, late August sun, Dr. King courageously faced centuries of systemic racism, saying:

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

Dr. King knew well the 'architects of our republic' were slave owners, yet he would take these men and their ideas of freedom and justice at their best, interpreting their intentions as a 'sacred obligation' to include every American in the dream of a land of opportunity. The irony is striking now, as I think about Dr. King's 'cash a check' metaphor in light of the economic storm raging around our nation and our world. King's words should serve to remind us today that there is a kind of bankruptcy that is even more toxic than the financial variety.

Here in the Ozarks I am grateful that our diversity is rising and our welcoming deficit is diminishing. Yet, as civil rights veterans know, progress toward Dr. King's dream is often three steps forward and two steps back. Case in point: the petition offered by the Ozarks Minutemen to Springfield City Council. This petition cloaks an anti-immigrant agenda. It attempts to appeal to strongly held values of law and order, but the effect of this petition, intended or not, is to legitimize attitudes of discrimination and racism, especially against our Hispanic neighbors. I only hope Springfield City Council members will see this petition for what it really is - a step backward for everyone who lives and works in the Ozarks.

To my Ozarks neighbors - to all whose presence signifies to me God's love for the diversity of the human family - may you keep believing with Dr. King, that our nation's "great vaults of opportunity" are indeed abundant. The Ozarks is an even better place to live, thanks to your great faith, your resolute hope, your dream to call the Ozarks home.

everything but God

2011-02-26T16:50:00.000-08:00

I’ve read that Saint Francis of Assisi would meditate for extended periods of time on this simple, conversational prayer: Who are you, God? And who am I?

There are times when I forget who I am. Not in the amnesia sort of forgetfulness that causes a person to forget his name or where he lives. What I mean is, I have occasions when I forget in a conscious way that I am God’s, someone who knows he is loved by God, someone who fell in love with Jesus Christ along the way and has experienced a calling to follow Him.

After reading a daily devotion by a favorite writer one morning this past week, I suddenly realized that, if it hadn’t been for taking the early morning time to read, I would have gone about my day influenced more by what is external to me such as what people expect of me because of my job, my title, etc. Essentially living out of what Thomas Merton called my “false” self, rather than my “true” self. Essentially reacting to people and events without any deep appeal to my heart or conscience since, by definition, such forgetfulness disconnects me from who I am, whose I am. Such forgetfulness blocks me from bringing the Presence into the present.

We live in a culture that shapes us into consumers of non-stop news, celebrity, position, and titles and status, and I wonder what this is ultimately doing to our souls. We easily blend our brand of faith with our cultural preferences in everything from our worship style to our politics. Francis’ conversational prayer meditation almost seems too simple and basic to appeal to people like us here in 2011 who are so afraid of “wasting time” and maybe even more afraid of coming face to face with solitude and silence, which for people like Francis and other mystics (like Jesus), appears to be about the only way human beings have had authentic experiences with God.

The reading that brought about this reflection was written by Brennan Manning. He writes about Jesus:

“The enduring temptation of his ministry is to fulfill his mission in a way opposed to the Father, to begin with a flashy demonstration of power by turning stones into bread and to end with a sensational exhibition of might by coming down from the cross. The alluring attractiveness of cultivating security, sensation, and power with life in the Spirit is Satan’s worldly way. Jesus utterly rejects it. In the final foolishness of love he freely accepts death on the cross.”

In this counterintuitive journey Jesus calls his followers to, I easily forget that the final foolishness is abandonment of everything but God.

new eyes to see

2010-12-12T17:39:00.001-08:00

Keep your eyes on the prince of peace, the one who doesn't cling to his divine power; the one who refuses to turn stones into bread, jump from great heights and rule with great power; the one who says, "Blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness" (see Matt. 5:3-11); the one who touches the lame, the crippled, and the blind; the one who speaks words of forgiveness and encouragement; the one who dies alone, rejected and despised. Keep your eyes on him who becomes poor with the poor, weak with the weak, and who is rejected with the rejected. He is the source of all peace.

Where is this peace to be found? The answer is clear. In weakness. First of all, in our own weakness, in those places of our hearts where we feel most broken, most insecure, most in agony, most afraid. Why there? Because there our familiar ways of controlling our world are being stripped away; there we are called to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency. Right there where we are weakest the peace which is not of this world is hidden.

In Adam's name I say to you, "Claim that peace that remains unknown to so many and make it your own. Because with that peace in your heart you will have new eyes to see and new ears to hear and gradually recognize that same peace in places you would have least expected." - Henri J.M. Nouwen

too much care

2010-01-09T09:04:00.000-08:00

"I have been absurdly burdened since the beginning of the year with the illusions of 'great responsibility' and of a task to be done. Actually whatever work is to be done is God's work and not mine, and I will not help matters, only hinder them, by too much care." Thomas Merton, January 1963

the face of Christmas

2009-12-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

Giving thought to Christmas, Christian writer and Franciscan cleric Richard Rohr wrote, “God’s revelations are always pointed, concrete, and specific. They are not a Platonic world of ideas and theories about which you can be right or wrong, or observe from a distance. Divine Revelation is not something you measure or critique, but Someone you meet!”

I prefer meeting people face-to-face. There is something paradoxically private and yet public about our faces. I’ve come to believe that Christmas has a face.

I’ve seen the face of Christmas in the faces of rural Nicaraguans waiting patiently during a food crisis when the coffee market collapsed in 2001. People were suffering from level-3 malnutrition. If they were fearful and angry, it never showed on their faces as they waited for a ten-pound sack of food that would only last a few days. Most recently I saw the face of Christmas again this year at the Crosslines Christmas Toystore.

Hundreds came on a freezing cold day knowing they would likely be waiting outside, so most were dressed in their warmest, which for some wasn’t much more than a jacket with a hood. Teeth chattering, breath visible in the cold, some bouncing up and down in place to generate some body heat, some huddled together among people they knew, but most were there alone. They came to provide a Christmas for their children that they weren’t able to give them on their own.

Sitting on a concrete step, a face comes in view, a woman’s face without makeup, framed by earmuffs, exposed and expressive because of exposure. Her face seemed to conceal a dignified suffering, concealing deep and secret wounds and yet transparent and open, and opening beyond my expectations just because I asked her, “what number do you have?” Another face pulled me in, her angular jaw jumping up and down intermittently in the cold, her lips chapped and cracking, her eyes downcast and dark and beautiful. The little neon-pink piece of paper in her hand had a number printed on it that wouldn’t be called for more than an hour, but she would endure the cold, not willing to risk missing the moment when her turn would come to make Christmas happen for her children. “My oldest is 4,” she said with a quivering chin, “and he believes in Santa Clause.” Her chin, nose and cheekbones were a color I’ve seen sometimes in the sky at sunrise.

The face of Christmas is a noble, vulnerable, patient, concealing yet revealing human face. I wish for eyes to see this face more. Since my recent Crosslines Christmas Toystore experience, I’ve been experimenting a little. I’m imagining each face I see as a face that is waiting, waiting for all their worth in the freezing cold, clutching a little pink piece of paper. Waiting to be welcomed out of the cold into the warm, and Christmas is about to happen.

our way through

2009-11-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

A shack of sticks and mud in Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Thanksgiving took me to places and time with people I love and memories both good and painful. At a time when it seems my journey is taking me in the direction of a new role and new relationships, it is easy to forget the painful work that humility has tried to accomplish in me. A sermon about finding my own "personal Haiti," a non-cooperative co-worker, a four-day weekend, and a reading from Richard Rohr's book, Everything Belongs, nudged me toward the peace that comes with acceptance, and even gratitude, for my wounds.

"As St. Augustine says, 'In my deepest wound I see your glory and it dazzles me.' Our wound is our way through. Or as Julian also put it, at the risk of shocking us, 'God sees the wounds, and sees them not as scars but as honors.... For he holds sin as a sorrow and pain to his lovers. He does not blame us for them' (chapter 39, Showing 13, Revelations of Divine Love). We might eventually thank God for our wounds, but usually not until the second half of life." - Richard Rohr, p. 166, Everything Belongs

seaside storm

2009-09-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Seaside, Florida is a curious place. Beautiful, clean, planned. It was chosen as the shooting location for the film "The Truman Show" partly because it has this nearly perfect look about it that fit the theme of the movie. For the movie, Seaside was chosen as the fictional town created just for a real human being who had no idea his life was nothing more than entertainment for television. Seaside is a real community, and real people live there living their real lives. But like the movie, it seems to exist in a kind of protective bubble. Someone's dream of a community.

Bonhoeffer wrote, "Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a dream wish .... God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.... God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth.... He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." From Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

trail ridge road

2009-05-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

"Instead of cursing the darkness light a candle for where we're goin'

There's something ahead worth lookin' for.

"In the hallways of the ages, on the road to history

What we do now will always be with us."

Light A Candle, by Neil Young, on Fork in the Road, 2009

content to follow in colorado

2009-04-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

I am content to follow to its source

Every event in action or in thought;

Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

When such as I cast out remorse

So great a sweetness flows into the breast

We must laugh and we must sing,

We are blest by everything,

Everything we look upon is blessed.

-- from "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" by W. B. Yeats

staring down the dark

2009-04-11T06:45:00.000-07:00

"Good Friday inevitably comes into every life. So does Holy Saturday. What is given to God is always returned transformed. That is the eternal third day that we forever await." - Richard Rohr

Kindergarten Girl in rural Nicaragua

I've made countless sincere and genuine attempts, and even more half-hearted tries to develop and grow this fruit, patience. When it comes to waiting on God to transform what I think needs transforming, I need instruction.

Word pictures help, like the image of patience as a staring contest with the dark. Richard Rohr puts it this way:

"Jesus trusted enough to outstare the darkness, to outstare the void, to wait upon the resurrection of the third day, not to try to create his own but to wait upon the resurrection of God."

The most instructive experiences regarding patience like this have come my way from being around people who are familiar with suffering and great sorrow.

I've heard that spiritual fruit (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.) are not acquired by the merely curious, and that they are most genuine when my ego-protecting self would, miraculously, produce the opposite. To be patient in those circumstances that would more often produce impatience in me, to "turn the other cheek" and "walk the second mile"... this is the practical fruit that "long-suffering" produces. The price is so steep that affluence and prestige and power of any kind cannot purchase it.

separate worlds

2009-02-15T07:41:00.000-08:00

"Faith-based nonprofits can too easily be the mirror image of secular organizations, maintaining the same hierarchies of power and separation between rich and poor. They can too easily merely facilitate the exchange of goods and services, putting plenty of professionals in the middle to guarantee that the rich do not have to face the poor and that power does not shift. Rich and poor are kept in separate worlds, and inequality is carefully managed but not dismantled." - Shane Claiborne in The Irresistible Revolution

dirty work

2009-01-27T16:24:00.000-08:00

"If you get involved with God's people, you will get hurt. The Holy Spirit makes it possible -- compels us, even -- to share lives with one another, live together, do each other's dirty work, offer hospitality, make peace, share money, raise kids together, start car co-ops and serve our neighbors. But if you do all these things with broken people (and broken people are the only kind available), you will hurt each other. You will be betrayed in one way or another. And you will, despite your best intentions and greatest hopes, betray. You will even forsake the people who have time and again laid down their lives for you.

"But here's the good news: as we have learned to pray "glorify your son, that your Son may glorify you" in community, we've come to understand a little bit more the truth about God's glory. Truth is, God is not glorified when we try to live together as perfect people. (Communities that strive for perfection are always weeding out the imperfect people -- until there's no one left.) Jesus was glorified when he loved the one who would hurt him. He prayed to the Father for strength to love with that kind of love in John 17. Likewise, we are glorified, that God may be glorified, when we keep loving one another, even after we hurt each other.

God is glorified when we keep doing the dirty work, even for people who treat us dirty."

- Shane Claiborne & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove in Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers

new moon man

2009-01-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

The journey is supposed to be challenging, shaping, difficult, beautiful, unbearable, and ultimately not so much about me but about Us and We. The journey always seems to wind its way past a window framing humility.

"A humble man can do great things with an uncommon perfection because he is no longer concerned about incidentals, like his own interests and his own reputation, and therefore he no longer needs to waste his efforts in defending them.

"For a humble man is not afraid of failure. In fact, he is not afraid of anything, even of himself, since perfect humility implies perfect confidence in the power of God before Whom no other power has any meaning and for Whom there is no such thing as an obstacle.

"Humility is the surest sign of strength." - Thomas Merton

completely unknown

2008-12-28T11:40:00.000-08:00

I'm grateful for the way Christmas can pull me into my past with nothing more than a song or a smell. Dusting off memories can be beautiful and painful. Dusting off books can be the same, putting me in touch once again with the insights they contain, and sometimes accompanied by a measure of regret about how much I've fumbled in my attempt to apply their insights. I've recently dusted off The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, and a particular passage touched a nerve, especially in light of Christmas.

"... as Henri Nouwen notes, the greater part of God's work in the world may go unnoticed. There are a number of people who have become famous or widely known for the ministries, but much of God's saving activity in our history could remain completely unknown. That is a mystery difficult to grasp in an age that attaches so much importance to publicity. We tend to think that the more people know and talk about something, the more important it must be."

north fork november

2008-11-22T04:39:00.001-08:00

A few days ago a passage from Parker Palmer's little book, "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation," came to mind while on retreat with some friends on the North Fork
River.

"Autumn is a season of great beauty, but it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer's abundance decays toward winter's death. Faced with this inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? It scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring - and scatters them with amazing abandon.

"In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. Instead, my mind is on the fact that the green growth of summer is browning and beginning to die. My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty all around. I am drawn down by the prospect of death more than I am lifted by the hope of new life."

"But as I explore autumn's paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I am easily fixated on surface appearances - on decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. And yet if I look more deeply, I may see the myriad possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season yet to come."

"In retrospect, I can see in my own life what I could not see at the time - how the job I lost helped me find work I needed to do, how the "road closed" sign turned me toward terrain I needed to travel, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to discern meanings I neeeded to know. On the surface, it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown."
- Parker J. Palmer, in "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation"

ruach:spirit:wind

2008-11-02T10:59:00.000-08:00

"Why do you spend your time in brooding? Don't you know you are being driven by great winds across the sky?"

- Cherokee chiefs to their young braves, from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr

sunday morning cemetary

2008-10-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

The excerpt below is from Richard Rohr's book, Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go. His words here are from a chapter entitled, "Getting Rid of the Church", and I am struck by the insight he shares about the "problem" of middle-class and affluent American Christians in search of more. Next to Matthew 25, this may be the best argument I've ever heard for becoming the kind of person who generously supports causes that prioritize the poor and the vulnerable.

"Jesus' harshest words are aimed at hypocrites, and the second harshest at the people who are primarily concerned with possessions. He says that power, prestige, and possessions are the three things that prevent us from recognizing and receiving the Reign of God. When he says that to good, upright people, they react with indignation and consider his remarks scandalous. They call him an unbeliever, an enemy of the law, and finally a devil - because they OWN too many things that they now must defend. The only ones who can accept the proclamation of the Reign are those who have nothing to protect, not their own self-image or their reputation, their possessions, their theology, their principles, or their certitudes. And these are called "the poor," ANAWIM in Hebrew. In the Magnificat, Mary sums up the spirituality of the ANAWIM."

"If in this world we are already living in the reality of the Reign of God, then the world becomes relative and we become "pilgrims and strangers." Life can't be based on the passing; it can't be based on transitory images. Instead, we know we have to base it on the truth, on the truth of who we are, on the truth of this creation, which God says is "very good."

"Our problem consists in the fact that we're so convinced of NOT being good. And we need a great deal of trust to believe God's pronouncement that everything God created is very good. We seem to believe that only perfect things are lovable. Yet the Gospels say very clearly that God loves imperfect things. But it's only the imperfect and the broken who can believe that. Thus it happens that God throws a party - and the "good" people don't come. That's why God says that the cripples, the lame, and the blind are to be invited - and they would be ready."

"This pattern has never changed. Those who don't have anything to prove or protect can believe that they are loved as they are. But we who have spent our lives ascending the spiritual ladder have a harder time hearing the truth. For the truth isn't found up at the top, but down at the bottom. And by trying to climb the ladder we miss Christ, who comes DOWN through the Incarnation. I'm convinced that many of the guilt feelings that haunt the middle class, much of its widespread poor self-image as we call it, and much of its self-hatred and self-centeredness are due to the fact that we have settled into a world that Jesus says we should never be at home in. If you base your life on illusion, you will naturally hate yourself."

"The proclamation of the Reign of Heaven is the most radical political and theological statement that could ever be made. It has nothing to do with being perfect. It has to do with living inside of the Big Frame, the final and full state of affairs, the lasting perspective. It is not a matter of thinking differently or attending a particular kind of church service or living with a new kind of theology of redemption.

We don't think our way into a new life; we live our way into a new kind of thinking.

"The Gospel is before all else a call to LIVE differently, so that life can be shared with others. In other words, the Gospel is ultimately calling us to a stance of simplicity, vulnerability, dialogue, powerlessness, and humility. These are the only virtues that make communion and community and intimacy possible."

- Richard Rohr, in Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go

natural birth

2008-10-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

"The entire universe seems to be operating out of a chaos theory of one sort or another. And whatever made us think that we are different than that? Well, the thing that did it more than anything else was religion. It taught us that we could be perfect.
When I spiritually direct people I strongly counsel them to mistrust any heroic gestures. They are much more food for the ego than they are food for God. God does not need your heroics—God needs who you really are. That is all you can ever give to God, not an idealized or perfect self." - Richard Rohr

little flock

2008-10-12T18:49:00.000-07:00

"Just as we show respect for the vulnerability of the deaf and blind (Lev.19:14), we are not to take a mother bird away from her vulnerable fledglings (Deut. 22:6). Newly planted fruit trees must be given three years to bear fruit before we may enjoy the fruit (Lev. 19:23). Even in wartime, we are not to harm a town's orchards. A besieging army may help themselves to the fruit, but "you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?" (Deut. 20:19). Finally, in response to the primal instruction to "replenish" the earth (Gen. 1:28, kjv), the land is to "rest" from cultivation every seven years, lest the soil become depleted (Lev. 25:4). The world and all the creatures are God's, and we are the stewards, the "husbandmen" - a wonderful archaic term designating the love and care with which we are to care for soil and water, all creatures, and each other."

- Robert Corin Morris, in "An Altar of Earth: The Bible as Earth-Book" from Weavings - September/October 2008

unknown path

2008-09-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

"In the Western world we have become distanced from the wonder of rolling planets, seasonal rhythms, and the unseen mysteries of the world. We may learn of natural wonders through the medium of television, but rarely find ourselves in living, wonder-filled touch with the universe.

It takes intentional commitment to place ourselves in a contemplative consciousness that acknowledges Mystery and allows for big steps of trust on the unknown path of faith.

In a way it is very simple. We don't need to travel to distant places or try to imitate the mystics. Instead we are invited to come home to ourselves, to the wonder of our creation in the divine image, and to our deep connection with the universe.

We belong in the great cosmic web that embraces all." - Elizabeth J. Canham, "Wonder, Love and Praise" in Weavings, Sept/Oct 2008

man of sorrows

2008-09-25T04:58:00.000-07:00

"Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer before entering into his glory?" (Luke 24:26)

The 'cup of sorrows' and the 'cup of joys' cannot be separated. Jesus knew this, even in the midst of his anguish in the garden, when his soul was "sorrowful to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38).

Our cup is often so full of pain that joy seems completely unreachable. When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become. The sorrow overwhelms us, makes us throw ourselves on the ground, face down, and sweat drops of blood.

Then we need to be reminded that our cup of sorrow is also our cup of joy and that one day we will be able to taste the joy as fully as we now taste the sorrow." - Henri Nouwen, Can You Drink the Cup?

waves of mercy

2008-09-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

"The mystery of forgiveness is God's ultimate entry into powerlessness. Look at the times when you have withheld forgiveness. It's always your final attempt to hold a claim over the one you won't forgive. It's the way we finally hold onto power, to seek the moral high ground over another person. Oh, we do it subtly to maintain our sense of superiority. Non-forgiveness is a form of power over another person, a way to manipulate, shame, control and diminish another. God in Jesus refuses all such power."

- Richard Rohr

mystic pass

2008-09-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

"The best definition I know for comtemplation is as follows: Contemplation is a long, loving look at what really is.

The essential element in this experience is time. There is a qualitative difference between ten minutes and ten hours, and even more, of course, between ten hours and ten days.

We have to find a place where we can receive all our experiences without repressing anything. We need a place where there's room to consider everything that we've done - and not done - in our life, a place that's bigger than Yes or No, a place bigger than the judgments that we pass.

At this all-embracing place God becomes quite clear. Here there is room for every part of you and for God's presence."

- Richard Rohr, Simplicity

rock bottom

2008-09-06T13:22:00.001-07:00

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learned the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.

"Are we still of any use?"

"What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?"
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1942, from "After Ten Years," a letter from prison.

human highway

2008-09-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

"We do not really know what it means to be human unless we know God. And, in turn, we do not really know God except through our own broken and rejoicing humanity. In Jesus, God tells us that God is not different from humanity.

"Jesus' reality, his cross, is to say a free "yes" to what his humanity finally asks of him.

"It seems that we Christians have been worshipping Jesus' journey instead of doing his journey. The first feels very religious; the second feels human, and not glorious at all."

- Richard Rohr, in Everything Belongs.

hanging lake light

2008-09-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

"The Christian vision is that the world is a temple, and buying and selling in the temple is the one thing that drove Jesus to anger and violence. It destroys inherent value and replaces it with an utterly false seeing: market value, the world of meritocracy and exchange rates.

It destroys the soul.

It had to be driven out or there would be no temple. There is no temple if you live merely in the world of buying and selling - the so-called bottom line. In that world, everything is weighed.

That kind of thinking is a dead end.

Preoccupation with exchange value and market value tends to blind us almost totally to inherent value. Prayer reconnects us with inherent value. Everything becomes priceless if it is sacred. And everything is sacred if the world is a temple."

- Richard Rohr, "Everything Belongs"

fog & shadow

2008-08-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

"For some of us, the tension between Spirit and self is so great that we abandon the spiritual quest: we turn away from the source and walk in shadows because we do not want to see ourselves in an unbecoming light. Some of us resolve the tension by denying our own darkness and trying to walk where the lights are on all the time: we hold the dark world at bay and seek out situations that satisfy our need to stay "pure." In one way or another, we remove ourselves from the great dramas of life where God and world interact, where light and dark cohere, where contradiction abounds." - Parker J. Palmer

uphill climb

2008-08-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

"Self-confidence is a precious natural gift, a sign of health. But it is not the same thing as faith. Faith is much deeper, and it must be deep enough to subsist when we are weak, when we are sick, when our self-confidence is gone, when our self-respect is gone. I do not mean that faith only functions when we are otherwise in a state of collapse. But true faith must be able to go on even when everything else is taken away from us. Only a humble man is able to accept faith on these terms, so completely without reservation that he is glad of it in its pure state, and welcomes it happily even when nothing else comes with it, and when everything else is taken away." - Thomas Merton

morning walk

2008-08-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

"To confess your sins to God is not to tell him anything he doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate bridge." - Frederick Buechner

bucket of blue

2008-08-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

"If we learn to handle our own souls tenderly and lovingly, then we'll be able to carry this same loving wisdom into the world outside." - Richard Rohr