Change is Good

Change Is Good

Turn around and believe the good news!
— Jesus’ first preached words, Mark 1:15

The authentic religious life is a matter of becoming who we already are, and all that we truly are! Can you imagine that? Is the seed already within you—of all that God wants you to be? Do you already know at some level who you authentically are? Are you willing to pay the price, even the mistrust of others? Could that be what we mean by having a unique “soul”? Most saints thus described the path as much more unlearning than learning. There are so many illusions and lies that we must all unlearn. And one of the last illusions to die is that we are all that different or that separate. Finally we are all one and amazingly the same. Differentiation seems to precede union and communion, for some strange reason.

This growing illumination is not just one “decision for Jesus.” It is a whole journey of letting go and developing an ongoing practice of letting go, and turning around one more time, until it becomes a way of life. As the old Shakers used to sing and dance, “. . . To turn, turn / will be our delight, / ’Till by turning, turning / we come round right.” To be authentically human is to change, and to be a whole human is to change many times—away from my smallness and toward an Unspeakable Greatness—which itself is never fully attained.

— From unpublished notes

The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available
in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, And . . . .

Earlier  in my blog I published a book review of Rick Joiner's The Final quest.. 

The author claims to have eschatological visions which began in his mountain cabin in Colarado. Even without the imprimatear I felt comfortable with this book as it had perfectly homogenius spiritual continuity. 

Joiner would leave his cabin and the vision would resume exactly where he had left it before he left. Perhaps it is easier to think of him as a Protestant Dante, writing in elementary style for a modern American audience. As He tries to reach his children God will use whatever means available .... it often surprises me that God will always meet us on our own level as Numbers 22 : 28 proves !  CS Lewis has provided some excellent eschatological narratives, namely The Great Divorce.

Having gone through what seems like Purgatory Joiner is introduced the fringes of Heaven. The people here are exstatically happy. However as he is drawn closer and closer to the Heavenly source of light the people become even more content, the grace that expanded thier souls during life soaking up their Heavenly reward.  Close to the Throne of grace, from which all light comes the Preacher is introduced to the Apostle Paul. It is explained that we are all called to great things in life, which even Paul did not fully complete. He was the one that came closest to doing all that was in his heart during his lifetime.
           
 Rohr is correct - we do all have a sense of what we are supposed to do in life. Willingness is all a desire to swim against the tide and be willing to be unstinting through suffering. 

The gratitude that Christ talks of in these places can only be attained through humility, something that Francis is calling us to. The human heart is such that without suffering we will simply not be humble and as I look back at my own life I am reminded of what the Apostle said in 2 Corinthians 12:7 :

To keep me from becoming concieted, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.



 

"Peace of Mind" Is a Contradiction in Terms.

“Beginner’s mind” is actually someone who’s not in their mind at all! They are people who can immediately experience the naked moment apart from filtering it through any mental categories. Such women and men are capable of simple presence to what is right in front of them without “thinking” about it too much. This must be what Jesus means by little children already being in the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3-4). They don’t think much, they just experience the moment—good and bad. That teaching alone should have told us that Christianity was not supposed to be about believing doctrines and moralities. Children do not believe theologies or strive for moral certitudes. They respond vulnerably and openly to what is offered them moment by moment. This is pure presence, and is frankly much more demanding than securing ourselves with our judgments.

Presence cannot be easily defined. Presence can only be experienced. But I know this: True presence to someone or something allows them or it to change me and influence me—before I try to change them or it!

Beginner’s mind is pure presence to each moment before I label it, critique it, categorize it, exclude it, or judge it up or down. That is a whole new way of thinking and living. It is the only mind that has the power to actually reform religion.

Adapted from Beginner's Mind (CD, DVD, MP3)
Richard Rohr

"Peace of Mind" is indeed a contradiction in terms . Rohr is correct about another thing - after being taught the basics - that none of this matters - the next step in the spiritual journey is to learn to live with Chaos and face duality, bridge biulding where we can but otherwise just accepting; handing over to the Father. As I and my family move forward in faith I find that the phenomena my wife and I struggle the most with is trying to understand our exponential spiritual growth curve. 

It simply cannot be done.

All the heart is made for is to recieve, not to understand. 

We will not understand the Beatific vision, just absorb it.

 Post enlightenment notions of "understanding" would however and measure Him with a measuring stick. Joyce was right - thought is thought of thought and without contemplation we can be totally overwhelmed and dishonest with ourselves.

We are not the sum of our thoughts. 

Our minds will never be at peace as they are made to analyse and not wonder. A religous experience is therefore when the mind is suspended and the heart simply over rides saying "this is right. I know this to be true."

The source of that knowing, that peace is facinating.  

We have had some beautiful weather here in Glasgow recently and on the way to work I was thinking about the sacrament of the present moment.

The key to seeing "the big picture" is seeing ourselves in the same, loving honest spotlight as God does, i.e. that we are nothing and exhalt in our own poverty, like the little man of Assisi whose visit to the Holy Land represents just about the sum total of all the West's peacemaking attempts to date. We are poor and our story is seldom told. these acknowledgements are the only way that we can drop all of our ownprevious misconceptions and step into what Rohr calls the True Self.

Our existence in the present is not contingent on our achievements in the past.

Our existence in the present moment is not contingent  upon thoughts of our achievements in the future. We just are. 

It was my privilege to attend a debate at St Andrews University on assisted suicide. An atheist philosophy teacher got up to speak. 

At other times the good professor was very mild mannered and always had the time of day for any student. On this topic however he was quite animated.

“do you know how much envisaging oneself in the future is imperative to being a human being? You simply cannot take the right to choose away from a paraplegic or someone else who has no hope for the future.”

A very high spiritual benchmark, but if our self image is truly based on the Imago Dei, living every consecutive present moment with God then we have nothing to fear. As per the New Evangelization we must be open to God preparing us for lives of Greatness, not success.  This is St Paul's battle with the Flesh. If the ego is in control success - the ultimate comfort - is strived for. If the soul is in the driving seat then we aspire to greater things. Contemplation is the mechanism by which we achieve this orientation. It is furthered by suffering, which is only understood par coer.

  The greatness to which we are all called is worked out in the economy of grace between us and whatever healthy form the IMAGO DEI takes for us. Alternatively occidental post modern and confused images of what the human person is will always call us to follow the ego. This is why America is such a fascinating place. 

There is so much innocence there, willingness to learn but the European culture and ways of comportment have been lost. Because nothing can be done without community culture was ultimatley supposed to teach us how to live with our fellow man.  However both societies now are living a lie as "selfish society" is an oxymoron. As Rome leads the Universal Church the Amercan church leads the Protestant world, but a more divided society I have not seen, not least between ethnic groups but also church "ghettos."

 The soul will always gravitate to the City of God, loving God and serving fellow man, but it needs to be freed of individualistic, Protestant self images if it is to be free to gravitate unhindered towards its purpose. 

This is achieved through initiation but as those who complete the 12 steps are encouraged to complete a fearless moral inventory contemplation is equally imperative as the Catholic Via of spiritual growth is moved along.

We can only recieve Grace in the present moment. People that can live totally in the present moment are spiritually bulletproof.

Some years ago here in the UK a beautiful young mother was stabbed maliciously in the back of the neck in London. She was permantely physically incapacitated, paralised from the neck down. Lying on her hospital bed she could only think of her family. Having no thought for herself at all that she could exclaim was “God is Doing marvellous things.” Her hospital bedroom was her reality, no present, no future. Knowing that God was there with her she had no thought outside of the present.

When we have reached such high mansions we know that the Lord we experience in the present his taking care of our future also. We trust for the future because of what we are experiencing in the now, the only place where we can truly experience the Divine. We cannot be truly present if we are weighing up our future, the person we are talking to and ourselves at the same time.

The young British mother mentioned is now the leader of a Community of faith in London. 

I remember watching Die Große Stille (Into Great Silence) with a dear Catholic friend. This is the year in a life of some of the most austere monastics in the word. My friend found the joy expressed by the Carthusian Monks amazing as these fully grown, austere religous men slid down the snow in the  Alps. 

These men knew where there community was and where free to grow. 

I am reminded of the two of us greeting a monk at Pluscarten abbey
in Elgin, Scotland. He was polite and friendly but it was clear where his priorites lay. As he crossed a style he greeted us wormly but it was clear that this 40 year old monk in a white habit just wished to get home !

Although another friend thought it a bit voyeuristic Die Große Stille was a fascinating film. Some three hours long an old blind, seraphically happy monk was interviewed at one stage. As he explained God had allowed his sight to be taken for the good of his soul even through translation the truth of what he was saying was eveident. Community helps us to deal with anything.

 Because of Calvin’s sentiments on success America has consistently been the most successful country on the Planet. For all intents and purposes the first nation founded on Protestant principles America has been affected by the apparently inexorable link between predestination and worldly success.  In contradistinction to the UK Thatcher said that the USA was affected more by “philosophy than history.” This is undoubtley the case. 

St Andrews had a high percentage of American students. Many of whom simply did semesters with us in Scotland. At the end of her semester I remember an aquintance of mine sitting on a step looking quite dejected. A student from a top American University chatting with her I came to see how she did not view her semester as “a success.” When Aristotle talked about looking at the things men “do” rather than what is in their hearts he was talking of virtue; actions and words done over a long period of time which become “virtue.” At least here Aristotle never mentioned “success.”

Fr Richard Rohr on Jung

RICHARD ROHR’S LINEAGE
Monday, July 16, 2012
Much of the teaching of C. G. Jung
Some people do not like the fact that I quote the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung. I must admit that he’s had a major influence on my entire life. I first read him when I was very young, and again and again he would offer phrases that I knew were true. When I first read his work, I didn’t have the education to academically know that. I just knew intuitively that “He is right.” Carl Gustav Jung was a great thinker, and he wanted to bring externalized religion back to its internal foundations. He brought together amazing theology (his father was a Protestant minister) with very good psychology—and he is surely not an "enemy" of religion at all. When asked if he "believed' in God, he said, with wonderful simplicity, "I do not believe, I know."
I’m not saying I agree with every word he’s ever said, but what I am saying is that “much of the teaching of C. G. Jung” is in my lineage. He gives us more than enough wisdom to trust him. After all, I am sure you do not agree with every word I say. I would be disappointed in you if you did.

~ Richard Rohr, 2012
Adapted from Fr. Richard’s teachings on his lineage

Honesty

As I grow older, I find more and more people, in all fields of life, who seem more and more trapped and unfree. They seem unable to adjust to their own growing truth. The price is just too high, and so they choose security over honesty. In my field, I see bishops, priests, and ministers, who in moments of private honesty, reveal they do not really believe this or that any more, but they have to pretend to believe it to be faithful to the persona they built and created in their first 40-50 years. After a while, they actually think they DO believe it, but their lack of enthusiasm, commitment, or joy shows you that they do not. It is so much easier to repeat formulas and keep everybody–and your own soul–at bay. I would say this pattern represents the norm not the exception, at least in the church. So many are split personalities. And why wouldn’t they be? In fact, it would seemingly be predictable with the mystery of God always unfolding and leading us to ever further depths. If you do go to the depths, the price of speaking your honest truth from that level is just too high. Imagine all the people you would upset! It will call your job and self image into question. Plus, it is like throwing your previous life script out the window and admitting that much of it was mistaken. But that should be a given–if we are at all growing! THE STEPS TOWARD MATURITY ARE NECESSARILY IMMATURE.

Fr Richard Rohr - richardrohr.wordpress.com

The Cross - The Ultimate Barrier Breaker.

I am doing a short study of the Letter to the Ephesians on this lovely Sunday morning, and have had time to absorb some of its amazing insights. Paul, or whoever wrote it, says that the exact meaning of the cross is that “Jesus destroyed in his own person the hostility” between groups (In fact, he repeats it twice in both 2:14 and 2:16) Jesus did not take sides with his Jewish religion against the pagans, but instead he did a most amazing thing, which we have yet to comprehend. The author says that he destroyed the hostility “THAT WAS CAUSED BY THE RULES AND DECREES OF THE LAW”. In other words, the very identification of his group (or any group) with its own customs and practices is what justifies their hostility toward another group, and maintains their own superiority system–which is always violent in maintaining itself.

Is this not the core historical problem that continues to justify most hostility to this day? My group versus your group thinking? We do it this way and you do it the wrong way? Think of the genocides of the last century, which were usually in Christian based cultures, to realize how we have missed the message. Ephesians says that Jesus “killed” or “destroyed” the very ground of this hostility by himself being killed “under the law” (with the blessing of both religion and state), and thus revealing the limitations, blindness, and often complicity in evil of what are usually nothing more than cultural customs passing for divine law. Our “sacred order” is usually maintained at someone else’s expense. This is so much of a surprise that most of us still refuse to be surprised–and also disappointed in our capacity for missing the profound revelation from the cross of Jesus. Ephesians goes on to say that Jesus is trying to “create one single New Humanity” (2:15). We are still waiting for this new single humanity. It could still change history, and it eventually will, but probably we have to hit bottom first–and see how our sacralized beliefs and customs are themselves much of the problem.

richardrohr.wordpress.com

When we walk Without the Cross

First Homily

"When we walk without the Cross...." by Pope Francis

 In these three readings, I see that there is something in common :  it is movement. In the first reading, in the second reading, movement in the building up of the church; in the third in the Gospel, movement in confession.

To walk, to build up, to confess.

To walk. "House of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the lord. " this is the first thing that God said to Abraham: Walk in my presence and be without reproach. To walk: our life is a journeyand when we stop it is no good. To walk always, in the presence of the Lord, in the light of the Lord, seeking to live with that irreproachability which God which God asked of Abraham, in his promise.

To build up: to build up the church, stones are spoken of.: the stoneshave substance; but living stones, stones anointed by the Holy Spirit. To build up the church, the Bride of Christ, on that cornerstone which is the Lord Himself. This is another movement of our lives - to build up.

Third, to confess. We can walk as much as we wish, we can build many things, but if we do not confess Jesus Christ, it is NO GOOD. We will become a humanitairian N.G.O., but not the church, the bride of the Lord.

When one does walk, one halts. When one does not build on stone, what happens? That happens which happens to children on the beach when they make sand castles, it al comes down, it is without substance. When one does not confess to Jesus Christ , I am reminded of the expression of Leon Bloy: "He who does not pray to the Lord prays to the Devil." When one does not confess Jesus Christ, one confesses the worldliness of the devil, the worldliness of the demon.

To walk to build/construct, to confess. But the matter is not so easy, because in walking, in building, in confessing, at times there are shocks, there are movements that are not properly movements of the journey : they are movements that set us back.

This Gospel continues with a special situation. The same Peter  who has confessed Jesus Christ says to him: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. I will follow YOU but let us NOT speak pf the Cross. This has nothing to do with it. I will follow you with other possibilities, without the Cross."

When we walk around the Cross, when we build without the Cross, and when we confess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord: we are Worldly, we are Bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but NOT disciples of the LORD.

I would like that everyone, after these days of grace, should have the courage, truly the courage, to walk in the presence of the LORD, with the Cross of the LORD; to build up the Church upon the Blood of the Lord that  was shed upon the cross; and to confess the only glory: CHRIST CRUCIFIED. And in this way the Church will move FORWARD.

I hope for all of us that the Holy Spirit, through the prayer of the Virgin Mary, our Mother, may grant us this grace: to walk, to build up, to confess Jesus Christ CRUCIFIED.

So may it be. 

Amen.

Mary Our Mother - By My Wife

Our Blessed Mother is most certainly the prime example of following Our Lord. In complete trust, love and surrender to the Will of God. So what do we know about Our Blessed Mother - the Mother of all Mothers?

We know that Mary treasures and ponders in her heart all that is said by and about Her Son (Luke 2).   We too seek our understanding and intimacy with Christ, we can do this by following in Her Footsteps. "In her journey of faith and always to her credit, she travelled always and everywhere in hope. We are called to do the same (Archbishop Vincent Nichols)."

On rare occasions the voice of Our Blessed Mother breaks through in Scripture. We hear this in John 2 :1-12 (wedding feast at Cana) and (the Annunciation) Luke 1:26- 38. When she speaks it is not to claim something for herself but to praise God who has done Great things for her. She reminds us that he will do Great things for us , she points us to Christ. "Do whatever he tells you," she commands the servants at the wedding feast. This command is for all of us.

Mary's huminility should not be confused as simpering or "yellow bellied." Her silence shows an abundance of courage. She had the courage to let go of her own plans for her life, to plough on through ridicule, evento endure when the disciples themselves walked away.

Silence has many meanings and can speak volumes. A signal of affirmation or protest. It can be a welcome respite or an uneasy truce. It can be a familiar understanding betwenn friends or a void between strangers.

In her silence, Mary grew for and in the Love of God, despite Her suffering and all the Trials that She endured. Reflection on the life of Mary should draw us to the Real Presence of Christ. Asa pure fine example of true love, Mary as Spouse of the Spirit, Mother of the Son and Faithful daughter of the Father is one certain example of Holiness, Trust and Complete Surrender.

Let us find a way through Jesus through Mary.

Ad Jesus per Mariam.

By My Wife handmadebymo.org