Richard Rohr 3

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Oneing
Whole-Making Sunday, November 16, 2014
One of my favorite mystics is called Julian of Norwich. We don’t know

her real name. She is simply named after the church in Norwich, England
—St. Julian’s—where she had her little anchor-hold. One window of her
small room looked into the sanctuary for mass and another opened to the
street where the people would come by for her counsel and prayer. Julian
experienced her “showings,” as she called them, on the night of May 8,
1373. Then she lived in the anchor-hold for twenty years, trying to process
and communicate what she had experienced on that one night. Julian
wrote about these showings in her book Revelations of Divine Love, the
first book published in English by a woman.
Julian experienced and wrote of a compassionate, relational, and joyful

God. She writes: “For before he made us, he loved us; and when we were
made, we loved him. And this is our substantial goodness, the substantial
goodness in us of the Holy Spirit. It is nothing we create; it is our
substance. God revealed to me that there may and there will be nothing at
all between God and the soul. And in this endless love, the human soul is
kept whole as all the matter of creation is kept whole.”
Julian uses the Middle English word “oneing” to describe this whole-
making work of God. God is always oneing everything: making twos and
threes and fours and divisions and dichotomies and dualisms into one. As
she explains, “God wants us to know that this beloved soul that we are is
preciously knitted to him in its making by a knot so subtle and so mighty
that it is oned with God. In this oneing it is made endlessly holy.
Furthermore, he wants us to know that all the souls which are one day to
be saved in heaven without end are knit in this same knot and united in
this same union, and made holy in this one identical holiness.”
Adapted from Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, disc 7

(CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence:
We are one in God.
Oneing
Interbeing Monday, November 17, 2014
The Christian mystics always go to the Trinitarian level, because here God
is a verb more than a noun. God is a flow more than a substance. God is an
experience more than an old man sitting on a throne. And we are inside
that flow. We are indeed products and images of that outflowing. This is
what all the language in John’s Gospel means when Jesus says in several
places, “I have come forth to take you back with me” (see John 17). We
end where we began.
Julian of Norwich says, “Greatly are we to rejoice that God dwells in our
souls, and more greatly are we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God. Our
soul is created to be God’s dwelling place, and the dwelling of our soul is
God.” This we might now call interbeing, or life as participation. Julian
continues: “It is a great understanding to see and to know inwardly that
God who is our Creator still dwells within what he has created—God in
his substance, of which substance we are what we are.” We share in the
same substantial unity as God, she seems to say. This is not pantheism (I
am God), but it is orthodox panen theism (God is in me and I am in God).
We would call that ontological union or metaphysical union between two
distinguishable beings, although God is not a being as much as Being
Itself. In the end Julian is quite careful to preserve the mystery of twoness
within the dance and flow of divine oneness. We cannot bear the
impossible burden of being God, but we can and should enjoy the
privilege and dignity of being with and in God. Here we accept being fully
and freely accepted, which for some sad reason is very hard for the ego to
do.

(CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence:
We are one in God.
God is always oneing everything: making twos and threes and fours and
divisions and dichotomies and dualisms into one. (Sunday)

God is a flow more than a substance…. And we are inside that flow. (Monday)

The mystics overcome the splits early and are able to live as ontologically whole
people (not necessarily psychologically always whole) ahead of time, and do not
wait until their deathbed. (Tuesday)

The object and goal of all spirituality is finally the same for all genders: union,
divine love, inner aliveness, soul abundance, forgiveness of offenses, and
generous service to the neighbor and the world. (Wednesday)

We must fully recognize that mystics like Francis and Clare were speaking from
this place of conscious, chosen, and loving union with God, and such union was
realized by surrendering to it and not by any achieving of it! (Thursday)

The goal of Christianity (and any mature religion) is for you to be able to
experience your unity with yourself, with creation, with neighbor, with enemy,
and with God in this world. (Friday)

Rest: The Broken Truth
A wonderful children’s book, Old Turtle and the Broken Truth, written by
Douglas Wood with watercolor illustrations by Jon J. Muth, tells an imaginary
story of how the world came to be so fragmented when it is meant to be whole
and how we might put it back together again.
In a far-away land that “is somehow not so far away,” one night a truth falls from
the stars. And as it falls, it breaks into two pieces—one piece blazes off through
the sky and the other falls straight to the ground. One day a man stumbles upon
the gravity-drawn truth and finds carved on it the words, “You are loved.” It
makes him feel good, so he keeps it and shares it with the people in his tribe. The
thing sparkles and makes the people who have it feel warm and happy. It
becomes their most prized possession, and they call it “The Truth.” Those who
have the truth grow afraid of those who don’t have it, who are different than they
are. And those who don’t have it covet it. Soon people are fighting wars over the
small truth, trying to capture it for themselves.
A little girl who is troubled by the growing violence, greed, and destruction in
her once peaceful world goes on a journey—through the Mountains of
Imagining, the River of Wondering Why, and the Forest of Finding Out—to
speak with Old Turtle, the wise counselor. Old Turtle tells her that the Truth is
broken and missing a piece, a piece that shot off in the night sky so long ago.
Together they search for it, and when they find it the little girl puts the jagged
piece in her pocket and returns to her people. She tries to explain, but no one will
listen or understand. Finally a raven flies the broken truth to the top of a tower
where the other piece has been ensconced for safety, and the rejoined pieces
shine their full message: “You are loved / and so are they.” And the people begin
to comprehend. And the earth begins to heal.
Death and Heaven

Eternity is the Monday, December 1, 2014
Shape of Everything
Scientists tell me that everything was created in the Big Bang. There are
the same number of atoms now as there were then. Nothing has died.
Everything has simply been in 14 billion years of change—changing
forms, but not substance. The risen Jesus reveals a different form, but is
still Jesus, the Christ. Nothing goes away. When you die, you don’t leave.
There is no place to go to. This is it! You leave the encapsulation of this
finite body which you and I take far too seriously because it’s the only one
we have known.
Blessed Julian of Norwich writes: “In this endless love, we are led and
protected by God and we never shall be lost for God wants us to know that
the soul is a life which life is joined to God’s goodness and grace and will
last in heaven without end” (Chapter 53, long text of her Showings). We
are treasured and hidden in God, without end, despite our sinfulness,
according to this 15th century English mystic. Julian is all cosmic
optimism and hope, and precisely because of her firm belief and personal
experience of the cosmic meaning of Jesus’ resurrection.
If Jesus is the map for the entire human journey, then Julian sees in the
suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ the map and
trajectory for all of creation. Paul taught that the final chapter of history
will be resurrection (1 Corinthians 15), but we made it into a worthiness
contest at which very few seemed to win the prize. Gratefully, we still say
in the Eucharistic Preface of the funeral liturgy, “Life is not ended. It is
merely changed.” Eternity seems to be the shape of everything.
Christianity should have been the most optimistic religion of all. What a
shame that we denied such hope and vision to so many centuries of
Christians and chose to live in fear instead. The true Gospel has always
been too good to be believed and trusted, and so we decided not to! All we
know for sure is that God is not stingy, as all of creation proudly shouts
and proclaims.

(CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence:
Falling forever into the deathless depths of God.
Death and Heaven

Practicing Heaven Now Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Hope, it seems to me, is the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and
generously. The ego needs success to thrive; the soul needs only meaning.
The Gospel gives our suffering personal and cosmic meaning, by
connecting our pain to the pain of others, and finally, by connecting us to
the very pain of God. Any form of contemplation is a gradual sinking into
this divine fullness. This is precisely to live in a unified field which
produces in people a deep, irrational, and yet calmly certain hope.
People of deep prayer are doing themselves a great favor, or, as Jesus says,
they get a hundred times more already in this life, which then bubbles
forth into a limitless life later (Mark 10:30). If we have it now, we will
have it then. Why would God not give divine union to us later, while
giving it so freely, gratuitously, and undeservedly now? Why would God
change the general policy? A life of inner union, a contemplative life, is
simply practicing for heaven now. God allows us to bring “on earth what
is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) every time we allow, receive, and forgive
the conflicts of the moment and sit in peace and freedom. God holds
together all the seeming opposites and contradictions within us. That is a
triumphant soul.
Authentic mystical experience connects us and just keeps connecting at

ever-newer levels, breadths, and depths, “until God can be all in all” (1
Corinthians 15:28). Or as Paul also writes, earlier in the same letter, “The
world, life and death, the present, and the future are all your servants, for
you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 3:22-23).
Full salvation is finally universal belonging and universal connecting. The
Biblical word for that was “heaven” and some notion of it is found in all
religions.
Adapted from Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World

from a Place of Prayer, pp. 99-100;
and Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi, p. 226
Gateway to Silence:
Presence
Right Here, Right Now Monday, December 8, 2014
Augustine said, “In the end there will only be Christ loving himself.” This
means that the whole of Creation is the Christ Mystery. The Eternal One
has come forth and has taken on form and manifestation—which is us,
which is the whole planet, the animals, plants, and elements, the galaxies
and all the endless forms and faces that have come forth from God. Our
job as conscious humans is to bring the beauty and goodness of everything
to full consciousness, to full delight, to full awareness. When you
understand that, you can understand what Paul means when he says that in
the end “God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28), which is surely
where Augustine got the courage to say the same.
When Paul says to “pray always” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), he can’t mean to

walk around saying the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” all day. Prayer is
basically a total life stance. It is a way of being present in the world in
which we are present to the Presence and present to the Presence in all
things. In a certain sense, you either pray always (or almost always) or you
do not pray at all.
Being fully present to the moment and to God would be total conversion,
but we’re all still learners on that path. I hope we’ve learned how to
appreciate at least one or two moments, how to rest and abide in one or
two special moments, and to learn to say, “This is good. This is enough. In
fact, this is everything.” Once you recognize that it’s all right here, right
now, then you’ll carry that awareness everywhere else. How you do
anything is how you do everything. This is what Julian of Norwich meant
when she looked at one little hazelnut in the palm of her hand, and said
“This is everything that is” (Chapter 4, short text of her Showings).
Once we can learn to be present to the Presence, the things that used to
bother us don’t bother us quite as much. The things that used to defeat us
no longer defeat us. The things we thought we could never surrender to,
we now can. Even to accept that we are not ready to accept something is
still a form of this utterly grounding and accepting Presence.
Adapted from The Eternal Now—and how to be there! (MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence:
What this moment offers is the grace of God.
Death and Heaven

Falling Forever Thursday, December 4, 2014
James Finley writes in “Ripening,” an issue of CAC’s journal, Oneing:
“The lifelong process of ripening brings about a corresponding ripening of

our ability to understand the fundamentals in a wiser, peace-giving
manner. For example, when people who believe in God go through painful
experiences they are naturally troubled. They often feel, ‘If God watches
over me, how could God let this happen to me?’ This is such an
understandable response to suffering in the life of those who trust and
believe in God’s providential care.
“However, as a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in

a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that
protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all
things. This is the Mystery of the Cross that reveals whatever it means that
God watches over us; it does not mean that God prevents the tragic thing,
the cruel thing, the unfair thing, from happening. Rather, it means that
God is intimately hidden as a kind of profound, tender sweetness that
flows and carries us along in the intimate depths of the tragic thing itself—
and will continue to do so in every moment of our lives up to and through
death, and beyond. Saint John of the Cross talks about a windfall of
delight. When fruit becomes very ripe, the slightest wind can cause it to
fall to the ground. The windfall of delight first pertains to those little
promises along the way, but also to our last breath, which we know and
trust will send us falling forever into the deathless depths of God.”
Adapted from "Ripening," Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 2
Gateway to Silence:
Death and Heaven

Sabbath Meditation Saturday, December 6, 2014

Remember:

You must die into your one and only life, the life that you must learn to
love. It will show itself to be one continuous movement—first learning to
love your life and then allowing yourself to fully die into it—and never to
die away from it. (Sunday)

If Jesus is the map for the entire human journey, then we see in the death,
resurrection, and ascension of Christ the trajectory for all of creation.
(Monday)

To the degree you have experienced intimacy with God, you won’t be
afraid of death because you’re experiencing the first tastes and promises of
heaven in this world. (Tuesday)

Full salvation is finally universal belonging and universal connecting. The
Biblical word for that was “heaven.” (Wednesday)

“The windfall of delight pertains … to our last breath, which we know and
trust will send us falling forever into the deathless depths of God.” –James
Finley (Thursday)

Death is not a changing of worlds as most imagine, as much as the walls
of this world infinitely expanding. (Friday)

Rest: Practicing Dying
Elizabeth Lesser, author and co-founder of Omega Institute, offers ways of

practicing death:
• Become an “I don’t know it all.”
Whenever you find yourself getting anxious about the big and small
deaths of daily life—being out of control, not getting what you want,
endings and partings—take a few minutes to allow in the possibility that
you do not see the full picture. Often what looks terrible today will, in
retrospect, have been a blessing. Just allow that possibility in. You do not
have to understand or figure everything out. You can relax into the
mystery of not knowing.
• Disengage from the ego.
Develop a simple meditation practice. Every day, spend some time sitting
in silence…. Sit with a straight back and relaxed body. Feel the nobility,
patience, and strength of the posture. Allow your identification to broaden
out beyond the ego with its constant thoughts and its shifting likes and
dislikes. Just observe everything…. This is the practice of meditation.
• Take birth and death back from the experts.
Because we are more frightened of what is not known to us, it makes

sense to become familiar with the two bookends of life: birth and death. If
you can, be at the births and deaths of family members and friends; sit
with sick people; help others who are suffering. Do not shy away from
what makes you uncomfortable. Learn about death—study its biological
and spiritual stages.
Adapted from "Five Ways of Practicing Dying" by Elizabeth Lessler
Gateway to Silence:
For Further Study:

Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
Intimacy: The Divine Ambush (CD, MP3 download)
A New Way of Seeing, a New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul
(CD, MP3 download)
"Ripening," Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 2
Presence
The Duty of the Sunday, December 7, 2014
Present Moment
A book that for many years has been voted a must-read by spiritual
directors is Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s Abandonment to Divine Providence.
De Caussade was a 17th century Jesuit in France. I’d like to share some of
my favorite quotes from this book.
“Every moment we live through is like an ambassador that declares the

will of God to us.” There is no more infallible way to seek the will of God
than moment by moment to see that what this moment offers me is the
grace of God. If we did nothing more than that, de Cassaude says, we
would attain the highest levels of transformation. Everything in life is to
be welcomed as somehow the expression of the will of God. Your reaction
to whatever happens has to be “as if” it were the will of God, or you can’t
respond to it graciously. De Caussade writes, “We must accept what we
very often cannot avoid, and endure with love and resignation things
which could cause us weariness and disgust. This is what it means to be
holy.” I think all of us shrink from his challenge because we know we
can’t do it on our own. We only succeed by God’s grace now and then.
De Caussade says, “True mystics seek the real; we seek the ephemeral.
They want God as God is; we want God as we imagine or would like God
to be.” The greatest ally of God is what is. God can always work with
what is. That is why there can be no real obstacle to union with God
except our own resistance. God can and will use everything, absolutely
everything, even the worst things—which is the meaning of Jesus’
crucifixion and resurrection.
De Caussade continues, “We find all that is necessary in the present

moment.” Perhaps a summary sentence in his teaching is this: “If we have
abandoned ourselves to God, there is only one rule for us: the duty of the
present moment.” “What does this moment ask of me?” is always the right
question.
Gateway to Silence:
Presence
Right Here, Right Now Monday, December 8, 2014
Augustine said, “In the end there will only be Christ loving himself.” This
means that the whole of Creation is the Christ Mystery. The Eternal One
has come forth and has taken on form and manifestation—which is us,
which is the whole planet, the animals, plants, and elements, the galaxies
and all the endless forms and faces that have come forth from God. Our
job as conscious humans is to bring the beauty and goodness of everything
to full consciousness, to full delight, to full awareness. When you
understand that, you can understand what Paul means when he says that in
the end “God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28), which is surely
where Augustine got the courage to say the same.
When Paul says to “pray always” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), he can’t mean to

walk around saying the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” all day. Prayer is
basically a total life stance. It is a way of being present in the world in
which we are present to the Presence and present to the Presence in all
things. In a certain sense, you either pray always (or almost always) or you
do not pray at all.
Being fully present to the moment and to God would be total conversion,
but we’re all still learners on that path. I hope we’ve learned how to
appreciate at least one or two moments, how to rest and abide in one or
two special moments, and to learn to say, “This is good. This is enough. In
fact, this is everything.” Once you recognize that it’s all right here, right
now, then you’ll carry that awareness everywhere else. How you do
anything is how you do everything. This is what Julian of Norwich meant
when she looked at one little hazelnut in the palm of her hand, and said
“This is everything that is” (Chapter 4, short text of her Showings).
Once we can learn to be present to the Presence, the things that used to
bother us don’t bother us quite as much. The things that used to defeat us
no longer defeat us. The things we thought we could never surrender to,
we now can. Even to accept that we are not ready to accept something is
still a form of this utterly grounding and accepting Presence.
Gateway to Silence:
Presence
The Always Coming Christ Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Jesus said to his disciples, “Be awake. Be alert. You do not know when
the time will come. It is like a man travelling abroad. He leaves home and
places his servants in charge, each with his own work. And he orders the
gatekeeper to be on watch. So I tell you, watch. You do not know when the
Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at
cock crow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you
asleep. What I say to you, I say to all: stay awake.” –Mark 13:33-37
Sadly, we’re almost programmed (perhaps by childhood conditioning) to

hear the Gospel in a threatening or punitive way, as if Jesus is saying,
“You’d better do it right, or I’m going to get you.” With that outlook, we
are likely to largely miss the point in this passage. This is the bad fruit of
using religion and Scripture to threaten people into love, which is actually
a total impossibility. Most people who start with fear stay with fear and
never get to the higher motivations.
Let’s try to hear it in a much more exciting and positive way. Jesus is not
talking about the second coming of Christ. He’s not talking about your
death, either. What he’s talking about here is the forever coming of Christ,
the always coming of Christ, the eternal coming of Christ…now…and
now…and now. In the above passage Jesus says this clearly: “in the
evening, at midnight, at cock crow, [and] in the morning.”
You see, Christ is always coming; God is always present. It’s we who
aren’t! We’re always somewhere else, at least I often am. Jesus tells us to
be conscious, to be awake, to be alert, to be alive. It’s the key to all
spirituality, because that is the one thing we aren’t. Be honest. Most of us
live on cruise control. We just go through the motions of our daily
routines. We wake up and we repeat what we did the day before, and
we’re upset if there are any interruptions.
But, in fact, when God has the best chance of getting at us is in the gaps,
in the discontinuities, in the exceptions, in the surprises. This is what it
means to be awake: to be constantly willing to say that God could even be
coming to me in this! Even in this! Saying “Just this!” has become a new
verbal practice of mine. I am learning to say it even amidst the things I
don’t want, I don’t expect, and sometimes don’t like—in the evening, at
midnight, at cock crow, or in the morning.
Adapted from "To Be Awake Is to Live in the Present,"

Collection of Homilies 2008 (CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence:
Presence
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Thomas Merton Day
Be Here Now
Thomas Merton entered the monastery in Kentucky on this day when he

was 27 years old. He was accidentally electrocuted in Bangkok 27 years
later on December 10, 1968, at the age of 54. Merton reacquainted
Christianity with its contemplative roots. His writings inspired many,
including myself, to return to le point vierge, “the virgin point” of pure
poverty and nothingness in God’s presence, which can only be found in
the now.
If you watch your mind, you will see you live most of your life in the past
or in the future, both of which Jesus warns us against. That’s just the way
the mind works. If you are to experience the ever-present and ever-coming
Christ, the one place you have to be is the one place you are usually not:
NOW HERE or “nowhere.” Everything that happens to you happens right
now; if you can’t be present right now, nothing new is ever going to
happen to you. You will not experience your experiences; they will not go
to any depth in your soul. You really won’t grow unless you’re willing to
live right here, right now—to be present.
How do you be present? Jesus describes it rather profoundly: “You must

love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, with
your whole mind, and with your whole strength” (Luke 10:27). Whenever
all of these parts are working together at the same time you are present. He
finishes by saying “Do this and life is yours!” (10:28). I like to say that
prayer happens whenever all of you is present—body, mind, soul, spirit,
emotions—all together. That’s hard work. This is the core and constant
meaning of all spiritual practice, no matter what religion: how to be here
now! Then you will know what you need to know to go forward.
Usually we have to be shocked into it, I’m sorry to say. Great love does it.
When you are deeply in love—with anything—you tend to be present to
the Now. Someone has said, “To be a saint is to have loved many
things”—many things—the tree, the dog, the sky, the flowers, even the
color of someone’s clothing. You see, when you love, you love, and love
extends to everything all the time and everywhere. When you love, you’re
much more likely to be present.
Another time when all of you is present is when you suffer or when
someone dies. For some reason, all the forms of death pull us into the now
moment. In the presence of dying, for some reason, we discover our
deepest life. Someone said there are only two themes in all of literature:
love and death. I can understand why.
Adapted from "To Be Awake Is to Live in the Present,"

Gateway to Silence:

Is There Another Way?
Teaching an Alternative Orthodoxy

A live video webcast with Richard Rohr,
Cynthia Bourgeault, and James Finley

Tuesday, December 16, 2014
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Presence

Remember:

A summary sentence in Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s teaching is this: “If we
have abandoned ourselves to God, there is only one rule for us: the duty of
the present moment.” (Sunday)

To “pray always” is a stance, a way of being present in the world in which
we are present to the Presence and present to the same Presence in all
things. (Monday)

This is what it means to be awake: to be constantly willing to say that God
could even be coming to me in this! Even in this! “Just this!” (Tuesday)

If you are to experience the ever-present and ever-coming Christ, the one
place you have to be is the one place you are usually not: NOW HERE or
“nowhere.” (Wednesday)

I am convinced that the purest form of spirituality is the ability to accept
the “sacrament of the present moment” and to find God in what is right in
front of me. (Thursday)

“Once we change the nature of our relationship with each moment to that
of an awakened stance, formlessness can function through form, and spirit
can shine through our transformed, utterly unique self.” –Kathleen
Dowling Singh (Friday)

Rest: If You Want
Read the following poem by John of the Cross aloud slowly, meditatively,
resting in the awareness of Presence within your own soul’s womb.

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy
and say,

“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,

as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yes there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence externally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb of your soul,

as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never
far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light and
sing . . .

“If You Want” by St. John of the Cross, translated by Daniel Ladinsky,
Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West
(used with permission)
Gateway to Silence:
For Further Study:

Enneagram: The Discernment of Spirits
(DVD, CD, MP3 download)
Living the Eternal Now (CD, MP3 download)
I Am Who I Am
Becoming Like Children Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Some years ago I visited an old Franciscan who lived in Gallup, New
Mexico. He spent most of his life working with the native people, and he
loved them deeply. When I knew him, he was probably in his late eighties.
He was bent over and he would walk the streets of downtown Gallup in
his Franciscan robe and sandals, carrying a cane. He would lift his bent
head and greet everybody with the greeting of St. Francis: “Good
morning, good people!” Our job is to remind people of their inherent
goodness, and this is what this dear man did.
On his cane he had strung a string of battery-powered, blinking Christmas

lights. Now to anyone who is a tourist in town, they must think him quite
the old fool—bent over, in a brown robe and sandals, with blinking
Christmas lights on his cane! And it was not even Christmas time.
One day I asked him, “Father, why do you put those blinking Christmas
lights on your cane?”
He cocked his head toward me, looked up grinning, and said, “Richard, it
makes for good conversation. See, you are talking to me now. Everybody
asks about them, and I am able to talk to everybody because of my
Christmas lights.”
Now, was he a fool in most peoples’ eyes? Was he a naïve innocent? Yes,
I guess he was. The “holy fool” is the final stage of the full human
journey. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, “It is those who
become like little children who will enter the Kingdom of God” (Matthew
18:3). Jesus, in his frequent allusion to children, was in his own way
describing this final stage of life. We return to that early childhood, as it
were, running naked and exposed into the great room of life and death. “I
am who I am who I am” now. God has accepted me in my most naked
being, and I can now give it all back to God exactly as it is with conscious
loving trust that it will be received. What else would God want?
Adapted from The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis,
disc 5 (CD)
Gateway to Silence:
I am who I am in the eyes of God, nothing more and nothing less.
I Am Who I Am
Holy Fools Wednesday, December 17, 2014
St. Francis illustrates this stage in many memorable ways. When he hears
one day that the people of Assisi are calling him a saint, he invites Brother
Juniper to join him in a walk through his old home town. Brother Juniper
was the first simpleton (that is a compliment!), the holy fool of the original
friars. Francis knew he could always trust him to understand what he was
saying. Francis once said, “I wish I had a whole forest of such Junipers!”
Francis told Brother Juniper, “Let’s take off these robes, get down to our
underwear, and just walk back and forth through Assisi. Then all these
people who are thinking we are saints will know who we really are!” Now
that’s a saint: someone who doesn’t need to be considered a saint, who can
walk foolishly in his underwear the full length of Assisi.
A few years later, when people were again calling Francis a saint, he said,
“Juniper, we’ve got to do it again.” This time they carried a plank into the
piazza. They put it over some kind of a stone or maybe the fountain, and
there they seesawed all day. They had no need to promote or protect any
reputation or pious self-image.
That’s a rather constant spiritual tradition in the Eastern Church and in the
Desert Fathers and Mothers, but it pretty much got lost after the 13th
century Franciscans. We became more and more serious about this intense
salvation thing, or you might say we took ourselves far too seriously.
Moralism replaced mysticism. And this only increased after the in-house
fighting of the 16th century reformations. We all needed to prove we were
right. Have you noticed that people who need to prove they are right
cannot laugh or smile?
When you are a “holy fool” you’ve stopped trying to look like something
more than you really are. That’s when you know, as you eventually have
to know, that we are all naked underneath our clothes, and we don’t need
to pretend to be better than we are. I am who I am, who I am, who I am;
and that creation, for some unbelievable reason, is who God loves,
precisely in its uniqueness. My true identity and my deepest freedom
comes from God’s infinite love for me, not from what people think of me
or say about me. Both the people who praise me and those who hate me
are usually doing it for the wrong reasons.
Adapted from Franciscan Mysticism (an unpublished talk)
Gateway to Silence:
I Am Who I Am

Remember:

We no longer have anything to prove or protect, so we can let go and
surrender to Reality/God, which are now experienced as the same thing.
(Sunday)

St. Francis faced his broken self and it was precisely there that he met the
most unconditional of loves. (Monday)

God has accepted me in my most naked being, and I can now give it all
back to God exactly as it is with conscious loving trust that it will be
received. (Tuesday)

My true identity and my deepest freedom comes from God’s infinite love
of me, not from what people think of me or say about me. (Wednesday)

God took on all human nature and said “yes” to it forever! In varying
degree and with infinite qualities, God took on everything physical,
material, and natural as himself. That is the full meaning of the
Incarnation. (Thursday)

Once you find this compassion toward your own little I am, tiny and
broken and poor as it is, then you’re able to share compassion with
everyone and everything. (Friday)

Rest: Training for the “Third Eye”
The lamp of the body is the eye. –Matthew 6:22
The ego self is the unobserved self. If you do not find an objective
standing point from which to look back at yourself, you will almost
always be egocentric—identified with yourself instead of in relationship
with yourself. Ego is not bad; it is just what takes over when you do not
see truthfully and completely.
Much of the early work of contemplation is discovering a way to observe

yourself from a distance and learning how to return there in moments of
emotional turmoil (positive as much as negative), until you can eventually
live more and more of your life from this awareness. You will find
yourself smiling, sighing, and “weeping” at yourself, more than either
hating or congratulating yourself (both of which are ego needs).
This knowing of self must be compassionate and calmly objective. It

names the moment for what it is, without need to praise or blame my
reaction to it. This takes away my reaction’s addictive and self-serving
character so that it no longer possesses me. Now I have a feeling instead
of a feeling having me. It gives me a strong sense of “I,” because there is
now no need to eliminate or deny the negative. (My full self is accepted.)
Ironically, the truly destructive part of the negative is exposed and falls
away now as unnecessary. To see the negative is to defeat it, for evil relies
upon denial and disguise.
The Christian name for this stable witness is the Holy Spirit. One only
needs to connect with the deepest level of desiring where “The Spirit bears
common witness with our spirit that we are indeed children of God”
(Romans 8:16). It is a common knowing, a participative event, and it feels
like you are being “known through” with total acceptance and forgiveness.
This will change your life! You will then “know as fully as you are
known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See,
pp. 166-168
Gateway to Silence:
For Further Study:

The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (CD)
Francis: Turning the World on Its Head: Subverting the Honor/Shame System
(CD, MP3 download)
Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation
(CD, MP3 download)
The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See
True Self/False Self (CD)
Silence
The Shortest or Longest Sunday, December 21, 2014
Day of the Year
Depending on which hemisphere you live in, today is the shortest or

longest day of the year—the day with the least or the most hours of
daylight. Surely this is a metaphor and symbol for non-dual
consciousness! We must welcome both light and dark to live fully. This
week’s theme explores how silence can help us do just that.
People who are interested in issues of peace and justice surely recognize
how communication, vocabulary, and conversation have reached a very
low point in our society, both in our politics and in our churches. It feels
like the only way through this is a re-appreciation for this wonderful, but
seemingly harmless, thing called silence. Blaise Pascal, the French
philosopher and mystic, said centuries ago, “All human evil comes from
this: our inability to sit still in a chair for half an hour.”(If you think this is
an exaggeration, a recent study at the University of Virginia said that 67%
of men and 25% of women would sooner endure an unpleasant electric
shock rather than be alone in silence for even 15 minutes!) Perhaps you
see why I have given so much time and energy to male initiation rites and
retreats in general. Very few, including priests and bishops, know how to
be silent even during a retreat.
Silence is not just that which is around words and underneath images and
events. It has a life of its own. It’s a phenomenon with an almost physical
identity. It is almost a being in itself to which you can relate.
Philosophically, we would say being is that foundational quality which
precedes all other attributes. When you relate to the naked being of a
thing, you learn to know it at its core. Silence is at the very foundation of
all reality. It is that out of which all being comes and to which all things
return. (If the word “silence” does not grab you, you can interchange it
with nothingness, emptiness, vastness, formlessness, open space, or any
undefined reality.)
All things are in fact a creatio ex nihilo; every something, by God’s plan it
seems, first comes from nothing! If you can first rest in the nothing, you
will then be prepared for the something. When nothing creates something,
we call that grace! Such silence is described in the very first two verses of
Genesis. The first reality is described in the Bible as a “formless void,”
and the Spirit is expectantly “hovering” over this “trackless waste and
emptiness” (tohu bohu in the Hebrew of Genesis 1:2), as if to impregnate
creation with God—which silent mystery I would call the birth of
“Christ”! The Spirit is silent, secret, invisible, but totally powerful and
always effective, humble, and quite willing to give the credit to others for
all the further millennia of unfolding (“evolution”). The coming together
of these Two Great Silences is the primal conception and the beginning of
Everything!
Adapted from Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation, pp. 1-2;

and Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction, disc 3
(Published by Franciscan Media.)
Gateway to Silence:
Just be.
Silence
Finding God in the Monday, December 22, 2014
Depths of Silence
Silence precedes, undergirds, and grounds everything. Unless we learn

how to live there, go there, and abide in this different phenomenon,
everything—words, events, relationships, identities—becomes rather
superficial, without depth or context. We are left to search for meaning in
a life of events and situations which need to increasingly contain ever
higher stimulation, more excitement, and more color, to add vital signs to
our inherently bored and boring existence. This need for stimulation is the
character of America and most Western countries. We are in danger of
becoming just a shell with less and less inside, and less contact with the
depth and reality of things—where all the lasting vitality is found. This is
what Jesus calls “a spring inside us—welling up unto eternal life” (John
4:14). God is always found at the depths of things, even the depths of our
sin and brokenness. And in the depths, it is always silent.
As a culture, it seems we are deeply afraid of silence, as I said yesterday.

The running from silence is undoubtedly running from God, from our
soul, from our selves, from the truth, and from freedom. One of the
beginnings of freedom is to stop thinking and “just look” (contemplata in
Latin), or just be. That’s when God can meet you exactly where you are,
in this embodied spirit that you are. Give yourself permission to get out of
your head, to let go of your sacred explanations and theological certitudes
that too often make personal listening, waiting, seeking, and praying a non
need! My single biggest disappointment in serving as a priest for 44 years
is the lack of spiritual curiosity among the vast majority of Catholics (I
can only pick on them!) They too often settle for glib answers that make
silent awe and pregnant questioning unnecessary—which is the very birth
of the authentic religious spirit.
In silence and solitude, we can finally get our selves (our feelings, our
needs, our compulsions, our reactions) out of the way and return to “the
face we had before we were born,” as the Zen masters put it. Who am I
before I was a priest or a teacher or a male or an American or whatever I
am? And before that? And before that? That free and deeply desirous
position of nothingness, nakedness, and emptiness is where God can most
powerfully meet us and teach us. My two favorite saints, Francis of Assisi
and Thérèse of Lisieux, both made this their certain and constant starting
place—which is why they are so believable.
Adapted from Adapted from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction, disc 3

(Published by Franciscan Media.);
and “Finding God in The Depths of Silence,” Sojourners, March 2013
(Reprinted with permission from Sojourners, 800-714-7474, sojo.net.)
Gateway to Silence:
Just be.
Silence
Silence as an Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Alternative Consciousness
For me, the two correctives of all spirituality are silence and service. If
either of those is missing, it is not true, healthy spirituality. Without
silence, we do not really experience our experiences. We may serve others
and have many experiences, but without silence, nothing has the power to
change us, to awaken us, to give us that joy that the world cannot give, as
Jesus says (John 16:22). And without clear acts of free service (needing no
payback of any sort, even “heaven”), a person’s spiritual authenticity can
and should be called into question. Divine Love always needs to and must
overflow!
To live in this primordial, foundational being itself, which I am calling

silence, creates a kind of sympathetic resonance with what is right in front
of us. Without it, we just react instead of respond. Without some degree of
silence, we are never living, never tasting, as there is not much capacity to
enjoy, appreciate, or taste the moment as it purely is. The opposite of
contemplation is not action, it is reaction. We must wait for pure action,
which always proceeds from a contemplative silence in which we are able
to listen anew to truth and to what is really happening. Such spiritual
silence demands a deep presence to oneself in the moment, which will
probably have the same practical effect as presence to God.
You do not hear silence (precisely!), but it is that by which you do hear.
You cannot capture silence. It captures you. Silence is a kind of thinking
that is not thinking. It’s a kind of thinking which mostly sees
(contemplata). Silence, then, is an alternative consciousness. It is a form
of intelligence, a form of knowing beyond bodily reacting or emotion. It is
a form of knowing beyond mental analysis, which is what we usually call
thinking. All of the great world religions at the higher levels (mystical)
discovered that our tyrannical mode of everyday thinking (which is largely
compulsive, brain-driven, and based on early patterning and conditioning)
has to be relativized and limited, or it takes over, to the loss of our primal
being and identity in God and in ourselves. I used to think that mysticism
was the eventual fruit of years of contemplation; now I think it all begins
with one clear moment of mystic consciousness, which then becomes the
constant “spring inside us, welling up unto eternal life” (John 4:14).
Adapted from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction, disc 3

and Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation, pp. 4-5, 9
Gateway to Silence:
Just be.
Silence
The Eve of the Incarnation
Silence and Grace
My best writings and teachings have not come from thinking but, as
Malcolm Gladwell writes in Blink, much more from not thinking. Only
then does an idea clarify and deepen for me. Yes, I need to think and study
beforehand, and afterward try to formulate my thoughts. But my best
teachings by far have come in and through moments of interior silence—
and in the “non-thinking” of actively giving a sermon or presentation or a
moment of counsel.
For me, Aldous Huxley described it perfectly in a lecture he gave in 1955

titled “Who Are We?” He said, “I think we have to prepare the mind in
one way or another to accept the great uprush or downrush, whichever you
like to call it, of the greater non-self.” That precise language might be off-
putting to some, but it is a quite accurate way to describe the very
common experience of inspiration and guidance.
All grace comes precisely from nowhere—from silence and emptiness, if

you prefer—which is what makes it grace. It is both you and yet so much
greater than you at the same time, which is probably why believers chose
both uprushing fountains (John 7:38) and downrushing doves (Matthew
3:16) as metaphors for this universal and grounding experience of spiritual
encounter. Sometimes it is an uprush and sometimes it is a downrush, but
it is always from a silence that is larger than you, surrounds you, and
finally names the deeper truth of the full moment that is you. I call such a
way of knowing the contemplative way of knowing, as did much of the
older tradition. (The word “prayer” has been so consistently trivialized to
refer to something you do, instead of something that is done to you, with
you, in you, and as you.) Then, like Mary, you are ready to give birth. You
are ready for Christmas.
Adapted from “Finding God in the Depths of Silence,” Sojourners, March 2013
Gateway to Silence:
Just be.
Silence
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Feast of the Incarnation of God in Christ
Silence as the Heart of Prayer
When peaceful silence lay over all, and when night had run half way her
swift course, down from the heavens, from the royal throne, leapt your all-
powerful Word. –Book of Wisdom 18:14-15
Words are necessarily dualistic. That is their function. They distinguish

this from that, and that’s good. But silence has the wonderful ability to not
need to distinguish this from that! As in the magnificent quote above from
the Catholic Bible, the divine word itself can only enter the world in
silence and at nighttime. Silence can hold impossibilities together in a
quiet, tantric embrace. Silence, especially loving silence, is always non-
dual, and that is much of its secret power. It stays with mystery, holds
tensions, absorbs contradictions, and smiles at paradoxes—leaving them
unresolved, and happily so. Any good poet knows this, as do many
masters of musical chords. Politicians, engineers, accountants, and most
seminary trained clergy have a much harder time.
Max Picard, in his classic book The World of Silence, says, “The human
spirit requires silence just as much as the body needs food and oxygen.”
As a general spiritual rule, you can trust this: The ego gets what it wants
with words. The soul finds what it needs in silence. The ego prefers full
solar light—immediate answers, full clarity, absolute certitude, moral
perfection, and undeniable conclusions. The soul, however, prefers the
subtle world of shadow, the lunar world that mixes darkness and light
together, or as the Book of Wisdom more poetically puts it above, “When
night had run half way her swift course…”!
Robert Sardello, in his magnificent, demanding book Silence: The Mystery

of Wholeness, writes: “Silence knows how to hide. It gives a little and sees
what we do with it.” Only then will it or can it give more. Rushed,
manipulative, or opportunistic people thus find silence impossible, even a
torture. They never get to the “more.” Sardello goes on to say, “But in
Silence everything displays its depth, and we find that we are a part of the
depth of everything around us.” This is so good and so true!
When our interior silence can actually feel and value the silence that
surrounds everything else, we have entered the house of wisdom. This is
the very heart of prayer. When the two silences connect and bow to one
another, we have a third dimension of knowing, which many have called
spiritual intelligence or even “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2: 10-
16). No wonder that silence is probably the foundational spiritual
discipline in all the world’s religions, although it is only appreciated as
such at the more mature and mystical levels. Maybe the absence of silence
and the abundance of chatter is the primary reason that so much personal
incarnation does not happen. Christmas remains a single day instead of a
lifetime of ever deepening realizations.
Adapted from Adapted from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction, disc 3

and “Finding God in The Depths of Silence,” Sojourners, March 2013
Gateway to Silence:
Just be.
Silence
What Sustains Me: Contemplation Friday, December 26, 2014
As the name of our center probably makes clear (Center for Action and
Contemplation), my daily and primary practice is contemplation. I try in
every way and every day to see the events, people, and issues in my world
through a much wider lens that I hope is “Christ Consciousness.” I have to
practice hour by hour letting go of my own agenda, my own anger, fear,
and judgments in very concrete ways. In that empty space, often made
emptier by my very failure, God is always able to speak to me, and
sometimes I am able to hear. In that space, I find joy.
I have worked for most of my life, with the help of my Franciscan

tradition and other spiritual teachers, to spend a good chunk of every day
in silence, solitude, and surrender to what God and the moment are
offering. I fail at it far more than I succeed, but grace grants me just
enough “wide-lens experience” to know that it is my home base, my
deepest seeing, and by far the best gift I can also offer to the world, and to
you.
Without a daily contemplative stance, I would have given up on the

church, America, politics, many people, and surely myself a long time
ago. Without a daily contemplative practice, I would likely be a cynical
and even negative person by now, but by Somebody’s kindness, I do not
think that I am. With contemplative eyes, I can live with a certain non-
dual consciousness that often allows me to be merciful to the moment,
patient with human failure, and generous toward the maddening issues of
our time. For me, it is the very shape of Christian salvation or any
salvation. My sadness is that so few have been taught this older and wiser
tradition, although many still come to it by great love and great suffering.
Adapted from Sojourners magazine, July 2009 (This piece originally appeared in
Sojourners God’s Politics blog, sojo.net. Used with permission.)
Gateway to Silence:
Just be.
Silence
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Feast of John the Beloved Disciple
Sabbath Meditation

Remember:

Silence is at the very foundation of all reality. It is that out of which all
being comes and to which all things return. (Sunday)

The running from silence is undoubtedly running from God, from our
soul, from our selves, from the truth, and from freedom. (Monday)

The two correctives of all spirituality are silence and service. (Tuesday)

Sometimes grace is an uprush and sometimes it is a downrush, but it is
always from a silence that is larger than you, surrounds you, and finally
names the deeper truth of the full moment that is you. (Wednesday)

As a general spiritual rule, you can trust this: The ego gets what it wants
with words. The soul finds what it needs in silence. (Thursday)

With contemplative eyes, I can live with a certain non-dual consciousness
that often allows me to be merciful to the moment, patient with human
failure, and generous toward the maddening issues of our time. (Friday)

Rest: Centering Silence
Contemplative prayer can be traced through the Desert Fathers and

Mothers, Pseudo-Dionysius, early Christian and Benedictine monasticism,
some early Franciscans like Bonaventure, the unknown author of the The
Cloud of Unknowing, the Carmelites, Brother Lawrence, John of the
Cross, and Teresa of Ávila, but then was largely lost everywhere (Jean
Pierre de Caussade, S.J. being one clear exception). After the dualistic
fights of the 16th century it was largely forgotten with almost no teachers
emerging even in the contemplative Orders. If you learned it, it was by the
Holy Spirit, or on your own—by study of the sources above!
In the 1970s, Trappist monks Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating, and

William Meninger reintroduced Christians to contemplation through the
simple practice of Centering Prayer. Centering Prayer is one good way to
draw us into the silence that surrounds and holds us, but of which we are
too often unaware. It helps us sink into the wordless reality of who God is
and who we ourselves are.
1. Sit comfortably with your eyes closed, breathing naturally, relaxing

deeply. Become aware of your love and desire for God in this moment.
2. Choose a word or phrase that expresses your intention to be open to

God’s presence (such as this week’s Gateway to Silence—“Just be.”—or
Grace, Rest, etc.).
3. Hold the word gently, without speaking, repeating it in your mind

slowly.
4. Whenever you become aware of anything (thoughts, feelings,

sensations), simply return to the word, which symbolizes your intention.
5. Gradually let the word fall away as you slip into silence. Rest in silence.
6. Continue in silence as long as you wish (20 minutes twice daily is

suggested by many teachers).
Gateway to Silence:
Just be.
For Further Study:

Are You Eager to Love? (CD, MP3 download)
The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (CD)
Sic et Non: Yes, And (MP3 download)
Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation
In Our End Is Our Beginning
Going Deeper
Monday, December 29, 2014
It's one thing to read the Daily Meditations (or any spiritual text). It's quite
another to integrate the teachings into your very being. I hope you will
take all of what I say deeper than mere intellectual understanding, perhaps
in some or all of these ways:
 Contemplative practice: Contemplation is a "laboratory" in which

you learn to die and to be reborn. The rest of your life becomes the
field in which you live out this way of surrender and participation
in Love. Commit to a daily practice of some kind--silent
meditation, yoga, chanting, or maybe one of the "Rest" practices
introduced in the Saturday meditations.
 Sabbath: Set aside regular, longer periods of quiet or retreat,
simply to rest in awareness of God's presence. Find a rhythm of
rest and work that allows for renewal so that you enter your active
life from contemplative grounding.
 Service: Allow the natural welling-up of love to flow outward in
acts of justice, healing, and compassion. Life is not about you; you
are about life!
 Shadow work: The task of searching out and embracing shadow--
the parts of yourself that you hide or ignore--is ongoing, the work
of a lifetime. Let the people and circumstances that "push your
buttons" be your teachers. Look for yourself with a loving gaze in
the mirror of both your enemies and those who enthrall you.
 Spiritual direction: If you do not have someone to guide you, to
hold onto you during the times of not knowing, you will normally
stay at your present level of growth. Seek out a sacred companion
you can trust to be honest and present to your journey, who can
reflect back to you God's presence in your life and the world.
In the year to come I'll continue suggesting ways of opening your full
being--heart, mind, and body--to Presence (such as the "Gateway to
Silence" or the "Practice" in the Saturday meditations). It's never
something you achieve, but always a gift awaiting your awareness and
receptivity. May you grow in your awareness of God's presence
everywhere and always.

In Our End Is Our Beginning
The Authority of What Is

In the coming year of Daily Meditations, I will introduce the teachers who
have taught me: the individuals, traditions, and texts that have most shaped
my own worldview and spirituality. On many occasions, people have
asked me: "By what authority do you say the things you do, Richard? Why
should we believe you?" These are completely legitimate questions.
Having a solid and clear "epistemology"--how we know the things we
know--is important, or we are subject to the whims and fancies of any
teacher.

The things I teach come from a combination of inner and outer authority,
drawn from personal experience and a long lineage of the "perennial
tradition" as Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, Ken Wilber, and many others
called it. I don't believe God expects us to start from zero and reinvent the
wheel of faith in our one small lifetime. Thankfully, we each participate in
the "communion of saints," the force field of the Holy Spirit. This Great
Tradition, the perennial philosophy, has developed through the ages, and is
an inherited gift. (It is quite unfortunate that most of us confuse our own
rather recent customs with "tradition," and a mere 500 years inside of one
denomination or culture is still "recent custom.")

The Perennial Tradition points to recurring themes and truths within all of
the world's religions. At their most mature level, religions cultivate deeper
union with God, with each other, and with reality--what is. The work of
religion is to re-ligio--re-ligament--or reunite what our egos and survival
instincts have put asunder, namely a fundamental wholeness at the heart of
everything. My calling (and in the last 28 years, it has been the CAC's
work as well) has been to retrieve and reteach the wisdom that has been
lost, ignored, or misunderstood within the Judeo Christian and Perennial
traditions. That many people cannot be wrong.

My Wisdom Lineage
Friday, January 2, 2015
As best I can discern it, my spiritual lineage has about 15 building blocks.
I must begin with "The First Bible"--Creation itself. God has revealed
who God is through what is: "Ever since the creation of the world, God's
everlasting power and glory, however invisible, have been there for the
mind to see in the things he (sic) has made" (Romans 1:20). From nature I
turn to the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Prophets who call us to be
self-critical and inclusive. The Prophets then prepare us to understand the
radical challenge of Jesus' teaching and life. He is my point of synthesis,
who unites all before and after.

Thus the lineage continues with the apostle Paul, the Desert Fathers and
Mothers, the more inclusive wisdom of the Patristic period and the
early Eastern Church, my own Franciscan tradition, the "correct
practice" emphasized by Buddhism and Hinduism, right-brained
interpretations of reality such as art and myth, the non-dual mysticism
that is always emerging at the higher levels of every religion, the wisdom
of non-violent teachers and social activists, and in the last century the
brilliant psychology of Carl Jung. Now we also have the growing
scientific evidence pointing to patterns of love and "entanglement"
throughout the universe.

I've also learned so much from people who are in the recovery movement.
The 12-Step program represents the best of American spirituality,
offering a very practical way of living the Gospel. Finally, Spiral
Dynamics (or "integral theory," as Ken Wilber calls it) charts the growth
of human consciousness throughout history and human development, as
I've partly shared during the past year of Daily Meditations.
If truth is one (Ephesians 4:4-6), we must recognize we are all approaching
that one divine truth from different angles, with different needs, in
different eras, and with different starting points. But I find the final goal to
be the same. Unity is not the same as uniformity, and so my own path has
been to find and emphasize the essentials so clearly that we can then
easily see what the non-essentials are. In my experience, this confusion
between essential and non-essentials, between means and ends, is the most
common mistake of religious people in all religions, clergy and laity alike.

We each must find our own way (as almost all my favorite saints said, in
one way or another!). Nothing else is possible. But it is also helpful to
have reference to the common path so that I know I am not alone and my
ideas are not just my own but from the one Holy Spirit. (Individualism is
the bane of much postmodern soul work.) If we can remember that we all
came from God and are headed back to God, whatever circuitous route we
take, I think it will help us be more humble and patient with each other.
We all have our preferred symbols, rituals, Scriptures, and words for
things, but let's not ever let them get in the way of what they are all
pointing to and leading us toward--union of the soul with God.

Adapted from "The Authority of What Is,"
the Mendicant, January 2015

Stringing Pearls, drawing by Vanessa Guerin, 2004.
The Wisdom Tradition
The Perennial Tradition

Sunday, January 4, 2015
The "perennial philosophy" or "perennial tradition" recognizes that there

are some constant themes, truths, and recurrences in all of the world
religions. Unfortunately, many religions have emphasized differences and
claimed their particular brand is better than others. But there have been
threads of the perennial tradition throughout history, even acknowledged
by the Catholic Church. In Nostra Aetate, for example, the Fathers of the
Second Vatican Council begin by saying that "All peoples comprise a
single community and have a single origin [created by one and the same
Creator God].... And one also is their final goal: God.... The Catholic
Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions" (Vatican
II Documents, 1965, #1, 2). The document goes on to praise Native
religion, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam as "reflecting a ray of
that truth which enlightens all people."
Aldous Huxley calls the perennial tradition a metaphysic, a psychology,
and an ethic at the same time: "1) the metaphysic which recognizes a
divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; 2) the
psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical to,
divine Reality; 3) the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of
the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being. This is immemorial
and universal. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found
among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the
world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the
higher religions" (The Perennial Philosophy, vii).

The Wisdom Tradition, as it can rightly be called, is what we hope to
uncover this year, following a lineage of teaching and tradition through
various times, people, and places. What I teach is true not because
"Richard Rohr says so." This wisdom is grounded in the unchanging yet
ever fresh and relevant themes of a mature spirituality.

Adapted from "The Perennial Tradition," Oneing, Vol. 1 No. 1,
pp. 11-12

Wisdom's Authority
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
I dare to write not because I strongly trust my own ability to think or write,
but with a much stronger faith in the objective presence of the "Stable
Witness" within (Romans 8:16), who "will teach you everything" (John
14:26) and whose "law is already written on your hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33).
All that a true spiritual teacher really does is "second the motions" of the
primal and ever present Holy Spirit.

The first motion is already planted within us by God at our creation
(Jeremiah 1:5; Isaiah 49:1), and that is probably what gives spiritual
wisdom both such inner conviction and such outer authority. The best
compliment I ever get is something like this: "Richard, you did not teach
me anything totally new. Somehow I already knew it, but it did not
become conscious or real for me until you said it."

That is the divine symbiosis between members of the body of Christ, or the
"midwifery" of Socrates who believed that he was merely delivering the
baby that was already inside the person. On some level, spiritual cognition
is invariably experienced as "re-cognition." Even Peter said that his work
was largely "recalling" and "reminding" (2 Peter 1:12-15), and Jesus gave
the same job description for the Holy Spirit (John 14:26).

I am also convinced by what Malcolm Gladwell calls in his book Blink,
"thin slicing." Gladwell believes that what we call insight or even genius
comes from the ability of some people to "sift through the situation in front
of them, throwing out all that is irrelevant, while zeroing in on what really
matters. The truth is that our unconscious is really good at this, to the point
where thin slicing often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and
exhaustive ways of thinking" (p. 33). Wisdom is a refined and Spirit-led
ability to thin slice!

I would hope that I am doing some sort of thin slicing here, and that it will
open you to real transformation and "what really matters."

Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture As Spirituality, pp. 1-2
Remembering Wisdom
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Cynthia Bourgeault, a core faculty member of CAC's Living School,

writes in her book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing: "Wisdom is an ancient
tradition, not limited to one particular religious expression but at the
headwaters of all the great sacred paths.... One of the greatest losses in our
Christian West has been the loss of memory (in fact, almost a collective
amnesia) about our own Wisdom heritage" (The Wisdom Way of Knowing:
Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart, p. 4). And I would
add, how could we possibly honor or include any other wisdom tradition,
when we do not even know our own?!

Cynthia continues: "The real Source of Wisdom lies in a higher or more
vivid realm of divine consciousness that is neither behind us nor ahead of
us but always surrounding us.... [Wisdom] seems to go underground for a
while; one loses the thread. Then, in ways inexplicable to linear causality,
it pops up again. It re-creates itself over and over, so it seems, in the minds
and hearts of those who have been taught (or discovered on their own)
how to listen and see. It never really goes away, and it always comes back
in a fresh new form, customized to the conditions of the world" (pp. 25-
26). As Augustine said, it is "forever ancient and forever new."

We pick up and follow the thread where we find it--in the Bible, through
Jesus' life and teachings, in the writings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers,
in the mystics of all ages and faiths, in art and psychology and myth and
science. Wisdom is all around, inviting us to hear and understand--and it is
not at all the same as merely knowing correct facts and information. We
have confused intelligence/knowledge with true wisdom for far too long
now. They are not the same at all (Isaiah 11:2, 1 Corinthians 12:8),
although both are finally necessary.


Alternative Orthodoxy
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Most Christian churches have spent an awful lot of time concerned about
maintaining verbal and ritual orthodoxy--the official doctrines and liturgies
(when even the Roman church legitimates at least 16 forms of the Mass in
all of its Eastern Rites!). We must be honest and admit that it has focused
much less on the practicals of the Sermon on the Mount or what Jesus
spent most of his time doing: touching and healing people, doing acts of
justice and inclusion, teaching and living ways of compassion and non-
violence.

Franciscanism, insofar as it actually imitated Francis of Assisi, emphasized
an "alternative orthodoxy," a different view on what really matters, which
had much more to do with orthopraxy (right practice) than merely
believing the right words. (Read Jesus' parable about the two sons where
he makes this same point in Luke 21:28-32.) While not rejecting the
traditional orthodoxy of the church, the Franciscan "alternative orthodoxy"
was a parachurch viewpoint on the edge of the inside of organized
Christianity. It often seems this is where wisdom has to hide, as Proverbs
says, "Wisdom builds herself a house" (9:1). It became the entire history of
Religious Orders in the Catholic and Orthodox churches: we went to the
edge and emphasized different things, often to protect neglected Gospel
values and teachings.

Brian McLaren uses the words "a generous orthodoxy" to describe
something similar, a marriage of thinking and practice. Brian identifies a
generous orthodoxy with "a consistent practice of humility, charity,
courage, and diligence. Humility that allows us to admit that our past and
current formulations may have been limited or distorted. Charity toward
those of other traditions who may understand some things better than our
group.... Courage to be faithful to the true path of our faith as we
understand it, even when it is unpopular, dangerous, and difficult to do so.
Diligence to seek again and again the true path of our faith whenever we
feel we have lost our way..." (A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 34).

Franciscanism's offering, similar to the Quakers, Shakers, Amish, and
Mennonites, was a simple return to lifestyle itself: including the outsider,
preferring the bottom to the top, choosing social poverty and divine union
over any private perfection or any sense of moral superiority, and an
attitude of non-violence instead of religion as forced compliance, which
invariably leads to a warlike mentality. Any alternative and generous
orthodoxy can be found, if you look with non-dual eyes, in all sacred texts
and traditions, and surely in Jesus, as we'll discover in this year of Daily
Meditations. An alternative orthodoxy is never stingy with grace or
inclusion because it has surrendered to a God who is infinitely
magnanimous and creative in the ways of love and mercy.

Deep Ecumenism

Friday, January 9, 2015
Although I am clearly a Catholic, I would hope that my brothers and

sisters from other denominations and faiths would also find much to guide
and inspire them in what we will try to say this year. The ecumenical
character and future of religion is becoming rather obvious. Either religion
moves beyond its tribal past or it has no chance of "saving the world"! The
"emerging church" is gathering the scriptural, contemplative, scholarly,
and justice-oriented wisdom from every part of the Body of Christ. It is
really the religious side of globalization. [1]

Matthew Fox, surely a prophetic teacher, describes the importance and
value of deep ecumenism in his book One River, Many Wells. He writes:
"From Hinduism we hear: 'Many are the paths of humans, but they all in
the end come to Me.' ... In the Bhagavad Gita, God says: 'I am the thread
that runs through the pearls, as in a necklace.'

"Rumi, the Sufi mystic from the Moslem tradition, grounds the likeness
found in every mystical tradition to the depth of the experience of the
Divine one touches in a particular tradition. Love is the key.
For those in love,
Moslem, Christian, and Jew do not exist....
Why listen to those who see it another way? --
if they're not in love--their eyes do not exist.

"From the Buddhist tradition, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of the centrality of
going deep if we are to do inter-faith work when he says: 'Through the
practice of deep looking and deep listening, we become free, able to see
the beauty and values in our own and others' traditions.' Yet, to get to the
point of seeing the beauty and value in others' traditions, one must look
and listen deeply into one's own. One must practice some path along the
journey that leads to depth. One must enter the well of mystical
experience" (One River, Many Wells, pp. 16, 18, 22).

And so this year we draw deeply from the mystical, Wisdom well, from
the Christian tradition--which is my own--and from many other faiths too.
Next week we will look more closely at the Wisdom way of knowing, that
is not only intellectual but full hearted and embodied.

[1]Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture As Spirituality, p. 4
Every Creature Is a Word of God
Thursday, January 22, 2015
God brought things into being in order that his [sic]

goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be
represented by them; and because his goodness could not
be adequately represented by one creature alone, he
produced many and diverse creatures, that what was
wanting to one in the representation of the divine
goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness,
which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is
manifold and divided.
-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 47, 1

Each and every creature is a unique word of God, with its
own message, its own metaphor, its own energetic style,
its own way of showing forth goodness, beauty, and
participation in the Great Mystery. Each creature has its
own glow and its own unique glory. To be a contemplative
is to be able to see each epiphany, to enjoy it, protect it,
and draw upon it for the common good. (Some Sundays I
am drawn to awe, prayer, and service by the Nature
Channel much more than by the morning church service!)

Sister Ilia Delio, OSF, a speaker at some CAC
conferences, writes in true Franciscan style: "The world is
created as a means of God's self-revelation so that, like a
mirror or footprint, it might lead us to love and praise the
Creator. We are created to read the book of creation so that
we may know the Author of Life. This book of creation is
an expression of who God is and is meant to lead humans
to what it signifies, namely, the eternal Trinity of dynamic,
self-diffusive love" (Christ in Evolution, p. 62).

Meister Eckhart, OP, says it even more succinctly:
"Anyone who truly knows creatures may be excused from
listening to sermons, for every creature is full of God, and
is a book." And that is from one who was a member of the
Order of Preachers!
Adapted from "Every Creature Is a Word of God," Radical Grace,
Vol. 24, No. 2, Spring 2011, p. 3
Related resources:
The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3 download)
and In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation (CD, MP3
download)
Gateway to Silence
Let all the earth bless the Lord.
Practice
A Psalm of Praise
Today is the 100th birthday of Thomas Merton (1915-

1968), a man who almost single-handedly brought
contemplative spirituality back to Western Christianity's
awareness. He was a Trappist monk, poet, and activist, and
he was deeply engaged with interfaith dialogue. Merton
wrote extensively about contemplation, and his own prayer
practice "centered entirely on attention to the presence of
God and to His will and His love . . . a kind of praise rising
up of out of the center of Nothing and Silence" (The
Hidden Ground of Love, pp. 63-64). Here is one of his
exuberant, joyous psalms:

Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you.
The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip
poplar tree praise you.
The distant blue hills praise you,
together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of
brilliant light.
The bickering flycatchers praise you
with the lowing cattle and the quails that whistle over
there.

I too, Father, praise you, with all these my brothers,
and they give voice to my own heart and to my own
silence.
We are all one silence, and a diversity of voices.
You have made us together,
you have made us one and many,
you have placed me here in the midst
as witness, as awareness, and as joy.

Here I am.
In me the world is present,
and you are present.
I am a link in the chain of light and of presence.
You have made me a kind of center,
but a center that is nowhere.
And yet also I am "here."

-Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp.
131-132

Spend some time witnessing the wonder of creation and
write, draw, dance, or sing your own psalm of gratitude.

The Great Chain of Being
The Ticking Life Bomb

Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Every being is a spark of the Divine, or God. Look into the

eyes of the dog and sense that innermost core. When you
are present, you can sense the spirit, the one
consciousness, in every creature and love it as yourself.
- Eckhart Tolle
Presence is limited by the mere mind. Presence must

include heart, the memory, the "muscular memory" of the
very cells of the body. Yes, presence must include the
mind, although its erratic and compulsive character is a
huge problem, and the judging mind is often the worst
barrier to presence. I suppose this wholeness or presence is
what Jesus was trying to offer us when he said, "You must
love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind" (Luke
10:27). He's trying to tell us that presence is a broader and
deeper kind of knowing than just cognitive thinking.
Thinking knows things by objectifying them, capturing
them as an object of my knowledge. But presence knows
things by refusing to objectify them; instead it shares in
their very subjectivity. Presence allows full give and take,
what Martin Buber called the "I/Thou" relationship with
things as opposed to the mere "I/it" relationship. Buber
summed it up in his oft-quoted phrase: "All true living is
meeting." Presence knows, but with a wide-angle lens and
no filters.

It seems there has to be an affinity between the knower
and the known, which is actually the core meaning of
"love." There has to be a little bit of something in you for
you to see that same something over there. This is similar
to what John Duns Scotus called the Univocity ("one
voice") of Being: he said that we may use the word being
in one and the same sense when speaking of everything
from critters to their Creator. Being is thus One. It is God
in you that loves God. You and I will never know how to
love God by ourselves or alone, but only in states of
communion with our shared, naked Being. So God planted
a little bit of God in you (Romans 5:5) and in all of
creation too (Romans 8:18-22). We call it the Indwelling
Holy Spirit, and it's the part of us that just keeps yearning
for God. It is a ticking life-bomb. Your being is one with
God's Being.

Yet, for some reason, we choose to ignore this! Religion's
primary work is to keep making you aware of God's
indwelling presence. That's when you will move from
what Owen Barfield called Original Participation, which is
an empathy for things from the outside-in, to what he
called "Full and Final Participation," which is an empathy
for things from the inside-out. That's when religion grows
up--when it moves beyond its first preoccupation with
outer rituals, outer moralities, and outer belonging
systems. As disappointed as I get with early stage religion,
I can't give up on it, because religion still has the power to
communicate to you that you are a participant in
something bigger than yourself--and from the inside out.
We call it the discovery of the soul or the awakening of the
spirit.

Note this is not a creation of yours or even a mere belief of
yours, but a discovery and an awakening of a "preexistent
condition"! You are objectively in communion with God
from the moment of your conception, and there is really
nothing you can do about this, except choose to enjoy it
and draw life from this Endless Spring or to let it lie idle,
which is the only real meaning of sin.
Jesus Washing Peter's Feet (1852-56/detail), Ford Madox Brown, Tate Gallery, London
Jesus: The Servant
How to Win by Losing

Wednesday, March 11, 2015
The heart of Jesus' teaching was the Sermon on the Mount

(Matthew 5-7), together with his parables, many of which
are about losing and then finding (the lost son, the lost
coin, the lost sheep). All of these teachings, and Jesus'
lived example, call us to win by losing, which is so
countercultural and so paradoxical that Jesus finally had to
live it himself to show us it could be true.

The Sermon on the Mount begins with the so-called Eight
Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12). Read them from the
perspective of how they describe Jesus as the suffering
servant:

How happy are the poor in spirit; theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.

Meister Eckhart, OP, (1260-1328) said that to be poor
in spirit is to "know nothing, want nothing, and have
nothing." That sounds a lot like Buddhism! And this is
Jesus' opening line.

Happy the gentle: they shall have the earth for their
heritage.

This is so contrary to our love of power, certitude, and
control. Who of us really believes this? Could you
ever build an empire or even an institution with this
kind of naïveté?

Happy those who mourn: they shall be comforted.

We now know that grief is a privileged portal into soul
work and transformation.

Happy those who hunger and thirst for what is right: they
shall be satisfied.
Happy are the merciful: they shall have mercy shown
them.

There is a perfect correlation between how we give
and what we can receive. Consider this for the rest of
your life.

Happy the pure in heart; they shall see God.
Happy the peacemakers; they shall be called children of
God.
Happy those who are persecuted in the cause of right:
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3-10)

Each of these invitations, for that is what they are, are
concerned about vulnerable and outpouring relationship,
which is necessary for the second half of life, in the same
way that the Ten Commandments serve for ego-identity in
the first half of life. The Beatitudes are descriptions of a
mature human person much more than prescriptions for
other-worldly salvation. They offer something
astoundingly new to human consciousness, which is a
lifestyle based on vulnerability, mutuality, service--and
thus a willingness to be usable for God, history, healing,
and one another.
Adapted from The Great Themes of Scripture: New Testament, pp.
21-22 (published by Franciscan Media);
and The Path of Descent, disc 4, (CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence
The way down is the way up.
Jesus Washing Peter's Feed (1852-56/detail), Ford Madox Brown, Tate Gallery, London
Jesus: The Servant
Accepting the Mystery of Suffering

Monday, March 9, 2015
Mark likely wrote his gospel around 65 to 70 AD, much

closer to the time of Jesus than the other evangelists. He
gave us a picture of Jesus which was very close to the
preaching of the apostles, but in a different context and
with a very definite emphasis and intention. Mark began
writing shortly after the great persecution in Rome (64
AD) in which both Peter and Paul had been martyred.
They began to see where Jesus' message finally led people.
Until then, the gentile converts in Rome had experienced
largely the glory of Christ, it seems.

The purpose of Mark's gospel was therefore to remind
Christians, who acknowledged Jesus as the messiah, that
Jesus walked a path of "suffering servanthood." We
Christians say glibly that we are "saved by the death and
resurrection of Jesus" but seem to understand this as some
kind of heavenly transaction on his part, instead of an
earthly transformation on his and our part. We need to
deeply trust and allow both our own dyings and our own
certain resurrections, just as Jesus did! This is the full
pattern of transformation. If we trust both, we are
indestructible. That is how Jesus "saves" us from
meaninglessness, cynicism, hatred, and violence--which is
indeed death.

God is Light, yet this full light is hidden in darkness so
only the sincere seeker finds it. It seems we all must go
into darkness to see the light, which is counter-intuitive for
the ego. Our age and culture resists this language of
"descent." We made Christianity, instead, into a religion of
"ascent," where Jesus became a self-help guru instead of a
profound wisdom-guide who really transformed our mind
and heart. Reason, medicine, wealth, technology, and
speed (all good in themselves) have allowed us to avoid
the quite normal and ordinary "path of the fall" as the way
to transform the separate and superior self into a much
larger identity that we call God.
Jesus: The Servant
Boot Camp for the Boys

Thursday, March 12, 2015
After teaching his disciples plainly and in

parables, after showing them miracles of
healing and forgiveness, and after sending
them off to do likewise, Jesus asks the
Twelve who they think he is. Peter answers
in good doctrinal form, "You are the Christ"
(Mark 8:29).

His apostles may understand that Jesus is the
messiah, but they have their own ideas of
what a messiah ought to be. They do not yet
realize that the salvation Christ will bring is
not an easy victory. They have not yet
connected Jesus with the figure of the
suffering servant in Isaiah.

Mark wanted his own community to
understand this connection. It took the
Twelve a long time to comprehend it, so
Mark repeats the point three separate times
between chapters 8-10. Each time, Jesus
tells the apostles that the messiah must
suffer and die, with clear implications that
they must do the same. Each time they miss
the point and, in fact, they do the opposite.

Our first "pope," Peter, had the right
doctrine in words, but no intention of
changing his career track. He was thinking
of success the way most people do and
wanted to use Jesus to get there. But Jesus
told Peter and the apostles that the real way
to succeed is quite different: "Anyone who
wants to be a follower of mine has to put
self aside, shoulder his or her cross, and go
the way that I go. Whoever holds onto his or
her life will lose it. But whoever lets go of
his or her life for my sake and the Gospel's
will save it" (Mark 8:34-35). More and more
people today are finally beginning to
understand that this is not a call to willful or
heroic asceticism, but something that
demands much more of the ego. The self we
need to let go of is our falsely concocted
identity so that the True Self, or the self we
eternally are in God, can then naturally
emerge.

It is almost that simple and always that hard.
We are attached to our personas, careers,
masks, and agendas. They do not die easily--
and yet they surely will!
Jesus: The Servant
Summary
Sunday, March 8, 2015 - Saturday, March 14, 2015
Jesus' passion and death exemplified in dramatic theater a

"third way," which is neither fight nor flight, but a little of
both. It is fleeing enough to detach oneself from excessive
ego and the emotions that attach to it and fighting just
enough to stand up courageously against evil. (Sunday)

We need to deeply trust and allow both our own dyings
and our own certain resurrections, just as Jesus did! This is
the full pattern of transformation. (Monday)

"Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in
whom my soul delights. I have sent my spirit upon him, he
will bring fair judgment to the nations."--Isaiah 42:1
(Tuesday)

All of Jesus' teachings call us to win by losing, which is so
countercultural and so paradoxical that Jesus finally had to
live it himself to show us it could be true. (Wednesday)

"Anyone who wants to be a follower of mine has to put
self aside, shoulder their cross, and go the way that I go.
Whoever holds onto their life will lose it. But whoever lets
go of their life for my sake and the Gospel's will save it."
--Jesus in Mark 8:34-35 (Thursday)

The "paschal mystery" is indeed and always a mystery--
that the way up is the way down. (Friday)
Practice
Self-Emptying
Make my joy complete by being of a single mind, one in

love, one in heart and one in mind. Nothing is to be done
out of jealousy or vanity; instead, out of humility of mind
everyone should give preference to others, everyone
pursuing not selfish interests but those of others. Make
your own the mind of Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form
of God, did not count equality with God something to be
grasped. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a
slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every
way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to
accepting death, death on a cross.
--Philippians 2:3-8

Jesus consistently asks people to "come after me" or to
"follow me." Well, we see where he's leading us: to the
cross. Victory is not the avoidance of death, but precisely
death transformed. And that is what God does with people
who say yes to the process.

In the passage above, Paul uses the Greek word kenosis to
describe Jesus' act of self-emptying and surrender.
Contemplative prayer is a practice of self-emptying. At its
most basic, contemplation is letting go--of our habitual
thoughts, preferences, judgments, and feelings. Though
life itself is often our most powerful teacher through great
love and suffering, contemplation is a daily, small death to
false self and ego. It makes space for True Self to
reappear, to rise from the ashes of our partial and protected
self. If you do not already have a regular contemplative or
meditative practice, I encourage you to begin with a few
minutes of silence every day, emptying your mind of
patterned--mostly negative--thoughts to simply be present
to Presence.
Adapted from The Path of Descent (CD, MP3 download)

Jesus: Human and Divine
Participating in the Eternal Embrace

Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Yes, Christians formally believed that, "somehow," Jesus

was both human and divine at the same time. However,
with our largely dualistic thinking we humans were only
human, and Jesus, for all practical purposes, was only
divine. We missed the major point--which was to put the
two together in him and then dare to discover the same in
ourselves! We made our inclusive Savior, whom we could
imitate and participate with, into a Redeemer whom we
were told to worship as an exclusionary "Savior." It is so
strange that Jesus, who was always inclusive and
compassionate in his lifetime, seemed to create a religion
that had an entirely different philosophy. How could that
happen?

We were not assured that we could follow him as "partners
in his great triumphal procession" (2 Corinthians 2:14).
Instead we were told to be grateful spectators of what he
did, and we often missed the redemptive transformation
that was offered to us: "In your minds you must be the
same as Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). The Eastern
Church called this wonderful gift theosis or divinization,
and it is their greatest contribution to Christianity. But
even they have not drawn out its very real implications for
individuals, much less for society, the poor, or for justice.

Let me repeat, it is formally incorrect to say, "Jesus is
God," as most Christians glibly do. Jesus is the union of
"very God" with "very man." For Christians, the Trinity is
God, and Jesus came forth to take us back with him into
this eternal embrace, which is where we first came from
(John 14:3), so that "the outside of God" is fully taken
inside. This is exactly what it means to have an eternal
soul and is quite a different description of salvation--and,
dare I say, the whole point! It has little to do with our
supposed perfection and everything to do with God's
perfection.

This dynamic unity is what makes Jesus the Exemplar, the
"pledge" and "guarantee," the "Pioneer and Perfector of
our faith" (Hebrews 12:2). Now there is much less need to
"prove" that Jesus is God (which of itself asks nothing of
us). Our deep need is to experience the same unitive
mystery in ourselves and in all of creation--"through him,
with him, and in him" as we say in the Great Amen of the
Eucharist! The good news is that we also are part of the
eternal divine dance, but now as the ongoing Body of
Christ extended in space and time.
The Misunderstood Mystic

Thursday, April 16, 2015
I'm sure it's obvious that Paul is a major hero of mine. I've
spent a good deal of time and effort trying to help people
fall in love with Paul as I have. Many people don't like
Paul, and I'm convinced it's because they don't understand
him. I watch people's eyes glaze over at Sunday Mass
when the second reading is introduced as a letter from Paul
to one of his communities.

Many people think Paul is a moralist, when he's really a
mystic. In fact, he is a living example of how religion is
not a moral matter, as most of us have thought; it's a
mystical matter. As a mystic, Paul is a non-dual thinker.
He loves to teach in a dialectical way, which is a major
stumbling block to dualistic thinkers who only know how
to affirm or deny. Paul eventually reconciles the two
polarities that he often presents (such as weakness and
strength), but most people do not stay with him long
enough to see that. (This is one of the major problems of
short second readings on Sunday!)

I believe Paul creates the mystical foundations for
Christianity. Don't let the word "mysticism" scare you. All
I mean by mysticism is experience-based religion whereby
you come to really know something for yourself. It's not
just believing something; it's knowing something. That's
why Paul is able to speak with such authority. He's
constantly saying, "I know, and I know that I know. I'm
telling you what the Spirit has taught me." I think that's
why many people who are at a more mature level of
Christianity just devour Paul. They want to chew on and
relish his words because they know Paul's teaching comes
from a high level of consciousness, inner awareness, and
inner experience. He sees in wholes, not in parts, but those
of us who see in parts just stay at the dualistic level and
argue about the pieces.

Dualistic thinking gives false comfort, whereas freedom is
always scary. Some passages, like 2 Corinthians 6:14-18,
have clearly been inserted into Paul's writing, which can
be proved by internal textual analysis. Such passages
reflect the black and white, either/or thinking with which
the biblical transcribers and editors were more
comfortable. Later scribes, obviously offended by what
they observed to be haughty women, added passages about
how women should not speak in meetings (1 Corinthians
14:34-35). This clearly contradicts what Paul assumes
elsewhere (1 Corinthians 11:5). Paul does reflect his
patriarchal religion and time in history, but the dye has
been cast. Paul's revolutionary and much resisted teaching
is that "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither
slave nor free, neither male nor female; for you are all one
in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

The best advice I can give you in regard to understanding
Paul is to just stay with him. He'll eventually reach a
resolution to most of the dialectics he himself creates. And
stay on your own journey. You will find that Paul makes a
lot more sense in the second half of life than he did when
you were in the first half of life looking for proof in the
texts! Paul is indeed a teacher of adult Christianity. Keep
experiencing your experiences and depending on divine
guidance as he did; watch how the scales begin to fall
from your eyes as they did from Paul's (Acts 9:18).
Paul's Life-Changing Teachings

The Indwelling Spirit
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Paul develops a marvelous theology, really the very first

one, of the Holy Spirit, or what I often call the Internal
Witness. His theology is best summarized in Romans 8:16:
"The Spirit joins with our spirit to bear common witness
that we are children of God." What a succinct statement of
first stage contemplation! This is experienced when our
spirit learns how to calmly join with the "Always, Already
Awareness" of God--who is forever observing us and
loving us objectively and compassionately, just the way
we are. Only when our spirit joins with God's Spirit do
most of us find the strength to stand guard over our hearts
and minds (Philippians 4:7). It is almost impossible to do
this alone and unaided, unless one has immense discipline
and will power. (Buddhists seem to be trained in this much
better than followers of most other religions.)

Paul understands that Jesus left us his Indwelling Spirit as
a permanent, strengthening gift. So the Christ, for Paul, is
not out there; the Eternal Christ is in here, inside us in the
form of his Indwelling Spirit. I cannot say this strongly
enough. God has implanted in us a true "homing device"
that we can depend upon. Paul believes that we've all been
given a source for a true inner knowledge, which becomes
a calm inner authority whereby we know spiritual things
for ourselves (see 1 Corinthians 2:1-16). We have been so
afraid of this in most churches; most religious people have
been told to look outside instead of inside. Only the
mystics grab onto it with fervor and conviction.

Such a knowledge of the Indwelling Spirit creates the
foundation, not just for Paul's mysticism (and ours), but
for the egalitarian and charismatic church that Paul is
establishing. This church doesn't depend upon patriarchy
and hierarchy to generate itself, because everybody's got
the Spirit. Everyone can call upon this Indwelling Witness.
Humility is the giveaway that they are relying upon a
Source beyond themselves. So leadership really has
nothing to be afraid of here. The Spirit creates lovers, not
rebels or iconoclasts (1 Corinthians 13). Only God's Spirit-
with-us can fully forgive, accept, and allow reality to be
what it is.
Desert image by JeongJunYou.
The Desert Fathers and Mothers
Solitude and Silence

Tuesday, May 5, 2015
The desert fathers and mothers withdrew from cities to the

desert to live freely, apart from the economic, cultural, and
political structure (the Roman Empire) that first persecuted
the church and then later gave it a privileged status--in the
empire's own search for uniformity and control. The desert
fathers and mothers knew, as should we, that the empire
would be an unreliable partner. They recognized that they
had to find inner freedom from the system before they
could return to it with true love, wisdom, and helpfulness.
This is the continuing dynamic to this day, otherwise
"Culture eats Christianity for breakfast" to paraphrase
Peter Drucker, and our deep transformative power is
largely lost.

How do we find inner freedom? Notice that whenever we
suffer pain, the mind is always quick to identify with the
negative aspects of things and replay them over and over
again, wounding us deeply. Almost all humans have
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) of the mind,
which is why so many people become fearful, hate-filled,
and wrapped around their negative commentaries. This
pattern must be recognized early and definitively. Peace of
mind is actually an oxymoron. When you're in your mind,
you're hardly ever at peace, and when you're at peace,
you're never only in your mind. The Early Christian abbas
(fathers) and ammas (mothers) knew this, and first insisted
on finding the inner rest and quiet necessary to tame the
obsessive mind. Their method was first called the prayer
of quiet and eventually was referred to as contemplation. It
is the core teaching in the early Christian period and
emphasized much more in the Eastern Church than in the
West.

In a story from Benedicta Ward's The Sayings of the
Desert Fathers: "A brother came to Scetis to visit Abba
Moses and asked him for a word. The old man said to him,
'Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you
everything.'"[1] But you don't have to have a cell, and you
don't have to run away from the responsibilities of an
active life, to experience solitude and silence. Amma
Syncletica said, "There are many who live in the
mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and
they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in
one's mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for
one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own
thoughts."[2]

By solitude, the desert mystics didn't mean mere privacy
or protected space, although there is a need for that too.
The desert mystics saw solitude, in Henri Nouwen's
words, as a "place of conversion, the place where the old
self dies and the new self is born, the place where the
emergence of the new man and the new woman
occurs."[3] Solitude is a courageous encounter with our
naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure love.
Quite often this can happen right in the midst of human
relationships and busy lives.

Especially when outward distractions disappear, we find
that the greatest distraction from reality and from divine
union is our own busy mind and selfish heart. Anthony the
Great said: "The man who abides in solitude and is quiet,
is delivered from fighting three battles: those of hearing,
speech, and sight. Then he will have but one battle to
fight--the battle of the heart."[4]
Paul's Life-Changing Teachings
Paul as a Contemplative Practitioner

Sunday, April 19, 2015
As a teacher of the contemplative mind, Philippians is

probably my favorite of Paul's letters, because it describes
how we need to work with the mind. Paul writes his letter
to the Philippians during one of his many imprisonments.
He even speaks of being "in chains," and yet ironically this
is the most positive and joy-filled of all of his letters. The
very fact that he can be so happy during such hardship
tells us he had learned what to do with the rebellious and
angry mind. We have had no training in that for centuries,
and we see the sad results on the streets and in the
Congress of America.

In a most succinct and perfect summary, Paul says that
you should "Pray with gratitude, and the peace of God
which is beyond all knowledge, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:7). First, you
must begin with the positive, with gratitude (which might
take your whole prayer time). Second, you need to pray
however long it takes you to get to a place beyond
agitation, or to find "peace" (whether five minutes or five
hours or five days). Third, note that he says this is a place
beyond "knowledge," beyond processing information or
ideas. Fourthly, you must learn how to stand guard, which
is what many call "creating the inner witness" or the
witnessing presence that calmly watches your flow of
thoughts (mind) and feelings (heart). Finally, you must
know what the goal is: your egoic thoughts can actually be
replaced with living inside the very mind of Christ (en
Cristo). This is not self-generated knowing, but knowing
by participation--consciousness itself (con-scire, to know
with). This is major surgery, and Paul says it all in one
condensed verse!

Paul then goes on to suggest that we fill our minds "with
everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything
that is good, everything that we love and honor, everything
that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise"
(Philippians 4:8). Norman Vincent Peal calls this "the
power of positive thinking." I call it "replacement
therapy." If you don't choose love and compassion, the
human mind naturally goes in the other direction, and a
vast majority of people live their later years trapped in a
sense of victimhood, entitlement, and bitterness.

We are not free until we are free from our own
compulsiveness, our own resentments, our own
complaining, and our own obsessive patterns of thinking.
We have to catch these patterns early in their development
and nip them in the bud. And where's the bud? It's in the
mind. That's the primary place where we sin, as Jesus
himself says (Matthew 5:21-48). Any later behaviors are
just a response to the way our mind works. We can't walk
around all day writing negative, hateful commentaries
about other people in our mind, or we will become hate
itself!
Fathers of the Eastern Church
Summary
Sunday, May 10, 2015 - Saturday, May 16, 2015
The Cappadocian Fathers developed an intellectual

rationale for Christianity's central goal: humanity's healing
and loving union with God. (Sunday)

Matter and Spirit must be found to be inseparable in Christ
before we have the courage and insight to acknowledge
and honor the same in ourselves and in the entire universe.
(Monday)

The Mystery of God as Trinity invites us into full
participation with God, a flow, a relationship, a
waterwheel of always outpouring love. (Tuesday)

Full salvation is finally universal belonging and universal
connecting. Our word for that is "heaven." (Wednesday)

If you understand God as Trinity, there is no theological
possibility of any hatred or vengeance in God.
(Thursday*)

Jesus' foundational and even dualistic bias is against false
power and in favor of the powerless. (Friday)
Practice
Hesychasm, Sweet Repose
Hesychasm, a contemplative prayer of rest, has its roots in

the desert fathers and mothers as well as the Eastern
Orthodox tradition. Bishop Kallistos Ware, drawing from
John Climacus (AD 525-606) writes: "The hesychast, in
the true sense of the word, is not someone who has
journeyed outwardly into the desert, but someone who has
embarked upon the journey inwards into his own heart; not
someone who cuts himself off physically from others,
shutting the door of his cell, but someone who 'returns into
himself,' shutting the door of his mind."[1]

The Eastern Orthodox teachers of hesychasm suggest
using the Jesus Prayer as a way to enter into
contemplation: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have
mercy on me, a sinner." You might also choose the
"replacement therapy" of Centering Prayer, selecting a
word or short phrase to return to whenever you are
distracted. Repeat each word slowly, softly, and flowing
from one to the next. Gradually, with practice, the
repetitive rhythm of the words moves into long periods of
continuous, uninterrupted prayer.

The hesychast "is called to become conscious of the actual
presence of Jesus in the interior of his own being, a
presence given full and existential reality by the life of the
sacraments."[2]

"The hesychast ceases from his own activity, not in order
to be idle, but in order to enter into the activity of God. His
silence is not vacant and negative--a blank pause between
words, a short rest before resuming speech--but intensely
positive: an attitude of alert attention, of vigilance, and
above all of listening."[3]

"The principal thing is to stand with the mind in the heart
before God, and to go on standing before [God]
unceasingly day and night, until the end of life."[4]
Gateway to Silence
We are one.
References
[1] Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Inner Kingdom, Vol. 1 of the
Collected Works (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press: 2004), 93.
[2] John Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox
Spirituality (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press: 1974), 33.
[3] Ware, The Inner Kingdom, 97.
[4] Igumen Chariton of Valamo, comp., Bishop Kallistos Ware, ed.,
The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (Faber: 1997), 63.
Correction
*In the meditation for Thursday, May 14, the quotation that Richard
Rohr attributed to Teresa of Ávila is unverifiable in original sources.
Fr. Richard heard the story from someone while he was visiting
Ávila. The statement might be shared as Fr. Richard's own words
rather than Teresa's: "Oh, I believe there is a hell. It's just that no one
is there!"
For Further Study

On the Alexandrian mystics: Healing the Divide: Recovering
Christianity's Mystic Roots by Amos Smith
On the dynamic nature of Christ: The Cosmic Christ by Richard

Rohr (available as CD and MP3 download)
On Trinity: The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of the Trinity

by Richard Rohr (available as CD, DVD, and MP3 download)
On theosis: Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and

Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition edited by
Michael Christensen
On universal restoration and hell: Hell, no! by Richard Rohr

(available as CD and MP3 download)
For a simple chronology outlining the key figures and events of the
Early Christian Church and Patristic Period, click here.
Continue exploring the foundations of a benevolent universe

with Fr. Richard's short talk, Hell, no!
Drawing from Scripture, the fathers and mystics of the church,

philosophy, and psychology, Richard Rohr shows that Divine Love is
stronger than
hell, death, or sin. In the end, grace wins!
Order the CD or MP3 download at store.cac.org

This talk was recorded at CONSPIRE 2014, a conference sponsored by the Center
for Action and Contemplation, and is also included in In the Beginning: Six hours
with Rob Bell and Richard Rohr on reclaiming the original Christian narrative (CD
and MP3 download).
Job Opening
The Center for Action and Contemplation is seeking an experienced
accountant to join our team in Albuquerque, New Mexico. If you're
interested in helping us carry forward our nearly 30-year history of
bringing transformative teaching to the world, and you have 4-6 years
of experience in accounting, visit cac.org/job-senior-accountant to
learn more.
Please feel free to share this job opportunity with anyone you know
who might be a good fit for the skills needed and CAC's mission.
2015 Daily Meditation Theme

Richard Rohr's meditations this year explore his "Wisdom Lineage,"
the teachers, texts, and traditions that have most influenced his
spirituality. Read an introduction to the year's theme and view a list of
the elements of Fr. Richard's lineage in CAC's January newsletter, the
Mendicant.
Mystics and Non-Dual Thinkers:

Week 1
You Are What You Seek

Sunday, July 12, 2015
Over the next several weeks, I will introduce you to a

number of mystics who are important in my lineage of
spiritual wisdom. We'll explore these non-dual thinkers
from various traditions and religions in somewhat
chronological order, beginning where I left off with the
early Eastern Church and moving to modern times.

Please do not let the word "mystic" scare you. It simply
means one who has moved from mere belief systems or
belonging systems to actual inner experience. All spiritual
traditions agree that such a movement is possible,
desirable, and available to everyone. The experience of
divine union is the goal of all religion.

The spiritual wisdom of divine union is first beautifully
expressed in Sanskrit in the Vedas (the oldest Hindu text,
around three thousand years old) as a "grand
pronouncement": Tat Tvam Asi. This phrase contains
condensed wisdom that could likely be translated in the
following ways:

YOU are That!
You ARE what you seek!
THOU art That!
THAT you are!
You are IT!

As I understand it, the meaning of this saying is that the
True Self, in its original, pure, primordial state, is wholly
or partially identifiable or even identical with God, the
Ultimate Reality that is the ground and origin of all
phenomena. That which you long for, you also are. In fact,
that is where the longing comes from.

Longing for God and longing for our True Self are the
same longing. And the mystics would say that it is God
who is even doing the longing in us and through us (that
is, through the divine indwelling, or the Holy Spirit). God
implanted a natural affinity and allurement between God's
Self and all God's creatures.

Religion has only one job description: how to make one
out of two. For Christians, that is "the Christ Mystery,"
whereby we believe God overcame the gap from God's
side. God is saying in all incarnations that "I am not totally
Other. I have planted some of me in all things that long for
reunion." It is mimicked and mirrored in erotic desire and
the sexual pairing of animals and plants. The biblical Song
of Songs, Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir, and John of the Cross could
use only highly erotic images to communicate their
mysticism. Any notion of God as the "absolute other" will
create only absolute alienation. Add to that any notion of
God as petty, angry, or torturing, and the mystical journey
is over. So God created similarity and compassion in the
human person to overcome this tragic gap. God-in-you
seeks, knows, and loves God, like a homing device that
never turns off.

Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See,
pp. 29-30; Yes, And . . . Daily Meditations, p. 355;
and Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, pp. 98-100

Week 1
Symeon the New Theologian

Monday, July 13, 2015
Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) was a Byzantine

Christian monk and mystic revered to this day by Eastern
Christians. Symeon believed humans had the capacity to
experience God's presence directly. He visualized this
union happening within the "force field" of the Body of
Christ. This cosmic embodiment is created both by God's
grace and our response.

Symeon's Hymn 15 in his Hymns of Divine Love
beautifully names the divine union that God is forever
inviting us toward. These twenty-seven mystical lines
honestly say it all for me and move me to an embodied
knowing, to a living force field wherein we will know
mystical union on even the cellular level.

We awaken in Christ's body,
As Christ awakens our bodies
There I look down and my poor hand is Christ,
He enters my foot and is infinitely me.
I move my hand and wonderfully
My hand becomes Christ,
Becomes all of Him.
I move my foot and at once
He appears in a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous to you?
--Then open your heart to Him.
And let yourself receive the one
Who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
We wake up inside Christ's body
Where all our body all over,
Every most hidden part of it,
Is realized in joy as Him,
And He makes us utterly real.
And everything that is hurt, everything
That seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
Maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged
Is in Him transformed.
And in Him, recognized as whole, as lovely,
And radiant in His light,
We awaken as the beloved
In every last part of our body.

Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, pp. 219-220
Gateway to Silence
"I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through."
--Hafiz

Week 1
Meister Eckhart, Part I

Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Meister Eckhart (1260-1327), a German friar, priest,

mystic, and renowned preacher, was also an
administrator--prior, vicar, and provincial--for several
Dominican houses. My fellow Living School faculty
member, James Finley, suggests this engagement in the
"ways of the world" makes his teachings more accessible
to us all: "They do not require that we lives as a hermit or
go into the silence of the cloister in order to open
ourselves to the experience of God's oneness with us." [1]
Busy people can be mystics.

As a professor and theologian, Meister Eckhart had a deep
understanding of scripture and his own Christian tradition.
He was a true meister or spiritual master. I'll introduce a
few of Eckhart's principal themes today and tomorrow,
and I hope you'll take the time to explore more of his rich
and still accessible work. In many ways Eckhart is the
mystic's mystic. He speaks with such full non-dual
consciousness, that many do not know what he is talking
about! He often summarizes an abstruse passage with a
brilliant one-liner like "What a [person] takes in by
contemplation, that he [or she] pours out in love."

One Franciscan Archbishop accused Eckhart of teaching
pantheism, but as Eckhart said, they simply didn't
understand his words, which requires a non-dual approach.
Eckhart said, "If humankind could have known God
without the world, God would never have created the
world." Building on a basic awareness of God's
participation and revelation in nature, Eckhart believed
humans have a special role in celebrating this gift of
creation and adding to its beauty and diversity.

Eckhart taught the simple power of letting go and letting
be. To let go is no easy task. But in any loving
relationship, as we see in the Trinity, it is the source of
true joy. Matthew Fox writes that "laughter may well be
the ultimate act of letting go and letting be: the music of
the divine cosmos. For in the core of the Trinity laughing
and birthing go on all day long." [2] Eckhart puts it this
way: "The Father laughs with the Son; the Son laughs with
the Father. The Father likes the Son; the Son likes the
Father. The Father delights in the Son; the Son delights in
the Father. The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the
Father. This laughter, liking, delighting, loving is the Holy
Spirit!" Who could say it better?

For Eckhart, heaven is now. We are invited to already
participate in the eternal flow of Trinity here, in this
lifetime. The only thing keeping us from God and heaven
is our false notion that we are separate from God.

Week 1
Meister Eckhart, Part II

Thursday, July 16, 2015
Meister Eckhart illustrates the height of western non-

dualism. This is why he is largely impossible to
understand with our usual dualistic mind. When Eckhart
says, "I pray God to rid me of God," our logical mind
would see this as nonsense! It takes unitive consciousness
to discover what Eckhart means. There is no concept of
God that can contain God. Your present notion of God is
never it. [1] As Augustine said, "If you comprehend it, it is
not God." We can only come to know God as we let go of
our ideas about God, and as what is not God is stripped
away.

Before transformation, you pray to God. After
transformation you pray through God, as official Christian
prayers always say: "Through Christ our Lord. Amen!"
Before radical conversion, you pray to God as if God were
over there, an object like all other objects. After
conversion (con-vertere, to turn around or to turn with),
you look out from God with eyes other than your own. As
Meister Eckhart put it in one of his Sermons, "The eye
through which I see God is the same eye through which
God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one
seeing, one knowing, one love." [2] All we humans are
doing is allowing God to "complete the circuit" within us--
until we both see from the same perspective. [3] This is the
"mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16), which will be
experienced as a "spiritual revolution" in thinking
(Ephesians 4:22).

Michael Demkovich, a Dominican priest and scholar,
explains: "It is through our coming to know the truest self
that we are transformed into something divine. Eckhart's
notion of deiformity, a person's conformity to this
underlying reality of Godliness, is critical in his
understanding . . . of the soul." [4] Eckhart did not see the
soul as dualistically opposed to the body, but as a guide to
the body's experience. Because God took on a human body
in Christ and is present within humanity, the body is
sacred. In his preaching, Eckhart uses a verbal illustration,
exemplum, of eating to illustrate the body-soul
relationship: "The food which I eat, is thus united with my
body as my body is united with my soul. My body and my
soul are united in one being . . . which signifies the great
union we shall have with God in one being." [5]

Eckhart's analogy of a flask filled with water shows how
God is in the soul and the soul is in God, together and yet
without losing their uniqueness. In Eckhart's words: "Now
He [Christ] says: 'The Father and I are One'--the soul in
God and God in the soul. The water is inside of the flask,
thus [we say it] contains the water within it, but the water
is not truly in the flask and the flask is not truly in the
water. However, the soul is definitely one with God so that
the one without the other would be incomprehensible. One
can understand heat even without the fire and the rays
without the sun, but God is unable to understand Himself
without the soul, nor the soul without God, so completely
one are they." [6]

You can see why much of the dualistic church was just not
ready for dear Meister Eckhart, and thus he was never
canonized a saint. But he is still a "Meister"! As some
have said, he was a man from whom God hid nothing.

Week 1
Rumi
Friday, July 17, 2015
(Ramadan ends at sunset)
Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273) was a Persian Sufi or mystic,

a scholar, theologian, and poet. He is the most translated
poet in the world. Rumi inherited a position from his
father as head of a dervish learning community in Turkey.
Coleman Barks, who has translated a great deal of Rumi's
poetry, describes the community's purpose: "to open the
heart, to explore the mystery of union, to fiercely search
for and try to say truth, and to celebrate the glory and
difficulty of being in a human incarnation." [1] Like
Eckhart, Rumi was not cut off from the common world.
He worked in the gardens and advocated for his students'
needs, giving practical advice on all sorts of so-called
secular matters. Perhaps this earthy grounding allowed
Rumi to explore the very heights and depths of mystical
experience.

Sufism is the mystical arm of Islam. Mainline Islam, like
most organized religion, largely emphasizes external
behaviors, whereas Sufism developed and emphasized the
interior life. [2] According to Daniel Ladinsky, "the Sufis
themselves say their 'way' has always existed, under many
names, in many lands, associated with the mystical
dimension of every spiritual system." The special
emphasis of Sufism is "intense, often ecstatic, one-pointed
devotion to God." [3] If you have ever seen a Sufi Dervish
twirl around one pivot, as I was privileged to witness in
Turkey, all the message is contained therein.

Rumi's experience of ecstasy was born in grief. It seems
his beloved teacher and friend, Shams of Tabriz, was
killed by jealous students. Rumi's sorrow led him into a
yet deeper search for intimacy with the Divine. Ladinsky
writes: "Rumi was inconsolable and began wandering,
searching for any trace of his friend who was All-in-All to
him. Finally he realized that his beloved Shams was within
him. That is exactly the role of a Master, to create an
intense desire for union with the Beloved--and when union
happens, an atomic mystical power is released that can be
directed toward humanity." [4]

Rumi often refers to the Divine Presence as a guest or a
friend. Here is just one small jewel, translated by Coleman
Barks, of Rumi's approximately 70,000 poems. [5]

One Who Can Quit Seeing Himself

I look for one simple and open enough
to see the Friend, not an intelligence

weighing several perspectives. I want
an empty shell to hold this pearl, not

a stone who pretends to have a secret
center, when the surface is all through.

I want one who can quit seeing himself,
fill with God and, instead of being

irritated by interruption and daily
resentments, feel those as kindness.

Week 2
Understanding the Mystics Contemplatively

Sunday, July 19, 2015
As we begin our second week of introducing the mystics
and non-dual thinkers who have had the most influence on
my lineage, I feel some caveats are in order. As our
brother Jim Finley says, it's really not too useful to skim
the mystics. It is far better to sit with them and savor them.
However, in these few weeks I can only touch on each
mystic. I hope that small taste will stimulate your hunger,
and that you will treat yourself to spending more time with
the teacher(s) who most intrigues you. You may find a
friend for life!

Can seeing with the eyes of mystics really have relevance
for our busy modern world? I think it is not only relevant
but absolutely necessary to change our levels of
consciousness, which many religious traditions have called
growth in holiness or divine union. As Einstein (who
himself might be called a secular mystic) said, "No
problem can be solved by the same consciousness that
caused it." Dualistic thinking has caused many of our
personal and global problems; our hope is that non-dual
consciousness can bring healing.

Cynthia Bourgeault tells our Living School students that
the more time spent in contemplation, the clearer the
mystics become. Contemplation teaches the non-dual
perspective of the mystics, so that we can better
understand them. It also helps empty us of our
preconceived notions so that we are more ready to receive
the next experience of God. How silly to think that God
must or could fit inside our human-made theologies!
Would you respect a God you could understand with your
little mind?

Through a regular practice of contemplation we can
awaken to the profound presence of the unitive Spirit,
which then gives us the courage and capacity to face the
paradox that everything is--ourselves included. Higher
levels of consciousness always allow us to include and
understand more and more, although much of it is
unsayable. Deeper levels of divine union allow us to
forgive and show compassion toward ever new people,
even those we are not naturally attracted to, or even our
enemies.

Mystics have plumbed the depths of both suffering and
love and emerged with compassion for the whole suffering
world and a learned capacity to recognize God within
themselves, in others, and in all things. If we can read with
an attitude of simple mindfulness, the insights the mystics
share can equip us with a deep and embracing peace, even
in the presence of the many kinds of limitation and
suffering that life offers us. From such contact with the
deep rivers of grace, we can live our lives from a place of
non-judgment, forgiveness, love, and a quiet contentment
with the ordinariness of our lives.

Adapted from What the Mystics Know: Seven Pathways to Your
Deeper Self,
pp. ix-x
Julian of Norwich, Part I

Monday, July 20, 2015
Lady Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) is one of my favorite
mystics. I return to her writings again and again, every few
months, and always discover something new. Julian
experienced her "showings," as she called them, all on one
night (May 8 or perhaps May 13, 1373) when she was very
sick and near death. As a priest held a crucifix in front of
her, Julian saw Jesus suffering and heard him speaking to
her for some hours. Like all mystics, she realized that what
Jesus was saying about himself he was simultaneously
saying about all of reality. That is what unitive
consciousness allows you to see.

This was such a profound experience that Julian eventually
asked the bishop to enclose her in an anchor-hold, built
against the side of St. Julian's Church in Norwich,
England. Julian was later named after that church. We do
not know her real name, since she never signed her
writing. Talk about loss of ego! The anchor-hold had a
window looking into the church that allowed Julian to
attend Mass in the sanctuary and another window so she
could counsel and pray over people who came to her on
the street. You can still visit it today, as I was once
privileged to do. Such anchor-holds were found all over
13th and 14th century Europe. There, holy people lived in
solitude and contemplation, while still offering council and
prayer for others. Nicholas Von Der Flue illustrates the
same pattern in Switzerland.

Julian felt the need to go apart and reflect on her profound
experiences. It took her twenty years to find a language
that the larger Church could understand, and then it took
us over 600 years to finally take her seriously. People like
Julian don't want to engage in oppositional thinking, and
they don't need to prove they're right, so they often
become hermits. They go apart to find a way to experience
their truth in a healing, transformative way. Julian first
wrote a short text about the showings, but feeling it did not
do her experience justice, she rewrote it as a longer text,
entitled Revelations of Divine Love (this is the first book
by a woman written in what we now call English). Julian's
interpretation is unlike the religious views common for
most of history up to her time. It is not based in sin,
shame, guilt, or fear of God or hell. Instead, it is full of
delight, freedom, intimacy, and cosmic hope.

Our modern sensibilities may see parts of Julian's vision as
gory, such as the blood flowing down Jesus' face, but to
Julian it was simply God's outflowing love. Mystics tend
to understand all things symbolically much more than the
rest of humanity. She saw the flow as the love that first
flows between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
(Deus ad intra). This is the love that, if we allow it, flows
from God through us to others and back to God (Deus ad
extra). This is the love that enabled the risen Jesus to
return to his physical body, now unlimited by space or
time, without any regret or recrimination--while still,
proudly, carrying his wounds. "Our wounds are our glory,"
as Julian puts it. This is the utterly counter-intuitive
message of the risen Jesus, and Julian got it!
Whether our wounds are caused by others or by our own

mistakes, Julian frames it all as grace, saying, "First the
fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the
mercy of God." Julian's showings helped her to understand
that it is in falling down that we learn almost everything
that matters spiritually. Humans come to full
consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their
own contradictions, and making friends with their own
mistakes and failings. As Lady Julian put it in her Middle
English, "Sin is behovely!" No wonder it took us 600
years of largely dualistic thinking to begin to take her
seriously.

Adapted from Following the Mystics Through the Narrow Gate, disc
7
(CD, DVD, MP3 download);
Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, disc 7 (CD, MP3 download);
Immortal Diamond: The Search For Our True Self, p. 85;
Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 39;
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, pp. xx,
136
Gateway to Silence
"Nothing can come between God and the soul." --Julian of Norwich

Week 2
Julian of Norwich, Part II

Tuesday, July 21, 2015
The place which God takes in our soul he will never

vacate, for in us is his home of homes, and it is the
greatest delight for him to dwell there. . . . The soul who
contemplates this is made like the one who is
contemplated. --Julian of Norwich, Showings

On that day, you will know that you are in me and I am in
you. --John 14:20

"That day" that John refers to has been a long time in
coming, yet it has been the enduring message of every
great religion in history. It is the Perennial Tradition.
Divine and thus universal union is still the core message
and promise--the whole goal and the entire point of all
religion.

Lady Julian of Norwich uses the idea of "oneing" to
describe divine union. In Chapter 53 of Revelations of
Divine Love, she writes, "The soul is preciously knitted to
Him in its making by a knot so subtle and so mighty that it
is oned into God. In this oneing, it is made endlessly holy.
Furthermore, He wants us to know that all the souls which
are one day to be saved in heaven without end are knit in
this same knot and united in this same union, and made
holy in this one identical holiness."

In Showings Julian says, "By myself I am nothing at all,
but in general, I AM the oneing of love. For it is in this
oneing that the life of all people exists" (Chapter 9). She
continues: "The love of God creates in us such a oneing
that when it is truly seen, no person can separate
themselves from another person" (Chapter 65), and "In the
sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all
people and all people are in one person" (Chapter 51).

This is not some 21st century leap of logic. This is not
pantheism or mere "New Age" optimism. This is the
whole point. It was, indeed, supposed to usher in a new
age--and it still can and will. Radical union is the recurring
experience of the saints and mystics of all religions. Our
job is not to first discover it, but only to retrieve what has
been re-discovered--and enjoyed, again and again--by
those who desire and seek God and love. When you think
you have "discovered" it, you will be just like Jacob "when
he awoke from his sleep" and shouted "You were here all
the time, and I never knew it!" (Genesis 28:16). As John
said in his Letter, "I do not write to you because you do
not know the truth, I am writing to you here because you
know it already" (1 John 2:21). I can only convince you of
spiritual things because your soul already knows what is
true, and that is why I believe and trust Julian's showings
too. For the mystics there is only one Knower, and we just
participate.

Adapted from Immortal Diamond: The Search For the True Self, p.
95;
Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, disc 7 (CD, MP3 download);
Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, pp. 45-46;
and "The Perennial Tradition," Oneing, Vol. 1 No. 1, p. 14

Week 2
The Cloud of Unknowing, Part I

The Cloud of Unknowing is a 14th century spiritual classic

written by an anonymous English monk. Again note the
lack of ego here. But the writer was also anonymous for
practical reasons. Meister Eckhart had just been silenced
by the Pope in 1329 for emphasizing independent study,
thinking, and experience, to which this author was also
committed. It took many generations for the Church to
affirm the value of inner, personal experience.

The author of The Cloud wrote in the language of the
common people because the book's purpose is to give
practical guidance for direct experience of God. Education
or high social status is not required, only a sincere longing
to encounter God. The author discourages those who are
gossips, the overly scrupulous, and the merely curious
from reading the book. "However," says the writer in the
foreword, "there are some presently engaged in the active
life who are being prepared by grace to grasp the message
of this book. I am thinking of those who feel the
mysterious action of the Spirit in their inmost being
stirring them to love. I do not say that they continually feel
this stirring, as experienced contemplatives do, but now
and again they taste something of contemplative love in
the very core of their being. Should such folk read this
book, I believe they will be greatly encouraged and
reassured."

The author believes that the spiritual journey demands full
self-awareness and honesty, a perpetual shadow-boxing
with our own weaknesses and imperfections. While
physical withdrawal from the world is not essential, letting
go of attachments to people, expectations, and things is.
This requires contemplative practice, a true spiritual
discipline. Rather than teaching passivity, the path into the
cloud of unknowing requires active intent, willingness,
and practice--knowing enough to not need to know more,
which ironically becomes a kind of endless, deeper
knowing.

Much of our contemplative practice will feel like failure,
but the author encourages "anyone who wants to become a
real contemplative" to "let the wonderful transcendence
and goodness of God teach you humility rather than the
thought of your own sinfulness, for then your humility will
be perfect. Attend more to the wholly otherness of God
rather than to your own misery. And remember that those
who are perfectly humble will lack nothing they really
need, either spiritually or materially. God is theirs and
[God] is all. Whoever possesses God, as the book attests,
needs nothing else in this life" (Chapter 23, Paragraph 2).

In the cloud, "Thought cannot comprehend God. And so, I
prefer to abandon all I can know, choosing rather to love
him whom I cannot know. Though we cannot fully know
him we can love him" (Chapter 6, Paragraph 2). In the
later stages of the journey, of course, loving becomes its
own kind of knowing--the deepest kind of knowing.
Buddhism: Week 1
The Importance of Inner Experience

Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Marcus Borg, in his marvelous book, Jesus and Buddha:
The Parallel Sayings, describes the many amazing
similarities in the lives of Jesus and the Buddha, who lived
five hundred years before Jesus. Borg's explanation for the
similarity in their wisdom teaching is that "both Jesus and
the Buddha had life-transforming experiences of 'the
sacred.'" [1] Buddha's transformational experience
happened under the Bodhi tree; Jesus' transformational
initiation happened at his baptism and during the forty
days he then spent in the desert. Both endured temptations
by "the devil." Both men were around thirty years old at
the time of their unitive encounter.

We all need such inner experience instead of simple outer
belief systems. You need inner experience whereby you
can know things to be true for yourself instead of believing
them because other people say they are true. [2] This is
second-hand religion or hearsay religion which is
unfortunately the most common variety.

James Finley points out that unlike Christianity, "there is
no belief system in Buddhism. That's why you can be a
devout Christian and a devout Buddhist at the same time.
The word 'Dharma,' [which is what the Buddha spent his
life teaching] means 'law' or 'rule' but not in the sense of a
dogma. It means the way reality really is. There is no
dogma or anything contrary to any Christian dogma in
authentic Buddhism. Alongside everything the Buddha
said, he also said, 'Don't believe it because I said it. Listen
to it and check it out for yourself. See if it rings true with
your own experience.'" [3]

The West has made an art form out of idealizing the
separate individual and trying to make it "holy" by itself.
You need a deep experience of radical participation to
break beyond your normal illusion of ego separateness.
Unfortunately, much garden variety Christianity only
affirms your separateness and your supposed superiority.
Religion was intended to give you an experience of what
Owen Barfield calls "original participation" or primal
unity. Before you are many, you are one. We have so
emphasized the "many" for centuries now, that it is very
hard for Western people to again experience the "one." We
are so self-conscious about either our private goodness or
our private badness. And worse, the self we are conscious
of, the self we are absorbed in, is precisely the self that
mystics say does not exist! It's actually our false self. [4]
The Self that exists, in Christian language, is the
communal "Body of Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12f).

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, uses
the idea of making cookies to illustrate our confusion
about who we really are: Imagine "that the moment each
cookie leaves the bowl of dough and is placed onto the
tray, it begins to think of itself as separate. You, the
creator of the cookies, know better, and you have a lot of
compassion for them. You know that they are originally all
one, and that even now, the happiness of each cookie is
still the happiness of all the other cookies. But they have
developed 'discriminating perception,' and suddenly they
set up barriers between themselves. . . . 'Get out of my
way. I want to be in the middle.' 'I am brown and beautiful
and you are ugly.' 'Can't you please spread a little in that
direction?' We have a tendency to behave this way also,
and it causes a lot of suffering. If we know how to touch
our nondiscriminating mind, our happiness and the
happiness of others will increase manifold." [5] This is
"the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16).

Thich Nhat Hanh continues (emphasis added): "We all
have the capacity of living with nondiscriminating
wisdom, but we have to train ourselves to see in that way,
to see that the flower is us, the mountain is us, our parents
and our children are all us. When we see that everyone and
everything belongs to the same stream of life, our
suffering will vanish. Nonself is not a doctrine or a
philosophy. It is an insight that can help us live life more
deeply, suffer less, and enjoy life more. We need to live
the insight of nonself." [6] Which with great irony, we
discover to be the One True Self!
John of the Cross, Part II: The Dark Night

I came out of the seminary in 1970 thinking that my job

was to have an answer for every question. What I've
learned is that not-knowing and often not even needing to
know is--surprise of surprises--a deeper way of knowing
and a deeper falling into compassion. This is surely what
the mystics mean by "death" and why they talk of it with
so many metaphors. It is the essential transitioning. Maybe
that is why Jesus praised faith even more than love; maybe
that is why Saint John of the Cross called faith "luminous
darkness." Yes, love is the final goal but ever deeper trust
inside of darkness is the path for getting there.

My good friend Gerald May shed fresh light on the
meaning of John's phrase "the dark night of the soul." He
said that God has to work in the soul in secret and in
darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening,
and what Mystery/transformation/God/grace will
eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or
stop the whole process. No one oversees his or her own
demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is
dying. God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were,
when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say
the mystics. We move forward in ways that we do not
even understand and through the quiet workings of time
and grace, as "Deep calls unto deep" (Psalm 42:8). In other
words, Spirit initiates deep resonance and intimacy with
our spirit, as the Endless Divine Yes evokes an ever-
deeper yes in us. That is the whole deal!

As James Finley, a core faculty member of CAC's Living
School, says, "The mystic is not someone who says, 'Look
what I have done!' The mystic is one who says, 'Look what
love has done to me. There's nothing left but God's
intimate love giving itself to me as me.' That's the
blessedness in poverty: when all in us that is not God
dissolves, and we finally realize that we are already as
beautiful as God is beautiful, because God gave the
infinite beauty of God as who we are."

Finley describes God as "the infinity of the unforeseeable;
so we know that [the unforeseeable] is trustworthy,
because in everything, God is trying to move us into Christ
consciousness. If we are absolutely grounded in the
absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as
it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with
courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in
others and in ourselves with love." Perhaps this explains
the mysterious coexistence of deep suffering and intense
joy in saints like John of the Cross. Otherwise, he and
Teresa and most other mystics would just seem like
impossible oddities.
Thérèse of Lisieux, Part II: Conversion

Tuesday, August 4, 2015
As a child, Thérèse experienced both great love and great

suffering. Having lost four babies prior to her birth,
Thérèse's family truly cherished her. Thérèse's father
called her "my little Queen." But due to her mother's
breast cancer, Thérèse had to live with a wet nurse from
the fragile age of three months to fifteen months. This
early separation, along with the death of her mother when
Thérèse was four, may have contributed to Thérèse being
overly sensitive and needing to please others in order to
feel secure and connected. She also experienced mild
depression as she held her grief and her need for
consolation inside. Thérèse often felt guilty for being
dramatic or making a fuss about seemingly small things. It
was as if she no longer had her feelings; her feelings had
her. Thérèse described the years between her mother's
death and age fourteen as "the most painful" period of her
life. But God uses everything, and these wounds became
sacred gifts that readied her for what she surprisingly
called her "complete conversion." [1]

Thérèse's conversion took place just before her fourteenth
birthday when she, her father, and two of her sisters had
returned from Midnight Mass early Christmas morning.
Her tired father made a comment to her sister Celine
which Thérèse overheard: "Well, fortunately, this will be
the last year!" He was referring to the little charade they
always played where Thérèse pretended to believe in Papa
Noel and opened gifts with joy to please her father. Now
she felt she'd been making him unhappy instead.

Thérèse's sensitive heart was shattered. But then the
miracle she'd been praying for happened. Instead of
bursting into tears and running up the stairs to her room, as
she would normally have done, she felt Jesus give her
immediate strength and deep foundation. She was able to
remain calm and participate joyfully in the family
tradition, as if her father's criticism had not happened.
Joseph Schmidt describes this new freedom: "By grace
stripped of falseness, Thérèse now saw herself more
clearly mirrored in the eyes of God, a child of God. . . .
[She realized] the violence she was doing to herself by . . .
being untrue to herself. . . . On that Christmas Day, she
had been able to stand her ground emotionally, take the
next step, and not be intimidated by her feelings." [2] She
claimed it was a complete victory over her egocentric
emotions for the rest of her life! Most of us never enjoy
such a victory, or even deem it as necessary.

It seems like such a little thing, but that is actually what
makes it so important in the end. Thérèse was all about
"doing small things with great love." An experience of
inner freedom and grace allows you to be more
compassionate both with yourself and with others. This is
at the heart of much Eastern Meditation practice. Looking
at yourself from a calm distance, you begin to see your
own patterns and understand that so much of your
behavior is habitual, knee-jerk reactions. Your immediate
feelings are almost always due to childhood conditioning,
but they are so deep in your unconscious that you have no
idea why you're doing what you're doing. We are indeed
unconscious. [3] Even St. Paul says that about himself
(Romans 7:14-24).

So much that we humans do, positive or negative, is
automatic brain response; there is very little free-will
involved. Every time we choose love, grace, and humility
over our habituated brain reactions, we expand our realm
of freedom. And love can only happen in the realm of
freedom. Thérèse was a master at finding such freedom
inside of very small spaces. Thus she called it her "little
way."
Thérèse of Lisieux, Part I: The Little Way

Monday, August 3, 2015
I have often mentioned my love for St. Thérèse of Lisieux

(1873-1897), the uneducated French Carmelite nun who in
her short, hidden life of only twenty-four years captured
the essence of Jesus' core teachings on love. Thérèse was
declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997, meaning that her
teaching is seen as thoroughly reliable and trustworthy. [1]
Thérèse taught that "Jesus does not demand great actions
from us, but simply surrender and gratitude." [2] She may
have been exposed to Jeanne-Pierre de Caussade's
teaching, since she "'democratized' holiness," as Joseph
Schmidt says, "making it clear that holiness is within the
reach of anyone willing to do God's will in love at each
successive moment as life unfolds . . . surrendering herself
into God's providence." [3]
In a statue of Thérèse at the entrance to her basilica in

Lisieux, she is holding a book with the words omen
novum--meaning new sign, new message, or literally new
omen. Pope Pious XI declared Thérèse's spiritual way of
childhood "omen novum" in a speech in 1925:
Thérèse fascinates the world today by the magic of her

example, [an] example of holiness that everyone can and
should follow. Because everyone must enter this small
way--way of a golden simplicity, [which] is childish only
by its name--in this way of spiritual childhood, all purity,
clarity of mind and heart, irresistible love of goodness,
truth, and sincerity. And this virtue of spiritual childhood,
which resides in the will of the soul, bears the most
beautiful fruit: love. O path so beautiful, so good, so
beneficent; all peace and holiness! Omen novum.
Thérèse came into a 19th century Catholic Church that

was controlled by Jansenism (the belief in an angry,
punitive God), perfectionism, and validation by personal
good behavior--which is a very unstable and illusory path.
In the midst of this rigid environment, Thérèse says, "I'm
convinced that my message is really new. Jesus himself
taught me this." This had been forgotten by most
Christians by the 19th century, so much so that Thérèse
had to call it "new."
Thérèse called this simple, childlike path her "Little Way."

It is a spirituality of imperfection. She says, "Jesus deigned
to show me the road that leads to this Divine Furnace [of
God's love] and this road is the surrender of the little child
who sleeps without fear in its Father's arms." [4] In a letter
to priest Adolphe Roulland, Thérèse writes: "Perfection
seems simple to me; I see it is sufficient to recognize one's
nothingness and to abandon oneself as a child into God's
arms." Any Christian "perfection" is, in fact, our ability to
include, forgive, and accept our imperfection.
Near the end of her life, Thérèse explained the Little Way
to her sister, and it became part of her autobiography, The
Story of a Soul. In contrast to the "Big Way" of heroic
perfectionism, she says, in essence, "I know when I am a
little one, I almost draw God's love toward me. God has to
love me and help me because I can't do anything by
myself. So I bring to God not my perfection, but my
imperfection." Then with utter confidence, she says, "I
know God comes rushing toward me." [5]
Thérèse uses a story from her own early childhood in a

very loving family to illustrate this point: "[Picture] the
little child who starts to hold herself up but does not yet
know how to walk. Wanting absolutely to climb to the top
of the stairs to find her mother again, she lifts her little
foot to finally climb the first step. Useless labor! She
always falls without making any advance. . . . Consent to
be this little child. Through practicing all the virtues, keep
lifting up your little foot in order to clamber up the stairs
of holiness. You will not even get to the first rung, but
God asks nothing of you except your good will. From the
top of the stairs he looks down at you with love. Soon,
won over by your ineffective efforts, he will come down
himself and, taking you in his arms, he will take you away
into his kingdom forever where you will never have to
depart from him." [6]
Thérèse of Lisieux, Part III: A Spirituality of

Imperfection
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
After her "complete conversion" on Christmas, Thérèse

turned from striving to be good to accepting her
imperfections and trusting God to remove them in God's
time. Thérèse brought what some of us call a spirituality of
imperfection back to the mainline Christian tradition. This
had become a subtext, forgotten and ignored, beginning
when Christianity wedded with empire in the year 313.
Once you align with the mind and will of empire and
success, your spirituality focuses on perfection,
achievement, performance, attainment, and willpower.
This "ladder theology" has dominated much of church
history, both East and West, down to our own time.

One of Thérèse's favorite parables is Jesus' story of the
Pharisee and the tax collector. It is not hard to see why.
"[Jesus] spoke this parable to some who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous, and therefore
despised others. Two men went up to the temple to pray;
one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector"
(Luke 18:9-10).

For the Jewish people listening to Jesus, the Pharisees are
the good guys who try to do everything right. The tax
collectors are the bad guys who have aligned with the
Roman Empire and are taking money from their own
Jewish people to give to the empire. So no one likes the
tax collectors, and everyone looks up to the Pharisees. As
always, Jesus in his non-dual way turns this deep
assumption on its head.

The parable continues: "The Pharisee stood and he prayed
thus with himself: 'O God, I thank you that I am not like
the rest of humanity--greedy, dishonest, adulterous--or
even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay
tithes on my whole income.' But the tax collector stood off
at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven
but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me,
a sinner.'" Jesus concludes: "I tell you, this man went
down to his house justified, rather than the other" (Luke
18:11-14).

The tax collector admits his powerlessness. That's why
Jesus says he goes home "justified." On the other hand, the
Pharisee, who has followed the rules and done it right, is
too filled with himself to have any room inside for God.
The religion of the tax collector is religion as receptivity,
rather than religion as self-assertion and willpower.
Perfection is not the exclusion of the contaminating
element--the enemy, to use Jesus' language--but, in fact,
perfection is the ability to include imperfection.

I think imperfection is the organizing principle of the
entire human, historical, and spiritual enterprise.
Imperfection, in the great spiritual traditions, is not just to
be tolerated, excused, or even forgiven. It is the very
framework inside of which God makes the God-self
known and calls us into gracious union. It's what allows
us--and sometimes forces us--to "fall into the arms of the
living God" (Hebrews 10:31).
Thérèse of Lisieux, Part V: Surrender to Love

Friday, August 7, 2015
Thérèse is a gift and inspiration to us precisely because she

is so little and ordinary, just like each of us. She was not
always a pillar of faith. During the last eighteen months of
her life, when she was dying painfully from tuberculosis,
Thérèse came to understand how people could have no
faith at all.

She told a sister at her deathbed, "If only you knew what
darkness I am plunged into. I don't believe in eternal life; I
think that after this life there is nothing. Everything has
disappeared on me, and I am left with love alone."
Although she did not regain feelings of faith, she said to
her sister Pauline, "Yes! What a grace it is to have [the gift
of] faith! If I had not had any faith, I would have
committed suicide without an instant's hesitation." Thérèse
also said, "The more we would surrender ourselves to
Love, the more we must surrender ourselves to suffering."

Brother Joseph Schmidt describes Thérèse's experience at
the end of her life:

She grasped faith with the willingness of love. . . . [1]

In her physical suffering and spiritual torture, Thérèse
surrendered into the reality of her nothingness, into the
welcoming arms of God where she had always been
from the beginning. Even though her little way seemed
an illusion, she refused to abandon it; she blindly
continued to live it. She was loving God by willingly
embracing God's love for her, however painful that
purifying love was. . . . Thérèse's early desire to love
God so lavishly--that desire, too was being purified by
God into a willing spirit of total self-surrender to
God's love and God's will. . . . Jesus was making her
one with himself in his own experience of physical
annihilation, spiritual darkness, and total self-
emptying. . . .

In her final agony, as she desired to be consumed in
the tender waves of God's love, she also desired that
same consummation of love for all those in her heart--
and for all humanity. With this intention, convinced
that God in taking her into divine love would draw
with her all creation, she prayed in one of her final
prayers, "Jesus, draw me into the flames of [Your]
love; unite me so closely with [You] that [You] live
and act in me." [2]

Earlier, she had written, "MY VOCATION IS LOVE!" . . .
She understood "that love comprised [the essence of] all
vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all
times and places--in a word, that it was eternal!" . . . Her
final sigh was an echo of her entire life: "Oh, I love Him!
My God, I love You!" . . . Her sisters documented that in
that final moment, Thérèse raised her eyes and her face
became radiant with an expression of total peace and sheer
joy. [3]
Mystics and Non-Dual
Thinkers:
Week 5
Evelyn Underhill
Sunday, August 9, 2015
This week we continue exploring the modern mystics who have had the
greatest impact on my own theology and practice. Evelyn Underhill
(1875-1941) was a prolific British writer who is best known for her book
Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual
Consciousness. Through her study of the mystics and even more through
her lived experiences, Underhill emphasized that the mystical state of
union with God produces creative action in the world.
As she puts it, "For [mystics,] contemplation and action are not opposites,
but two interdependent forms of a life that is one--a life that rushes out to
a passionate communion with the true and beautiful, only that it may
draw from this direct experience of Reality a new intensity wherewith to
handle the world of things; and remake it, or at least some little bit of it,
'nearer to the heart's desire.'" [1] The mystic's heart beats in union with
God's heart, so "the heart's desire" is God's desire.
Evelyn Underhill held the tension between intellect and intimacy in her
longing to be holy. At first she only trusted her intellect and studied
holiness methodically and empirically. She became known as the
Anglican woman who awakened Protestants to the Catholic mystics. As
Underhill gradually opened to the experiences of life, she was led from a
disembodied, intellectual spirituality to an engaged, down-to-earth
spirituality. She grew through the guidance of her spiritual director,
through the suffering and devastation of World War I, and through
visiting the poor and serving as a spiritual director and retreat leader.
Underhill's growth into a more incarnational spirituality is evident even in

her style of writing. Here is a selection from Mysticism, where she is
actually describing--from a safe distance--what she herself most needed at
the time, a "physical sense of the holy":
The mystics find the basis of their method not in logic but in life: in
the existence of a discoverable "real," a spark of true being, within
the seeking subject, which can, in that ineffable experience which
they call the "act of union," fuse itself with and thus apprehend the
reality of the sought Object. In theological language, their theory of
knowledge is that the spirit of man [and woman], itself essentially
divine, is capable of immediate communion with God, the One
Reality. [2]
Compare this to Underhill's later writing where her focus turns to

applying spirituality to ordinary life, thus uniting contemplation and
action:
Try to arrange things so that you can have a reasonable bit of quiet
every day and do not . . . think it selfish . . . . You are obeying God's
call and giving Him [sic] the opportunity to teach you what He wants
you to know, and so make you more useful to Him and to other souls.
[3]

Remember God is acting on your soul all the time, whether you have
spiritual sensations or not. [4]

Take the present situation as it is and try to deal with what it brings
you, in a spirit of generosity and love. God is as much in the difficult
home problems as in the times of quiet and prayer. . . . Try especially
to do His will there, deliberately seek opportunities for kindness,
sympathy, and patience. [5]
Here Underhill sounds like Jean Pierre de Caussade and Thérèse of

Lisieux! The contemplative, mystical path is similar across traditions and
ages. It arises from humble childlikeness and leads to the same place--
union with God.
Gateway to Silence
"If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess
exactly what we desire." --Simone Weil
References:
[1] Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism (E.P. Dutton &
Company: 1915), Ch. 10.
[2] Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study In the Nature and
Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (E.P. Dutton &
Company: 1911), 24.
[3] The Letters of Evelyn Underhill (Longmans, Green and Co.:
1951), 141.
[4] Evelyn Underhill, The Mount of Purification (Longmans,
Green and Co.: 1949), 184.
[5] The Letters of Evelyn Underhill (Longmans, Green and Co.:
1951), 137.

Week 4
Jean-Pierre de Caussade
As we continue looking at the mystics and non-dual

thinkers in my own lineage, I encourage you to do what
James Finley, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others say: Find
your practice and practice it. Find your teacher and
follow him/her. Find your community and be faithful to
it. Otherwise, you will tend to float around with no
accountability system for what you too easily "believe"
in your head. Your own ego will end up being the
decider and chooser moment by moment.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751), a French Jesuit,
was surely the Eckhart Tolle (author of The Power of
Now) of the 18th century. Caussade coined the term "the
sacrament of the present moment." His book
Abandonment to Divine Providence was the most
recommended book by spiritual directors for many
decades. It is a small but powerful book with a
profoundly simple message: "Embrace the present
moment as an ever-flowing source of holiness."

In his introduction to Caussade's book, John Beevers
writes, "Caussade was a very simple man. He was
obsessed by one thought: the necessity of loving God and
surrendering ourselves to him completely." [1] This is
nothing new. Jesus said, "You must love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all
your mind. This is the greatest and the first
commandment" (Mark 12:30). St. Albert the Great
(1193-1290) said, "Commit every particle of your being
in all things, down to the smallest details of your life,
eagerly and with perfect trust to the unfailing and most
sure providence of God." [2]

Caussade's key theme is: "If we have abandoned
ourselves to God, there is only one rule for us: the duty
of the present moment." Beevers explains that Caussade
is insisting "over and over again, that we must live from
minute to minute. The past is past, the future is yet to be.
There is nothing we can do about either, but we can deal
with what is happening moment by moment." [3] To live
in the present is finally what we mean by presence itself!

Beevers writes, "Caussade combines intense practicality
with profound mysticism--as did St. Teresa of Ávila.
This is nothing extraordinary. True mystics are always
much more practical than the ordinary run of people.
They seek reality; we too often are satisfied with the
ephemeral. They want God as he is; we want God as we
imagine him to be." [4]

Abandonment to Divine Providence is packed with non-
dual, mystical wisdom. Here are just a few examples:

"The truly faithful soul accepts all things as a
manifestation of God's grace, ignores itself and
thinks only of what God is doing."

"Let us love, for love will give us everything."

"Our only satisfaction must be to live in the present
moment as if there were nothing to expect beyond
it."

"Perfection is neither more nor less than the soul's
faithful co-operation with God."

"All will be well if we abandon ourselves to God."
Week 5
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Part I: Everything Is

Sacred
Monday, August 10, 2015
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a Jesuit paleontologist

and mystic whose writings were suppressed by Catholic authorities
during his lifetime, but are now bringing science and religion
together and mobilizing Christians to participate with God in the
process of bringing the universe to its fulfillment in Christ. We
Franciscans in particular resonate with Teilhard. I first discovered
him in college in the early 1960's, during the heady years of the
Second Vatican Council, and he filled me with a cosmic, earthy
vision for my life.
The Franciscan theologian Bonaventure, building on Paul, taught us

about the primacy of Christ: "For in him were created all things in
heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created
through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all
things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is
the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he
himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness was pleased
to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making
peace by the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:15-20).
In the words of Franciscan Sister and scientist Ilia Delio, "Christ is

the purpose of this universe, and as exemplar of creation, [Christ is]
the model of what is intended for this universe, that is, union and
transformation in God. . . . Because the universe has a 'plan,' we can
speak of the evolution of this plan as the unfolding of Christ in the
universe, who is 'the mystery hidden from the beginning' (Ephesians
3:9)." [1]
Teilhard writes: "I am not speaking metaphorically when I say that it

is throughout the length and breadth and depth of the world in
movement that man [sic] can attain the experience and vision of his
God." [2] Teilhard also says: "By means of all created things,
without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us.
We imagined [the divine] as distant and inaccessible, when in fact
we live steeped in its burning layers."
It was statements such as these, misinterpreted as pantheism or

naturalism, which resulted in Church and Jesuit superiors
prohibiting Teilhard from publishing his works and even banishing
him from living in his French homeland. But they could not make
him "abandon my own personal search," as Teilhard wrote to one of
these authorities. "I have ceased to propagate my ideas and am
confining myself to achieving a deeper personal insight into them.
This attitude has been made easier for me by my now being once
more in a position to do first-hand scientific work. . . . You can
count on me unreservedly to work for the kingdom of God, which is
the one thing I keep before my eyes and the one goal to which
science leads me." [3] For Teilhard, there was no dualistic split
between science and religion.
Nor was there a split between human work and spirituality. To
explain what he called "the divinization of our activities," Teilhard
wrote, "By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation,
nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On
the contrary, everything is sacred. . . . Try, with God's help, to
perceive the connection--even physical and natural--which binds
your labour with the building of the kingdom of heaven; try to
realize that heaven itself smiles upon you and, through your works,
draws you to itself." [4]

Week 5
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Part II:

Evolving Consciousness
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
The French Jesuit paleontologist and mystic Pierre Teilhard de

Chardin (1881-1955) viewed evolution as growth in
consciousness. Ilia Delio offers theologian Elizabeth Johnson's
perspective that "consciousness is integral to the whole
evolutionary process that culminates in the human spirit. She
writes: 'The law of complexity-consciousness reveals that ever
more intricate physical combinations, as can be traced in the
evolution of the brain, yield ever more powerful forms of spirit.
Matter, alive with energy, evolves to spirit. While distinctive,
human intelligence and creativity rise out of the very nature of
the universe, which is itself intelligent and creative. In other
words, human spirit is the cosmos come to consciousness.'" [1]

Ilia Delio, my friend and fellow teacher, Franciscan Sister and
scientist, has studied Teilhard extensively. She writes:

In Teilhard's view, Christian life is essential to the progress
of evolution. He emphasized that the role of the Christian is
to divinize the world in Jesus Christ, to "christify" the world
by our actions, by immersing ourselves in the world,
plunging our hands, we might say into the soil of the earth
and touching the roots of life. . . . The world, he claimed, is
like a crystal lamp illumined from within by the light of
Christ. For those who can see, Christ shines in the
diaphanous universe, through the cosmos, and in matter. He
posited a "mysticism of action" in a universe moved and
com-penetrated by God. For him, union with God means not
withdrawal or separation from the activity of the world but a
dedicated, integrated, and sublimated absorption into it. [2]

Teilhard . . . viewed the cosmos on a journey to God in a
process of divinization, which he called Christogenesis. . . .
Love is the force that energizes the process because love
permeates the entire cosmos, that is, the affinity of being
with being. Teilhard wrote, "Driven by the forces of love,
the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world
may come to being." He identifies this energy of love with
Christ, the Omega, saying, "the love of Christ is an energy
into which all the chosen elements of creation are fused
without losing their identity." [3]

Teilhard held that the whole of natural evolution is coming
under the influence of Christ, the physical center of the
universe, through the free cooperation of human beings. God
evolves the universe and brings it to its completion through
the instrumentality of human beings. Thus we are not called
to relate to God without a world. To love God we must also
love what God loves. We are called to love this created
world as God loves it. . . . We are to help transform this
universe in Christ by seeing Christ in the universe and
loving Christ at the heart of the universe. [4]

Inspired by Teilhard, for years I used his complimentary close in
all my letters, "Christ ever greater." This Christ is big enough to
include everyone and everything.

Week 5
Simone Weil
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Simone Weil (1909-1943), born in Paris to agnostic

Jewish parents, was drawn to the Christian faith around the
age of 26. She also had a deep curiosity and appreciation
for many religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism,
and saw that each spiritual tradition offered a unique
vision of transcendent wisdom. Yet Simone was cautious
of syncretism, writing: "Each religion is alone true, that is
to say, that at the moment we are thinking of it we must
bring as much attention to bear on it as if there were
nothing else. . . . A 'synthesis' of religion implies a lower
quality of attention." [1] Here you see how subtle and
penetrating her thought often was!

Although from an affluent family, Simone was
sympathetic to the working class and advocated for
workers' rights. As a political activist she was able to hold
the tension of positive and negative of both socialism and
capitalism. Simone died at the young age of 34, perhaps
from self-chosen starvation; perhaps from a lifetime of
poor health and, in her last year of life, tuberculosis; or
perhaps, as her first English biographer Richard Rees
writes, she died of love.

In spite of the pain she witnessed and experienced--
through war and sickness--Simone was able to see beauty,
and through beauty to see God. In her words: "In
everything which gives us the pure authentic feeling of
beauty there really is the presence of God. There is as it
were an incarnation of God in the world and it is indicated
by beauty. The beautiful is the experimental proof that the
incarnation is possible." [2] "The beauty of the world is
Christ's tender smile for us, coming through matter." [3]

Simone understood that suffering, beyond physical and
emotional pain, can be caused by our attachment to
expectations. She writes: "When we are disappointed by a
pleasure which we have been expecting and which comes,
the disappointment is because we were expecting the
future, and as soon as it is there it is present. We want the
future to be there without ceasing to be future. This is an
absurdity of which eternity alone is the cure." [4]

Eric Springfield explains how Simone "recognized that
love and goodness did not have to be defeated even by
affliction, that even in the midst of soul-destroying
suffering God could be present. . . . [Affliction] could be a
way of giving one's total consent to God, who never
refuses [God's] love to those who wait for it. Affliction
could serve to erase the screen of the self that we erect
between us and God and cannot tear down by ourselves."
[5]

In Waiting for God, Simone describes the implications of
mysticism, when the barrier between false self and God
disappears and one loves with God's unconditional,
inclusive love:

When a soul has attained a love filling the whole
universe indiscriminately, this love becomes the bird
with golden wings that pierces an opening in the egg
of the world. After that, such a soul loves the universe,
not from within but from without; from the dwelling
place of the Wisdom of God, our first-born brother.
Such a love does not love beings and things in God,
but from the abode of God. Being close to God it
views all beings and things from there, and its gaze is
merged in the gaze of God. [6]

To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny
ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in
imagination, to discern that all points in the world are
equally centers and that the true center is outside the
world, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity
in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul.
Such consent is love. The face of this love, which is turned
toward thinking persons, is the love of our neighbor; the
face turned toward matter is love of the order of the world,
or love of the beauty of the world which is the same thing.
[7]

Week 5
Etty Hillesum
Friday, August 14, 2015
I only came to know and appreciate Etty Hillesum (1914-

1943), a Dutch Jewish woman, after 1981 when her
journals and letters were first published. Etty's diaries
describe German-occupied Amsterdam from 1941-1943.
Though Etty had the opportunity to stay in Amsterdam,
she chose to go to Westerbork concentration camp, to
"share her people's fate." She was transferred to Auschwitz
in September 1943 and died that November.

Etty never fully identified as a Christian or religious, but
her personal writing reveals a mystic, someone who had a
deep awareness of her own inner life and her union with
others and God. She easily weaves in and out of prayer,
exploring the mundane and ordinary--setting the table,
teaching Russian--the erotic and romantic, and her human
longings and fears. We witness an evolution of faith and
growing maturity in her diaries. Etty struggles with sexual
attractions, emotional neediness, and self-consciousness.
Gradually she becomes able to simply observe herself and
those around her without attaching to desires for particular
outcomes, even for her loved ones' safety or her health.

Etty learned from her teacher and lover, Julius Spier, the
expression "reposing in oneself" and used it to describe
her love of life and equanimity with self and
circumstances: "I repose in myself. And that part of
myself, that deepest and richest part in which I repose, is
what I call 'God.' . . . 'As if I were lying in Your arms, oh
God, so protected and sheltered and so steeped in eternity.'
As if every breath I take were filled with it and as if my
smallest acts and words had a deeper source and a deeper
meaning. . . . [One's body] can love and
hineinhorchen--'hearken unto'--itself and unto what binds
us to life. . . . Truly, my life is one long hearkening unto
myself and unto others, unto God. And if I say that I
hearken, it is really God who hearkens inside me. The
most essential and deepest in the other. God to God"
(204).

As powerful as Etty's inner experience of God was, she
could move outward and work for the well-being of the
"bundles of human misery, desperate and unable to face
life. And that's when my task begins. It is not enough
simply to proclaim You, God, to commend You to the
hearts of others. One must also clear the path toward You
in them, God, and to do that one has to be a keen judge of
the human soul. A trained psychologist. Ties to father and
mother, youthful memories, dreams, guilt feelings,
inferiority complexes, and all the rest block the way. I
embark on a slow voyage of exploration with everyone
who comes to me. . . . Sometimes they seem to me like
houses with open doors. . . . I promise that I shall try to
find a dwelling and a refuge for You in as many houses as
possible. There are so many empty houses, and I shall
prepare them all for You, the most honored lodger." [2]
Gateway to Silence
"If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly
what we desire." --Simone Weil
References:
[1] Etty Hillesum, translated by Arnold Pomerans, foreword by Eva Hoffman, An
Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork (Henry Holt and Company: 1996), 204.
[2] Ibid., 205.

Week 6--Thomas Merton
Paradox and Mercy

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was born in France and lived

most of his adult life as a Cistercian or Trappist monk at
the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He
died tragically in Bangkok of accidental electrocution due
to faulty wiring. Merton has been a primary teacher and
inspiration to me since I first read his book The Sign of
Jonas in a high school seminary library soon after it was
written in 1958. I saw Merton once for just a moment, as
he (and Mother Teresa, believe it or not) walked by me
while I was visiting the monastery in early June of 1961.
Little did I know Merton would soon die, nor did I
imagine the lasting influence he would have on me and so
many people around the world. [1]

I believe Thomas Merton is one of the most significant
American Catholics of the twentieth century. His whole
life is a parable and a paradox, as are all of our lives.
Merton wrote, "I have had to accept the fact that my life is
almost totally paradoxical. I have also had to learn
gradually to get along without apologizing for the fact,
even to myself. . . . It is in the paradox itself, the paradox
which was and still is a source of insecurity, that I have
come to find the greatest security."

I'm convinced that is the very meaning of faith. Faith is
agreeing to live without full resolution. Both the Hebrew
Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures make that very
clear. We are often called to walk in darkness, where God
leads us to that next step which is usually not clear,
predictable, or controllable by the rational mind.

"I have become convinced," Merton goes on to write, "that
the very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs
of God's mercy to me: if only because someone so
complicated . . ." (Merton was a Four on the Enneagram--
they are complicated) ". . . and so prone to confusion and
self-defeat could hardly survive for long without special
mercy." [2]

Merton had an uncanny ability to describe his inner life
with God for the rest of us, and to apply that inner life in
the healing of the outer world. A prayer from his Asian
Journal, written during a conference on East-West
monastic dialogue, is representative:

Oh God, we are one with You. You have made us one with
You. You have taught us that if we are open to one
another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this
openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to
realize that there can be no understanding where there is
mutual rejection. Oh God, in accepting one another
wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we
thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our
whole being, because our being is in Your being, our spirit
is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be
bound together with love as we go our diverse ways,
united in this one spirit which makes You present in the
world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate
reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious.
Amen. [3]
Buddhism: Week 1
The Four Noble Truths

Thursday, September 3, 2015
After his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha

sat for some days in his inner liberation, which he called a
state of nirvana. As Thich Nhat Hanh explains, "Nirvana
means extinction--first of all, the extinction of all concepts
and notions. Our concepts about things prevent us from
really touching them." [1] For the Buddha, the ability to
see reality as it really is, free of all concepts that distort it,
was also the extinction of suffering. James Finley says,
"Suffering was blown out from within, so that it no longer
had any footing in his mind or heart."

Here's how Finley describes the Four Noble Truths that
Buddha taught for the rest of his life:

The Buddha felt called to share his discovery to help
others come to this realization. He found the ascetics that
he had lived with and told them, "I come to teach the
Middle Way." He embodies the Middle Way in the Four
Noble Truths. The First Truth is the truth of suffering. By
suffering, the Buddha means a pervasive discontent--that
the ability to abide in inner peace and fulfillment is
elusive. There is a pervasive sense of precariousness. This
suffering is the presenting problem. The illness that the
Buddha seeks to cure is the propensity for suffering.

The Second Noble Truth is that there is a way of life that
perpetuates the suffering. There are certain habits of the
mind and heart that are perpetuating the very suffering that
we seek to be free from. This way of life has its basis in
wanting life to be other than the way it is. This is the
diagnosis.

The Third Noble Truth is that it is possible to be healed
from these symptoms by learning to live as one with the
way life is. This is the truth of nirvana--this way of abiding
peace and equanimity in the rise and fall of daily
circumstances just as they are. So this is the hope for the
cure--that it is possible to rest in this abiding inner peace
and fulfillment.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the Noble Eightfold Path which
is the way of life in which one is liberated from the
tyranny of suffering so that one might come to this
nirvanic peace, this inner peace, the peace that passes
understanding in the midst of life as it is. What good
would it do if the Buddha just pointed out the problem and
did not give us a way to be delivered from the problem?
That way is the Noble Eightfold Path. [2]

Thich Nhat Hanh says, "The Chinese translate it as the
'Path of Eight Right Practices': Right View, Right
Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood,
Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness, and Right
Concentration." [3] We will unpackage the Noble
Eightfold Path in tomorrow's meditation.
Buddhism: Week 1
The Noble Eightfold Path

Friday, September 4, 2015
Thich Nhat Hanh says, "The Fourth Noble Truth is the

way out of suffering. First the doctor looks deeply into the
nature of our suffering. Then she confirms that the
removal of our pain is possible, and she prescribes a way
out." [1] The "way out" is the Eightfold Path. The Buddha
said again and again, "I teach only suffering and the
transformation of suffering." I often say: "If you do not
transform your pain, you will almost certainly transmit it"
and "All great religion is about what you do with your
pain." The Noble Eightfold Path describes the Buddha's
way to transform your pain. The Buddha said, "Wherever
the Noble Eightfold Path is practiced, joy, peace, and
insight are there." [2]

Thich Nhat Hanh writes that when the Buddha gave his
first sermon to the wandering ascetics, he "put into motion
the wheel of the Dharma, the Way of Understanding and
Love. This teaching is recorded in the Discourse on
Turning the Wheel of the Dharma. . . . It teaches us to
recognize suffering as suffering and to transform our
suffering into mindfulness, compassion, peace, and
liberation. . . . The teachings of the Buddha were not to
escape from life, but to help us relate to ourselves and the
world as thoroughly as possible." [3]

James Finley describes the Eightfold Path in the following
way within our Living School curriculum:

The first two steps of the Eightfold Path are Right Vision
and Right Thinking ("right" meaning effective in evoking
happiness and inner peace). These two are associated with
the notion of wisdom. They help us ground ourselves in
this wisdom of the Eightfold Path.

The next four of the eight steps are the paths of the moral
precepts. Do not confuse this with being "moralistic." The
intuition of the Buddha is that one will not come to this
inner peace unless one grounds one's life in an inflowing
and outflowing love. This is the core of what it means to
be moral. Love is the outflowing way that we must relate
to everything [read "God"] and the outflowing way we
must relate to each individual person. ["On these two
commandments hang the entire Law and the Prophets as
well," says Jesus (Matthew 22:40).]

So, Right View and Right Thinking are the wisdom
aspects of the Eightfold Path. But Right Speech, Right
Action, Right Livelihood, and Right Diligence are the life
of effort and choice that expands our realm of conscious
freedom. God cannot and will not give us any gift that we
do not want and freely choose--usually again and again.

The last two steps are Right Mindfulness and Right
Concentration. The Buddha felt none of this would work
without deep meditation practice. [4]

I also find that a meditation practice is necessary for
transformation, except for people who allow themselves to
be changed through great love or great suffering.
Meditation then preserves and sustains what they have
learned in love and suffering over the long haul. In other
words, I know many "meditators" who are still quite self-
absorbed people, and I have met people who do not even
know the word meditation, who live in deep unitive
consciousness. There is no one technique; life and death
itself are the only technique.
A Change in Consciousness
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Rather than making dogmatic statements about how to get

to heaven, Jesus modeled and taught how to live on earth
in a loving way, and he said that this was indeed heaven!
But Christians have all too often pushed heaven into the
future. We've made Jesus' death and resurrection into a
reward/punishment system for the next world, which
creates tremendously self-absorbed and self-preoccupied
people. It doesn't transform anyone into compassionate,
loving individuals. Instead it leads to a kind of morbid
self-analysis in which people feel guilty, inferior, and
inadequate or superior and self-righteous.

This dualistic approach has corrupted the true meaning of
the Gospel. I would go so far as to say that by sending
Christians on a path of well disguised but delayed self-
interest, we prostituted the entire spiritual journey from the
very start. You cannot easily get to love when you begin
with threats and appeals to fear. The driving energy is
completely wrong. Rather, you come to love by attraction.
Change must begin with positive energy or the final result
is never positive.

Maybe the Buddha didn't talk about God because he didn't
want his teaching to be interpreted as a method of earning
or losing God's love. He emphasized awareness and
experience more than winning a prize. Words, which are
by nature dualistic, tend to get in the way of actual
experience. Thomas Merton said, "Buddhist meditation,
but above all that of Zen, seeks not to explain but to pay
attention, to become aware, to be mindful, in other words
to develop a certain kind of consciousness that is above
and beyond deception by verbal formulas--or by emotional
excitement." [1]

Both the Buddha and Jesus were constantly telling people
to be compassionate, to let go, to detach. The difference is
that Buddhists were taught that they could not do any of
these things with a dualistic consciousness. If you were
raised Christian, on the other hand, you were given the
impression that you could be a forgiving person with a
dualistic mind. You can't! In effect, Christians were given
commandments about mercy, compassion, loving enemies,
and forgiveness without being taught the nondual
consciousness necessary for living most of those
commandments.

Because the Church usually did not enable any actual
change of consciousness, most people had to split. In
effect, we became hypocrites (the word first meant
"actors"); we had no other choice. We have to pretend that
we love our enemies, because Jesus said we should. We
have to pretend to be nonviolent, when in reality
Americans are all part of a highly militaristic culture. But
the real teaching of Jesus is ignored, is innocuous, and is
boring to us, because frankly, with the dualistic mind,
most of it is unlivable and impossible. You can give
people all the pious Christian teaching you want, but
without a transformation of consciousness, they don't have
the energy or the capacity to carry it out.

Thankfully, we are now in an age where we can be open to
learning from other world religions like Buddhism, which
have long been teaching the non-dual consciousness that
Christianity stopped teaching in a systematic way for the
last five hundred years. [2]
Gateway to Silence
"The suchness of each moment is the infinite mercy of God."
--Paul Knitter
Buddhism: Week 2
Unitive Consciousness
Monday, September 7, 2015
Paul Knitter, a theologian friend of mine from Cincinnati,

wrote an insightful book called Without Buddha I Could
Not Be a Christian. In it, he explains that Buddhism
teaches "practices that will help Christians draw on the
mystical contents of our faith. Buddhism can help
Christians to be mystical Christians . . . to realize and enter
into the non-dualistic, or unitive, heart of Christian
experience--a way to be one with the Father, to live
Christ's life, to be not just a container of the Spirit but an
embodiment and expression of the Spirit, to live by and
with and in the Spirit, to live and move and have our being
in God." [1] Like the Christian contemplative practices
we've explored this year, Buddhist practices such as
meditation, silence, and living mindfully help us encounter
the deepest, truest reality--our oneness with God.

Knitter writes, "True, what Christians are after is different
than what Buddhists are after. For Christians, it's
identification with the Christ-Spirit. For Buddhists, it's
realizing their Buddha-nature. And yet, both of these very
different experiences have something in common: they are
unitive, non-dualistic, mystical experiences in which we
find that our own identity is somehow joined with that
which is both more than, and at the same time one with,
our identity. This is what the Buddhist practices are so
good at--achieving such unitive experiences in which the
self is so transformed that it finds itself through losing
itself." [2]

Knitter paraphrases Raimon Panikkar, a Roman Catholic
priest, theologian, and advocate of inter-faith dialogue, by
describing true non-duality: "the interrelating partners are
not two. But neither are they one! Can Christians say
something similar about the relationship between God and
creation?" [3]

According to James Finley, who references the Catholic
writer, Romano Guardini, they certainly can! "Guardini
says that it's a principle of logic that A cannot be B at the
same time and in the same respect that it's A. . . .
Likewise, God is the Creator and we are the creature. And
yet, Guardini adds, 'Although I am not God, I am not other
than God either.' He says the direct intuitive realization
that although I am not God, I am not other than God either,
fans out in all directions. Although I am not you, I am not
other than you either. Although I am not the earth, I am
not other than the earth, either. As this soaks into me, what
are the implications of this in the way I act in the world, in
relationships with other people?"

Finley continues, "Thomas Merton realized that people of
different religions were not other than me, and how I treat
them I'm treating myself, and as Jesus says, I'm treating
Jesus. That's the social consciousness dimension of
contemplation." [4]
Gateway to Silence
--Paul Knitter
References:
[1] Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian
(Oneworld Publications: 2009), 154-155.
[2] Ibid., 155.
[3] Ibid., 14.
[4] James Finley, Jesus and Buddha: Paths to Awakening (Center
for Action and Contemplation: 2008), disc 6 (CD, DVD, MP3
download).
Buddhism: Week 2
Being Peace
Paul Knitter has been an activist for peace and justice

since the 1980's. He has been inspired by the Engaged
Buddhism of the last fifty years. Engaged Buddhism, a
term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh, brings insights from
Buddhist practice and teaching to social, political,
environmental, and economic injustice. In his book
Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, Knitter
applies the Buddhist approach to Christians who are
sincerely working for justice:

Buddhists are much more concerned about waking up to
our innate wisdom and compassion (our Buddha-nature)
than they are about working for justice. If Christians insist
that "if you want peace, work for justice," the Buddhists
would counter-insist, "if you want peace, be peace." That's
the point Thich Nhat Hanh gently drives home in the little
book . . . Being Peace. His message is as simple and
straightforward as it is sharp and upsetting: the only way
we are going to be able to create peace in the world is if
we first create (or better, find) peace in our hearts.

Being peace is an absolute prerequisite for making peace.
And by "being peace," . . . [Thich Nhat Hanh] means
deepening the practice of mindfulness, both formally in
regular meditation as well as throughout the day as we
receive every person and every event that enters our lives;
through such mindfulness we will, more and more, be able
to understand . . . whomever we meet or whatever we feel,
and so respond with compassion. Only with the peace that
comes with such mindfulness will we be able to respond in
a way that brings forth peace for the event or person or
feeling we are dealing with.

This Buddhist insistence on the necessary link between
being peace and making peace reflects Christian
spirituality's traditional insistence that all our action in the
world must be combined with contemplation. . . . But the
Buddhists are very clear: while both are essential, one
holds a priority of practice. If action and contemplation
form a constantly moving circle in which one feeds into
the other, the entrance point for the circle is
contemplation. [1]

I believe the entrance point can be action or
contemplation. Frankly, I believe most people act, love,
sin, and make mistakes before they see the deep need for
contemplation. Yet only when we are resting in our deep
center, our source, the Indwelling "Spirit in whom we live
and move and have our being . . . . only then can we be of
service to others" over the long haul--and with love. [2]

Knitter continues:

Why? Just why do Buddhists insist on the priority of
Awakening over acting? Why do they want to "just sit
there" before they "do anything"? Certainly, there are
different ways a Buddhist might answer this question. But
I believe that one of the recurring responses would be: to
remove one's ego from one's peacemaking, so that one's
actions will not be coming from one's ego-needs but from
the wisdom and compassion that constitute one's true
nature. [3]

When we first founded the Center for Action and
Contemplation almost thirty years ago, we envisioned
spending half our time teaching contemplation and half
teaching social justice. But for the same reasons Knitter
gave, as well as the fact that Western people are already
geared toward action, but need training in stillness and
silence, we now spend eighty percent of our effort
teaching contemplation, knowing that if the inner world is
authentic, an individual's political, economic, and service
attitudes will always change organically from the inside
out.
Buddhism: Week 2
InterBeing
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
I often tell the story of the holy recluse whom I came

across while walking in the woods during my retreat at
Merton's hermitage in 1985. A recluse is a "hermit's
hermit" who lives alone, in silence, and only joins the
community for Mass at Christmas and Easter. Somehow
he recognized me and excitedly said, "Richard! You get to
talk to people. Please tell them this one thing: God is not
'out there'!"and he pointed to the sky. Then he said thank
you and walked on.

Paul Knitter also sees the Western over-emphasis on God
as a Transcendent Other who is "out there" somewhere as
"the crux of the problem: Christian dualism has so
exaggerated the difference between God and the world that
it cannot really show how the two form a unity. . . . If there
is in Christian tradition and experience a God within, a
God who lives, and moves, and has being within us and
the world, we need help in finding such a God. Buddhism,
I believe, can provide some help." [1]

Knitter writes, "As Christians seek God, Buddhists seek
Awakening . . . [to] the way things are, the way they
work." Although Buddhists emphasize that Enlightenment
is beyond words, they use the term Sunyata to touch on
what the Awakening means. Knitter explains: "The
Mahayana tradition of Buddhism [describes Sunyata as]
Emptiness . . . in the sense of being able [and open] to
receive anything. . . . Zen Buddhists speak of Emptiness as
the 'Buddha-nature' that inheres all sentient beings. . . .
Thich Nhat Hanh translates Sunyata . . . as InterBeing. . . .
Pema Chödrön [A Buddhist nun who teaches in the
tradition of Tibetan Buddhism], refers to Sunyata as
Groundlessness . . . since everything is moving in
interdependence with everything else." [2] Sounds like the
incarnate mystery of Trinity to me!

Knitter continues, "If we Christians really affirm that 'God
is love' and that Trinity means relationality, then I think
the symbol Buddhists use for Sunyata [InterBeing] is
entirely fitting for our God. God is the field--the dynamic
energy field of InterBeing--within which, as we read in the
New Testament (but perhaps never really heard), 'we live
and move and have our being' (Acts 17:28). Or, from the
divine perspective, there is 'one God above all things,
through all things, and in all things' (Eph. 4:6). This
presence 'above, through, and in' can fittingly and
engagingly be imaged as an energy field which pervades
and influences us all, calling us to relationships of
knowing and loving each other, energizing us when such
relationships get rough, filling us with the deepest of
happiness when we are emptying ourselves and finding
ourselves in others." [3] This is what I like to call the
Spirit as a force field.

Knitter describes how we are inextricably linked with
God: "without the spirit, the body cannot live; without the
body the spirit cannot act. The same is true of Spirit and
creation. . . . Thinking about or imaging God as InterBeing
and relating to God as the connecting Spirit is a major
antidote to the dualism that has infected Christian theology
and spirituality. . . . With God as the connecting Spirit, the
Creator cannot be 'totally other' to creation. . . . Here I
think I'm getting closer to what Aquinas was trying to
express when he described the relationship between God
and the world as one of participation. . . . Therefore, a
better image for creation might be a pouring forth of God,
an extension of God, in which the Divine carries on the
divine activity of interrelating in and with and through
creation." [4] Clearly, then, God is not just "out there"!
Buddhism: Week 2
Mindfulness
Waking up this morning, I smile.

Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.
--Thich Nhat Hanh [1]

Thich Nhat Hanh, the beloved Buddhist monk, is often
called simply Thay (a Vietnamese term for teacher). Thay
explores the meaning of the name Buddha and applies this
rich word to ordinary humans:

The appellation "Buddha" comes from the root of the verb
budh--which means to wake up, to understand, to know
what is happening in a very deep way. In knowing,
understanding, and waking up to reality, there is
mindfulness, because mindfulness means seeing and
knowing what is happening. [2]

Paul Knitter recalls when he "realized that Pema
Chödrön's talk of Groundlessness and Karl Rahner's
emphasis on Mystery were two different fingers pointing
to the same moon":

For both of them, to feel the Reality of Mystery or
Sunyata means to let go of self, to trust totally in what
both of them call infinite openness. Openness to what? To
what is, to what's going on right now, in the trust that what
is going on is what I am a part of and what will sustain and
lead me, moment by moment. Only moment by moment.
There are no grand visions promised here. Just a mindful
trusting of each moment as it comes, with what it contains,
with its confusion or inspiration, with its joy or horror,
with its hope or despair. Whatever is there, this suchness
right now, is the breath of the Spirit, the power of Mystery,
the connectedness of Emptiness. . . . The suchness of each
moment is the infinite Mercy of God. [3]

Pema Chödrön teaches three graces of mindfulness
practice: precision, gentleness, and letting go. Once we
can honestly acknowledge whatever is going on in the
moment with clarity and acceptance, we can let our unmet
expectations go. This allows us to live more freely and
vibrantly, fully awake to Presence. Knitter writes: "if we
can truly be mind-ful of what is going on in us or around
us--that's how we can find or feel 'the Spirit' in it. Then our
response to the situation will be originating from the Spirit
rather than from our knee-jerk feelings of fear or anger or
envy. And whether the response is to endure bravely or to
act creatively, it will be done with understanding and
compassion--which means it will be life-giving or life-
creating." [4]

I hope these meditations invite you to go deeper--beyond
words and ideas about mindfulness--to actual practice and
experience. When you stay with your practice, eventually
you will realize, as Thich Nhat Hanh writes, "that our life
is the path, and we no longer rely merely on the forms of
practice." [5] I hope you are seeing that Christianity and
Buddhism are not in competition with one another.
Christians are usually talking about metaphysics ("what
is") and Buddhists are usually talking about epistemology
("how do we know what is").
References:
[1] Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching (Broadway Books: 1998),
102.
[2] Ibid., 187.
[3] Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian (Oneworld
Publications: 2009), 159-160.
[4] Ibid., 162.
[5] Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, 122.
Buddhism: Week 2
The Three Dharma Seals

Thay, Thich Nhat Hanh, writes: "The Three Dharma Seals
[Touchpoints of the Teaching] are impermanence (anitya),
nonself (anatman), and nirvana. Any teaching that does
not bear these Three Seals cannot be said to be a teaching
of the Buddha." [1]

Let's explore each of these briefly. Thay describes
impermanence as "what makes transformation possible.
We should learn to say, 'Long live impermanence.' Thanks
to impermanence, we can change suffering into joy." [2]
James Finley would say that what makes us suffer is
clinging to or craving things that are passing away, or
trying to avoid things that are unavoidable (aversion). The
Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths as a middle way
between craving and aversion, between indulgence and
asceticism.

Flowing from impermanence, we see that it is futile to
cling to even our assumed identity or our perceptions of
reality. Paul Knitter writes, "For Buddhists, the most basic
fact or quality of the world is not being, as it is for most
Western philosophers and theologians: it's becoming. . . .
Everything changes because everything is interrelated." [3]
The Second Dharma Seal, nonself, affirms the Buddhist
understanding that "nothing has a separate existence or a
separate self. Everything has to inter-be with everything
else." [4]

Thay explains the importance of the first two Dharma
Seals: "The teachings of impermanence and nonself were
offered by the Buddha as keys to unlock the door of
reality. We have to train ourselves to look in a way that we
know when we touch one thing, we touch everything. We
have to see that the one is in the all and the all is in the
one. We touch not only the phenomenal aspects of reality
but the ground of being. Things are impermanent and
without self. They have to undergo birth and death. But if
we touch them very deeply, we touch the ground of being
that is free from birth and death, free from permanence
and impermanence, self and nonself." [5]

The Third Dharma Seal, nirvana, is this freedom, the
ground of being. Thay uses an illustration--as great
teachers like Jesus and the Buddha do so often--to describe
this mystery:

A wave does not have to die in order to become water.
Water is the substance of the wave. The wave is already
water. We are also like that. We carry in us the ground of
interbeing, nirvana, the world of no-birth and no-death, no
permanence and no impermanence, no self and no nonself.
Nirvana is the complete silencing of concepts. The notions
of impermanence and nonself were offered by the Buddha
as instruments of practice, not as doctrines to worship,
fight, or die for. "My dear friends," the Buddha said. "The
Dharma [teaching] I offer you is only a raft to help you
cross over to the other shore." The raft is not to be held
onto as an object of worship. It is an instrument for
crossing over to the shore of well-being. . . . If you know
how to use the tools of impermanence and nonself to touch
reality, you touch nirvana in the here and the now. [6]
Gateway to Silence
--Paul Knitter
References:
[1] Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
(Broadway Books: 1998), 131.
[2] Ibid., 133.
[3] Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian
(Oneworld Publications: 2009), 10.
[4] Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, 133.
[5] Ibid., 136.
[6] Ibid., 136.
Buddhism: Week 1
Summary
Sunday, August 30, 2015 - Saturday, September 5, 2015
"When we seek what is truest in our own tradition, we

discover we are one with those who seek what is truest in
their tradition."
--James Finley (Sunday)

"Siddhartha turned and looked at the day star with
awakened eyes, as the Buddha, meaning 'the one who is
awake,' seeing life the way it really is, free from all
projections, all distortions, all delusions, all strategies, all
agendas, all belief systems."
--James Finley (Monday)

You need a deep experience of radical participation to
break beyond your normal illusion of ego separateness.
(Tuesday)

"According to Buddhism, there are two kinds of truth,
relative or worldly truth . . . and absolute truth." --Thich
Nhat Hanh (Wednesday)

For the Buddha, the ability to see reality as it really is, free
of all concepts that distort it, was also the extinction of
suffering. (Thursday)

If you do not transform your pain, you will almost
certainly transmit it. (Friday)
Practice
Tonglen
Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön shares the

practice of tonglen as a way of holding suffering and
awakening compassion:

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have
compassion for ourselves.
In particular, to care about other people who are fearful,

angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds,
arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean--you name it--to
have compassion and to care for these people, means not
to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. . .
. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could
open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it
as something that will soften and purify us and make us far
more loving and kind.
The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with

suffering--ours and that which is all around us--
everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of
suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart.
Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that
is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we
might seem to be.
We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a

person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help.
For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you
breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of
that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child
happiness, joy, or whatever would relieve their pain. This
is the core of the practice: breathing in others' pain so they
can be well and have more space to relax and open, and
breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you
feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we
often cannot do this practice because we come face to face
with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever
our personal pain, our personal stuckness, happens to be at
that moment.
At that point you can change the focus and begin to do

tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others
just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling
exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are
able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror
or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you
breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same
emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the
space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe
you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it--a
tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness, or whatever.
Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it
in--for all of us and send out relief to all of us.
[You] can do tonglen for all the people who are just like
you, for everyone who wishes to be compassionate but
instead is afraid, for everyone who wishes to be brave but
instead is a coward. . . .
Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us.
Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your

personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
[1]
Gateway to Silence
To understand everything is to forgive everything.*
Reference:
[1] Adapted from Pema Chödrön, "The Practice of Tonglen,"
Shambhala.org.
*The Gateway to Silence was previously attributed incorrectly to

Buddha. It appears to have originated with Madame de Stael in the
19th century.
For Further Study

James Finley and Richard Rohr, Jesus and Buddha: Paths to
Awakening (CD, DVD, MP3 download)
Richard Rohr, Living the Eternal Now (CD, MP3 download)
Richard Rohr, What the Mystics Know
"You cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge."

--Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water
Take a hard, honest, compassionate look at your own addictions

in CAC's self-paced, online study of spirituality and the Twelve Steps:
October 21-December 16, 2015.
Learn more and register at cac.org.
Buddhism: Week 2
Summary
Sunday, September 6, 2015 - Saturday, September 12, 2015
You can give people all the pious Christian teaching you
want, but without a transformation of consciousness, they
don't have the energy or the capacity to carry it out.
(Sunday)

"Buddhism can help Christians to be mystical Christians . .
. to realize and enter into the non-dualistic, or unitive,
heart of Christian experience." --Paul Knitter (Monday)

Only when we are resting in our deep center, our source,
the Indwelling "Spirit in whom we live and move and have
our being . . . . only then can we be of service to others"
over the long haul--and with love. (Tuesday)

God is not out there. (Wednesday)

"I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all
beings with eyes of compassion." --Thich Nhat Hanh
(Thursday)

What makes us suffer is clinging to or craving things that
are passing away, or trying to avoid things that are
unavoidable (aversion). (Friday)
Practice
The Four Limitless Qualities
Buddhism identifies Four Limitless Qualities: loving

kindness (maitri), compassion, joy, and equanimity.
Loving kindness and compassion may appear to be the
same, but there are subtle differences. In Buddhism,
compassion includes a willingness to identify so fully with
someone that you would be willing to carry a little of their
suffering. Equanimity may be close to what Christians
mean by peace. These four qualities are limitless in that
they increase with practice and use. If you don't choose
daily and deliberately to practice loving kindness, it is
unlikely that a year from now you will be any more loving.
The qualities are also limitless because they are already
within you--which beautifully parallels the Christian
theology of the Holy Spirit. There is a place in you that is
already kind, compassionate, joyful, and equanimous.

Last week's practice, Tonglen, focused on holding the
suffering of self and others. Today I will paraphrase Pema
Chödrön's practice for loving kindness, maitri. I invite you
to set aside a quiet period to go through these simple steps
with intention and openness.

1. Recognize the place of loving kindness inside

yourself. It is there. Honor it, awaken it, and
actively draw upon it.

2. Drawing upon the source of loving kindness within,
bring to mind someone for whom you feel sincere
goodwill and tenderness, someone you love very
much. From your source, send loving kindness
toward this person and bless them.
3. Awaken loving kindness for someone who is a

casual friend or associate--someone not in your
inner circle, but a bit further removed, someone you
admire or appreciate. Send love to that individual.

4. Now send loving kindness to someone about whom
you feel neutral or indifferent--for example, a gas
station attendant or a cashier. Send your blessing to
this person.

5. Think of someone who has hurt you, who has talked
evil of you, whom you find it difficult to like or you
don't enjoy being around. Bless them; send this
would-be enemy your love.

6. Bring all of the first five individuals into the stream
of flowing love, including yourself. Hold them here
for a few moments.
7. Finally, extend this love to embrace all beings in the

universe. It is one piece of love, one love toward all,
regardless of religion, race, culture, or likability.

This practice can help you know--in your mind, heart, and
body--that love is not determined by the worthiness of the
object. Love is determined by the giver of the love. These
steps can be repeated for the other three limitless qualities.
Remember, spiritual gifts increase with use. Love,
compassion, joy, and equanimity will grow as you let them
flow. You are simply an instrument, a conduit for the
inflow and outflow of the gifts of the Spirit. You are
"inter-are."
Gateway to Silence
--Paul Knitter
Reference:
[1] Richard Rohr, Jesus and Buddha: Paths to Awakening (Center
for Action and Contemplation: 2008), disc 4 (CD, DVD, MP3
download).
For Further Study

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian
Richard Rohr and James Finley, Jesus and Buddha: Paths to
Awakening (CD, DVD, MP3 download)
Richard Rohr, Living the Eternal Now (CD, MP3 download)
Hinduism: Week 1
Mystery and Multiplicity

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic

Church issued its historic conclusions that still stand as
inspired and authoritative for many Christians. In the
Council's document Nostra Aetate, it specifically
addressed other world religions, seeing what was good and
eternal in each of them:
From ancient times down to the present, there is found

among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden
power which hovers over the course of things and over the
events of human history; at times some indeed have come
to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a
"Father." This perception and recognition penetrates their
lives with a profound religious sense.
Thus in Hinduism, [humans] contemplate the divine

mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance
of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry.
They seek freedom from the anguish of our human
condition either through ascetical practices, or profound
meditation, or a flight to God with love and trust.
Hinduism prescribes eternal duties such as honesty,

refraining from injuring all living beings (non-violence),
patience, forbearance, self-restraint, tolerance, and
compassion. The Hindu texts are very non-dualistic and
poetic, opening the spiritual imagination. The Sanskrit
language itself seems to allow non-dual thinking, much
more than the Western languages which are often based on
the Greek and Latin languages. In Greek and Latin, reality
comes across as logical contraries or distinctions, with less
room for nuanced and various interpretations. The ancient
and native languages tend to be more subtle, descriptive,
poetic, and non-dualistic than most Western languages
which pride themselves on being clear, definitive, and
final.
Hinduism has been described as the most tolerant of the

world religions perhaps in part because it honors many
gods. This allows many differing worldviews and does not
require having one official scripture. Because of these
qualities, Hinduism and its many children are able to be
much more patient with mystery and multiplicity.
Hinduism: Week 1
The Eternal Way

Like so many Westerners, I grew up knowing almost

nothing about Hinduism, even though it is by far the oldest
of the "Great Religions." Because many of us had never
met a true Hindu, and Hindu dress, various gods, and
temples seemed so foreign to ours, we did not take
Hinduism seriously. That's what happens when everything
is seen in reference to one's self--whenever one's
nationality, era, and religion are the only reference points.
Most of us likely dismissed Hinduism without ever

reading a single text of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad
Gita, or much less the ancient Vedas. So we disregarded
the usually unconscious commandment of religious people
that "older is better" and closer to the Source. We too
easily forgot that Christianity is the "Johnny-come-lately"
as compared to Hindu and Buddhist Scriptures, and many
other spiritual poets, seers, and philosophers besides. Our
inclusion of the Jewish Scriptures in our own Christian
Bible (two thirds of it!) should have cued us that we are
building on, inclusive of, and dependent on other religions
older than ours. Most Christians seem to have never
thought of this, for some reason.
Some practitioners refer to the ancient texts that formed

Hinduism as "the eternal law" or the "eternal way."
Hinduism draws upon inspirations, we might now say,
from the collective unconscious or the Eternal One Spirit.
Western scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis
of various East Asian cultures and traditions with diverse
roots and no single founder. Thus it is much more
comfortable with seeming paradoxes or contradictions.
Hinduism begins with complete confidence in the One,
whereas Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, while calling
themselves monotheistic, are actually much more
preoccupied with the parts than the whole. Within Hindu
scriptures, each story or text seems to stand on its own,
and yet in the end creates a rather mystical world view.
Christians must be honest enough to know that the Holy

Spirit was not first discovered on Pentecost Sunday
somewhere around the year 30 AD. Surely Peter was right
when he said, "The truth that I have come to realize is that
God does not have favorites, and anybody of any
nationality who respects the Divine and does what is right
is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34-35). The majority of
human creation could not possibly have been just a throw-
away exercise on the part of what would then be a very
indifferent and inefficient God. Yet the three monotheistic
religions often seem to act as if that were the case--as if
God did not start becoming God until we came along. Of
course, if our imagined God is that indifferent, it allows us
to be quite indifferent too! Whereas a "God of all the
earth" (Psalm 47:8 and throughout the Hebrew Scriptures)
will inevitably create people of all the earth.
Hinduism: Week 1
Pointing in the Same Direction

I was only slowly introduced to Hinduism's profound

mystical depths through two very special authors, and I
admit that I first trusted them because they were both
Catholic priests, scholars, and even mystics themselves.
One was Dom Bede Griffiths (1906-1994), an English
Benedictine who in the pivotal year of 1968 founded an
ashram in India to combine Western and Eastern
spirituality. Griffith's writings are still monumental and
important. He built a huge and holy bridge, which many
have now walked over with great effect.
The other author who led me deeper in Hinduism was a

son of a Spanish mother and a Hindu father, Raimundo
Panikkar (1918-2010). Panikkar's intellect and spirit
astounded all who heard him or read his words. Some of
his over 40 books--such as The Silence of God,
Christophany, A Dwelling Place for Wisdom, and The
Experience of God--had a twofold and seemingly opposite
effect on many readers. They simultaneously felt that they
were in the earliest stages of spiritual understanding
compared to Panikkar, but they equally felt invited,
enlightened, and included inside of something that was
universal and available to all.
Somehow Panikkar's ancient roots, stellar mind, and his

Christian love all came through. He saw the Christ as the
fully adequate Christian symbol for the whole of Reality. I
never felt Panikkar compromised his Christian belief even
though he was quite able and willing to use metaphors for
the same experience from Hinduism and Buddhism. In
fact, it was his Hinduism that often led Panikkar to the
depths and the full believability of his Christian
experience. I would say the same for Bede Griffiths.
The great mystics tend to recognize that Whoever God Is,

he or she does not need our protection or perfect
understanding. All of our words, dogmas, and rituals are
like children playing in a sandbox before Infinite Mystery
and Wonderment. If anything is true, then it has always
been true; and people who sincerely search will touch
upon the same truth in every age and culture, while using
different language, symbols, and rituals to point us in the
same direction. The direction is always toward more love
and union--and in ever widening circles.
Hinduism: Week 1
An Ancient and Mature Religion

If you have ever traveled to India, you will realize that

Hinduism is less a religion there and more a 5000-year-old
culture, formed by such ancient sources as the Vedas, the
Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita and communicated in
thousands of other ways. Hinduism is the product of
millennia of deep self-observation, human history, a
confluence of cultures, and innumerable people seeking
the Divine and seeking themselves.
Hinduism is much more comfortable with pluriformity and

multiplicity than are the three religions of "the book." This
is symbolized by thousands of gods and dozens of primary
deities in Hindu literature and tradition. Christians have
surely dismissed polytheism too quickly as "wrong" or
with nothing to teach us. Claiming monotheism as their
religion has allowed Western "believers" to worship
ideologies like Communism, Capitalism, Jihadism, and
Success/Consumerism without recognizing that they are
indeed our real and operative "gods"--and like all gods
they are always "above question." We are de facto
polytheists ourselves, while pretending to have "one God
before us."
On a related note, the best way to be captured by a heresy

is to pretend to have condemned it. Christians condemned
polytheism and verbally affirmed our strict monotheism,
while fully allowing ourselves to be polytheistic in
practice. We did the same with Gnosticism, pretending to
dismiss it as a heresy in almost every century under a
different name--while most of Christianity floated
blissfully along "in its head," which is the exact meaning
of "Gnostic"!
In a recent webcast, Mirabai Starr shared that "Hinduism

is actually quite monotheistic or better said monistic. The
Upanishads assert that there is only one supreme, divine
reality." The ancient, diverse tradition led to the
overwhelming consensus and conclusion that the Atman
(True Self/Individual Consciousness) is the same as
Brahman (God). This is summarized in the well-known
Sanskrit phrase Tat Tvam Asi, loosely translated as "Thou
art That." This is the final extent and triumph of non-dual
thinking (advaita): God and the soul are united as one.
Hinduism's maturity--which allows it to refrain from

argumentation--is shown in its respect for at least four
basic personality types and four stages of life. This
provides for much human variety and patience with
individual growth and understanding, and it moves people
toward both tolerance and compassion. The Hindu religion
does not tend to be highly organized around one right
belief or one right ritual or any uniform seminary training.
This of course can be seen as either its greatest strength or

its greatest weakness. But I cannot deny that people
wander in great numbers in and out of temples all day
every day in India and Nepal, while many Christian
churches have a hard time filling up even once each
Sunday morning. You don't need an elite priesthood for
people to light candles, bow, sit in silence, offer flowers,
chant, or pour oil over sacred stones. Hindu children just
watch, and the reverence and respect is passed on to
another generation; while we Christians argue in
academies about theories of justification and who is
worthy to go to communion--and that is what we too often
pass on--not quiet worship of Mystery but noisy ideas
about which we are certain.
Hinduism: Week 1
Yoga
As I mentioned yesterday, there is allowance for great

variety within Hinduism. Surely there are some
temperamentally rigid Hindus, but the religion of itself
emphasizes concrete practices (yogas) which allow
practitioners to know things for themselves. I often
wonder if conservative Christians are afraid of the word
yoga because they are in fact afraid of concrete
orthopraxy! They prefer to strongly believe things but
have very few daily practices or yogas.
The summary belief in Hinduism is that there are four

disciplines, yogas, toward which different temperaments
tend to gravitate. The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit
for "the yoke which unites the seeker with the Sought."
Hindus believe that all four yogas can lead one to
enlightenment; in other words, there are at least four
foundationally different ways of praying and living in this
world. C. G. Jung built on these in his human typology of
Feelers, Thinkers, Judgers, and Perceivers, now used in the
Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator. Yet the West has too
often tended to try to fit everyone into one and the same
box. In Catholicism we at least had Benedictine,
Carmelite, Franciscan, Charity, and Ignatian spiritualities,
along with many others.
The four basic Hindu disciplines are:
 Bhakti yoga--the way of feeling, love, and the heart,

preferred by Christianity and most mystics
 Jnana yoga--the way of knowledge, understanding,

and wisdom, or head-based enlightenment, preferred
by Buddhism in all its forms

 Karma yoga--the way of action, engagement, and

work, which can be done in either a knowledge way
or a service/heart way, preferred by both Judaism
and Islam
 Raja yoga--this roughly corresponds to

experimentation or trial and error with mind and
body through practices and empirical honesty about
the inner life and the world, preferred by Hinduism
itself
Each of these paths leads one to union with the Supreme

Reality. For example, Raja yoga focuses on the mind's
ability to create our world through eight sequential steps,
ending in enlightenment:
1) Yamsas--five moral "thou shalt nots," calling for non-

violence, truthfulness, moderation in all things, no
stealing, and not being covetous

2) Nimayas--five "thou shalts," requiring purity,
contentment, austerity, study of the sacred texts, and
constant awareness of and surrender to divine presence
3) Asanas--postures (Westerners typically use the word

yoga to simply mean asanas.)
4) Pranayama--controlling the breath
5) Pratyahara--withdrawal of the senses

6) Dharana--concentration of the mind
7) Dhyana--meditation
8) Samadhi--enlightenment, union with the Divine
Hinduism: Week 1
Four Stages of Life

Hinduism teaches there are four major stages of life: 1) the

student, 2) the householder, 3) the forest dweller (the
"retiree" from business as usual), and 4) the wise or fully
enlightened person "who is not overly attached to anything
and is detached from everything" and thus ready for death.
I once saw these four stages represented in four stained
glass windows in a Catholic Church in Bangalore,
showing how central this cultural paradigm is.
Western cultures tend to recognize and honor the first two

stages at best. Seeing this missing piece in our societies, I
helped develop men's initiation rites, explained in Adam's
Return, and explored the later stages of life in my book
Falling Upward. My experience tells me that when you do
not do the third and fourth stages, you actually lose both
the skills and the elders to do the first and second stages
too!
This is foundational to understanding the spiritual

problems we are experiencing in Western religion and
culture today, and probably why we now seem to have an
epidemic of mental and emotional illness. It seems so
many people are angry today, especially at religion itself.
(Although I hope they do not waste too many years there.)
They are angry because we do not honor variety, staging,
interiority, or depth; but their attachment to that very anger
becomes their major hindrance itself.
Hinduism at its best honors staging, timing, ripening, and

maturity, and not just the zeal and fervor of the newly
"born again." We see this same mature understanding in
Christianity in the "mansions" of Teresa of Ávila and the
"nights" of John of the Cross. But this was seldom
mainline Catholicism, which taught "mortal sin" to seven-
year-olds and was quite content with elderly people living
in fear of God and fear of hell. What a huge loss of
potential and holiness.
In the first half of life--the student and householder stages

in Hinduism--the focus is on developing an ego, a separate
self. It's all about being safe and law-abiding and doing the
right practices. This is as it should be. It teaches the ego
necessary impulse control. The problem is when we get
stuck and stay here. Unless we move toward maturity, we
will miss the real purpose and meaning of our existence
and become over-identified with our small "faithful" self
and our practices too often become catatonic, unconscious
repetition. I know Christians who attend Mass every day
or read the Bible every day and are still in the kindergarten
of prayer and love.
The first half of life is about building a strong container;
the second half is about discovering the contents the
container was meant to hold. Yet far too often, solidifying
one's personal container becomes a substitute for finding
the contents themselves!
The second half of life--represented by the forest dweller

and the wise, enlightened person--moves the willing
individual beyond the basic needs for separateness, status,
and security to an awareness of their eternal, unchangeable
identity as one with others and with God. Your concern
becomes not so much to have what you love, but to love
what you have. In the second part of life you have a great
sense of freedom, no longer attached to outcomes but
intimately involved in the process and relationships. You
can trust that all will be well because all is held together
by Love and Divine Presence.
Hinduism: Week 2
Advaita
As I mentioned before, Eastern and Western philosophies

come from different starting points. With such dissimilar
foundations, at core they have very different worldviews.
Our Christian problem has been that we assumed Jesus
was a Westerner, when his Aramaic language and thought
forms would have been much more similar to the East. It is
no accident that Jesus lived in what we call "The Middle
East," on the cusp and under the control of Greek and
Roman cultures, but surely not inside of them.
Nonetheless, Western Christianity has understood and
even pictured Jesus as if he were a European.
Several central ideas, affirmed by Jesus, were already

formed in the ancient Hindu Vedas, then unfolded by the
Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. In each case, notice
that the mind revealed in these scriptures first sees things
in their wholeness; whereas Westerners tend to first see
things in their diversity. Today I'll briefly introduce
advaita, then we'll explore the Hindu themes of karma and
maya on Monday and Tuesday.
The word advaita is loosely translated as "having no

duality," implying that the proper or spiritual way of
understanding things is outside the realm of comparison or
judgment. Advaita describes the non-dual or contemplative
mind that understands things in their unity and connection
before it separates them: not completely one, but not two
either. Mirabai Starr says advaita "is not about everything
being one big mushy, homogeneous, tasteless thing." [1]
Rather, it's the subtle distinction that all things share the
same ground of being, the same supreme reality that
encompasses great diversity. At root, nothing is separate.
Can you "imagine" that way? Westerners have a very hard

time doing this until they are trained: first one, then two;
first similarity, then dissimilarity. If you start with two
(dissimilarity and distinction) it is almost impossible to
ever get back to unitive consciousness or similarity, from
which most compassion, or at least tolerance, proceeds. If
you start with advaita, you can still go back to making
needed and helpful distinctions, but now love and union is
prior to knowledge and information. That is the unique
starting place of so many Eastern religions!
Hinduism: Week 2
Karma
We have moved closer to the Eastern understanding in our

more recent use of the term karma, but it is still said like a
joke. "Bad karma!" or "Good luck!" or "What goes around
comes around" we might say in half jest. For the Hindu,
karma is an inviolate law and not just a clever aphorism. It
is the nature of the universe and moves people toward
purification of motive and honesty about why they are
doing what they are doing. Karma is an absolute law of
cause and effect. Even thoughts and desires have a
predictable karma. You are responsible for your own
thoughts and motives, and you cannot avoid the
consequences. Thoughts and motives are real and create
the Real. You cannot walk around thinking negative
thoughts, or they will destroy you.
Conversely, no love is lost in the universe. I believe you

are actually punished by your sins; whereas Western
religions tend to teach that you are punished for your sins.
Goodness is its own reward and evil is its own
punishment, karmic law would say. These are two very
different world views, and frankly, I am convinced that
Jesus taught the karmic one. "You cannot pick grapes from
thorns or figs from thistles. A good tree will bear good
fruit," he said, "and a bad tree will bear bad fruit"
(Matthew 7:17-18). Jesus also said, "If you show mercy,
mercy will be shown to you." (Matthew 5:7, Luke 6:37)
and "The standard you use will be used for you" (Mark
4:24).
Jesus sought to create a deep sense of personal choice,

responsibility, and freedom right now, and not just
disconnected payoffs in the afterlife. But we have
understood much of the Gospel in terms of divine threats
and artificial rewards--a delayed schedule of merits and
demerits. This deeply distorted the transformative message
of the Gospel and appealed to our self-interest instead of
love. In other words, it fed us at the ego level instead of
the soul level.
I believe Jesus teaches that rewards and punishments for

behavior are inherent and now, and only by karmic
implication are they external and later. Karma, rightly
understood, creates responsible and self-actualized people
instead of fear-based people. Your choices matter now!
Threats of punishment or promises of candy later create
perpetual adolescents and very well-disguised narcissism
at every level of Christianity.
Gateway to Silence
The Christ in me sees the Christ in you. Namaste.
Hinduism: Week 2
Maya
The Hindu word maya is often translated as "illusion." But

that does not get to the root of the insight and is too easily
dismissed by the Western person who prefers to take
things for what they are at face value. We might
understand deceit, but we do not understand illusion very
well. A better translation of maya might be "tricky." This
understanding can have a truly transformative effect on
how you live and die. When Hinduism (or Buddhism
which is a child of Hinduism) says all the world of forms
is maya (or emptiness), they are trying to help you look
deeper, broader, and in the long term.
If you recognize that what you first see is "tricky," you

might be more open to this better seeing. If it walks like a
duck and talks like a duck, it actually might not be a
duck--it might be a goose, a swan, or a cartoon. The
Upanishads illustrate maya using the familiar experience
of finding a rope on a path. You jump back, thinking it's a
snake, but it isn't. Mirabai Starr says, "Wisdom comes
with being able to engage in inquiry with curiosity (with
childlike wonderment as Jesus calls it) [in order] to see
what really is, and to discover it's not something we have
to defend ourselves against." [1] Reality is hard but also
benevolent.
Hinduism is saying that all phenomena pass themselves off

as total and final in their independent and free existence.
But just wait a while, or look deeper, and you will see that
all things are parts of much larger ecosystems of
connection and life. In their separateness they will pass.
Everything is qualified and provisional and contingent on
something else. Anything that asserts its completely free
and self-formed existence is lying to you. Everything from
the "self-made man," to the myth of private property, to
"my rights over my body," to the pollution of the earth--
these all proceed from a Western hubris which is not
willing to admit and face its self-serving illusions. Morally
speaking, the illusion of our separateness makes it hard for
us to seek the common good.
It is no surprise that the tragedy became the supreme form

of both Greek and Shakespearean drama, which always
ends in the sad results of human hubris. Yet of the many
arts in India, the tragedy is the only form India failed to
produce! If you face illusions early, lasting and destructive
tragedies are rare. Hubris is undercut at the very start.
Jesus, of course, taught the same when he told us to "take
up the cross" of this passing world and our own fragile
lives.
Hinduism: Week 2
Sacred Texts

To begin to understand the ancient and many sources of

Indian philosophy and Hinduism (which are often
synonymous), and surely at the risk of immense
oversimplification, I will briefly introduce their primary
sacred texts.
In the next few days, I will elaborate with several key

ideas that emerge from centuries of spiritual experience
and reflection upon that experience. These ideas amount to
the essential differences between Eastern and Western
philosophies and show why some ideas of Eastern
religions seem new or foreign to Western believers.
The Hindu sources clearly say contradictory things, with

what are surely conflicting ideas, but there is no need to
perfectly harmonize them in the Eastern mind. They are
each contributing their waters to a pool of wisdom that we
can swim inside of and thus learn to honestly struggle with
the conflict itself--which can be quite broadening,
deepening, and enlightening. This is similar to the Jewish
idea of midrash and the Christian idea of lectio divina. If
only we all could have approached the Bible and the
Koran in the very same way, how different history would
have been.
Westerners lived in blissful ignorance that holy people and

saints were already coming to our own later conclusions
centuries before Christ Jesus. One would think that
Christians would know that this does not in the least
diminish Jesus but in fact supports and affirms him.
The three major texts in Hinduism and Indian philosophy:
 The Vedas are the most ancient Sanskrit writings (as

much as three to four thousand years old) containing
hymns, philosophy, guidance, and rituals.
 The Upanishads--which means "what is learned

sitting at the feet of"--are later (800-400 BC), even
more mystical texts which elaborate on many of the
ancient themes. There are probably 13 major and
many minor Upanishads.
 The Bhagavad Gita emerged in various translations

from four centuries before Christ to four centuries
afterward. It is an extended dialogue between Prince
Arjuna, who is a passenger in a chariot, and Lord
Krishna, who is teaching him how to drive the
chariot. The 700 classic verses amount to an
extended commentary on "action and
contemplation."
Hinduism was not even named when these texts were first
written. And almost all of the Indian Scriptures were not
translated into English or modern languages until the 19th
century. Don't dismiss any of these until you have at least
tried to read them.
The Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita describes Lord Krishna, one of

Hinduism's central gods, as both this and that, totally
immanent and yet fully transcendent, physical and yet
formless, the deepest inner self and yet the Godself
(Bhagavad Gita 10). Krishna has even been called "The
Unknown Christ of Hinduism"--the same mystery that
Western Christians, with their dualistic minds, could not
put together in Jesus.
Krishna, like Jesus, also shows the integration of action

and contemplation. The Bhagavad Gita does not counsel
that we all become monks or solitaries, but in fact, Lord
Krishna tells Prince Arjuna that the true synthesis is found
in a life-long purification of motive, intention, and focus--
precisely in your world of action--which is what makes it
"contemplative." The Bhagavad Gita calls the active
person, which most of us are, to a life of interiority and
soul discovery, which is still our major concern today.
How can we do "pure action"? Only by gradually

detaching from all the fruits of action and doing
everything purely for the love of God, Lord Krishna
teaches. I think our Christ says the same thing in several
places (for example, Mark 12:30: "You shall love the Lord
with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength."). Jesus even counsels the same
love toward the neighbor (Matthew 22:39). Jesus is unitive
both vertically and horizontally, illustrated in the
geometric image of the cross. The only way to integrate
action and contemplation is to go ahead and do your
action, but every day to ask yourself why you're doing it.
Is it to make money? Is it to have a good reputation? Is it
to keep busy? Or is it for the pure love of Krishna, for the
love of God? Only then do we recognize who the Doer
truly is!
Reflect on these passages from The Bhagavad Gita (4:18,

23-24):
The wise see that there is action in the midst of inaction,

and inaction in the midst of action.
Their consciousness is unified,
and every act is done with complete awareness.
When a man has let go of attachments,
when his mind is rooted in wisdom,
everything he does is worship,
and his actions all melt away.
God is the offering. God
is the offered, poured out by God;
God is attained by all those
who see God in every action.
In the Gita, Prince Arjuna is the noble individual soul

("Atman"), and Lord Krishna is the personification of the
Divine ("Brahman"). Already in the ancient Vedas, Atman
and Brahman were discovered to be one, at least in a
foundational sense. This is exactly as Jesus proclaimed
when he said "I and the Father are One" (John 10:30).
Teresa of Ávila begins her journey through The Interior
Castle by proclaiming God's castle and chosen dwelling is
precisely "the beauty and amplitude of the human soul" (I,
3). Or as the Sufis say, Ishq'allah mahbud lillah--God is
love, lover, and beloved all at once.
Gateway to Silence
The Christ in me sees the Christ in you. Namaste.
Parallel Texts
Below are a few astoundingly parallel passages between

sacred texts from Hinduism and sacred texts from
Christianity. I hope this short introduction will encourage
you to seek much further on your own.
***
"You are the field. I am the Knower of the field in
everyone. Knowledge of the field combined with its
Knower is true and full knowledge." --Bhagavad Gita 13:1
"When both your spirit and the Holy Spirit bear a united
witness, you will know that you are a child of God."
--Romans 8:16
***
"Just as a reservoir is of little use when the whole
countryside is flooded, Scriptures are of little use to the
illumined man or woman, who sees the Lord everywhere."
--Bhagavad Gita 2:46
"You yourselves are our letter . . . not written with ink but
with the Spirit of the living God written on your hearts. . . .
Written letters bring death, but the Spirit brings life." --2
Corinthians 3:2, 6
***
"My true being is unborn and changeless. I am the Lord
who dwells in every creature. Through the power of my
own appearance, I manifest myself in finite forms."
--Bhagavad Gita 4:5-6
"In the beginning was only Being; One without a second.

Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos and entered
into everything in it. There is nothing that does not come
from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self." --The
Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 6, 2:2-3
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. Through him all things came
to be, and not one thing had its being but through him. . . .
And the Word became flesh and dwells among us." --John
1:1, 3, 14
***
"A person is what his deep desire is. It is our deepest
desire in this life that shapes the life to come. So let us
direct our deepest desire to realize the Self." --The
Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 3, 14:1
"So this is how you should pray. . . . May we do your will

on earth as it is done in heaven." --Matthew 6:9-10
***
"There is nothing that does not come from him. Of
everything he is the inmost Self. He is the truth; he is the
Self Supreme. And you are that! You are that!" --The
Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 6, 2:3
"I give them eternal life, and they will never be lost, and
no one can steal them from me. . . . Nor can anyone steal
them from the Father. Know that I and the Father are one."
--John 10:28, 30
"He is with you, he is in you. . . . On that day you will
know that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am
in you." --John 14:17, 20
Hinduism: Week 2
Summary
Sunday, September 20-Saturday, September 26, 2015
The word advaita is loosely translated as "having no

duality," implying that the proper or spiritual way of
understanding things is outside the realm of comparison or
judgment. (Sunday)
Karma, rightly understood, creates responsible and self-

actualized people instead of fear-based people. (Monday)
Morally speaking, the illusion of our separateness makes it

hard for us to seek the common good. (Tuesday)
The Hindu sources clearly say contradictory things, but

they are each contributing their waters to a pool of wisdom
that we can swim inside of and thus learn to honestly
struggle with the conflict itself--which can be quite
broadening, deepening, and enlightening. (Wednesday)
How can we do "pure action"? Only by gradually

detaching from all the fruits of action and doing
everything purely for the love of God, Lord Krishna
teaches. (Thursday)
"A person is what his deep desire is. It is our deepest

desire in this life that shapes the life to come. So let us
direct our deepest desire to realize the Self." --The
Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 3, 14:1 (Friday)
Practice
Darshan and Namaste
In the Hindu tradition, darshan (or darsana) is to behold

the Divine and to allow yourself to be fully seen. Many
Hindus visit temples not to see God, but to let God gaze
upon them--and then to join God's seeing which is always
unconditional acceptance and compassion.
I invite you to spend several minutes with one you love--a

human or perhaps a beloved dog--looking into their eyes.
Without speaking, simply mirror to each other love and
respect through your gaze. During the silence, allow the
source of love within you to well up and flow from you.
Receive the love flowing from the one gazing at you. It is
all one love. Witness the Divine Presence in both self and
the other.
Bring your experience of darshan to a close by placing

your palms together at your chest, bowing, and speaking
"Namaste." (Namaste is a familiar Indian greeting which
means "I bow to you.") Or you may prefer to say, "The
Christ in me sees the Christ in you."
Bring this loving gaze and an inner stance of humility and

recognition to all you encounter today.
Myth, Art, and Poetry

Mythos and Logos
Another building block in my wisdom lineage is the world

of myth, art, and poetry. This realm has a great capacity to
bring coherence, meaning, healing, connection, and deep
trust for the human journey that is demanded of us. I recall
Jane Hirshfield's words: "A good poem makes nothing
happen. It solves no outer problem. It is inherently
contemplative." And that's why myth, poetry, and art heal.
Rather than orient you toward solving a problem, they turn
your focus toward naked being itself, that deeper level of
meaning, purpose, and inner vitality--that deep well from
which we draw all our enduring energies. They evoke
those levels hidden beneath the "steel manhole cover" of
the ego, and speak to our personal unconscious--as good
therapy does--and even the collective unconscious--as
mystical and unitive knowing does.

Earlier this year I shared that there are several levels of
knowing and interpreting reality--a "hierarchy of truths" as
Pope Francis calls it. Not all truths are created equal, or of
equal importance. Something might be true, for example,
merely on a psychological level or a historical level or a
mythological level, but not on a universal level. For some
sad and illogical reason, fundamentalists think the
historical level is the "truest" one. "Did it really happen
just that way?" The literal level is one of the least fruitful
levels of meaning. Even if it did happen just that way, our
capacity to understand even that truth is still filtered
through our own cultural and personal biases, which are
largely unconscious. Truth on that level may be
fascinating, but it seldom "changes your life." [1]

At CAC's CONSPIRE conference last year, Rob Bell
explained the difference between logos, which is more like
problem-solving language, and mythos, which is more like
the language used in good poetry. Logos language includes
facts, data, evidence, and precise descriptions. Bell says,
"Logos language and thinking got us medicine, got us
airplanes. . . . We are living in a culture in which we have
had for the past three hundred years an explosion of logos
language. . . . But the problem is, there are whole
dimensions of our existence that require a different way of
thinking."

Bell says, "The Bible is mostly written in mythos
language. . . . Good religion traffics in mythos. . . . Mythos
language is for that which is more than literally true. . . .
Evolutionary science [logos language] does an excellent
job of explaining why I don't have a tail. It just doesn't do
so well explaining why I find that interesting!" We need
mythos language to express the more-than-factual meaning
of experiences like falling in love, loss, and death. [2]

Good religion, art, poetry, and myth point us to the deeper
levels of truth that logos can't fully explain. Early
Christians knew this; but the Western Church spent the
last five centuries trying to prove that the myths and
stories in the Bible really happened historically, just as
they are described. The Church went backward here, as we
came to rely heavily on technique, formula, and certitude
instead of the alluring power of trust and allowing. The
whole point of Scripture is the transformation of the soul.
But when we stopped understanding myth, we stopped
understanding how to read--and profit from--sacred story.
[3] Art, myth, and poetry invite us into the transformative
world of sacred story. This kind of knowing has the power
to change us at the level of the subconscious and intuition
because it can open mind, heart, and body simultaneously.
Children can read stories over and over again, fully
fascinated, without needing to verify the historical
question. Thus they can live in eternal and always true
time, given away by that lovely and captivating opening
phrase "Once upon a time."
Your Imaginarium

Wisdom, just like good poetry, must and will always

"resist intelligence," as New England poet Wallace
Stevens says enigmatically. It gives just enough of reality
to keep us out of our too-easy egotistic center. True
wisdom requires a spiritual state to complete the "logic."
Mature spirituality insists that we hold out for meaning
instead of settling for mere answers. Wisdom is
necessarily and always partially hidden, and reveals
herself only to those who really want her and will not try
to make a commodity of her (Old Testament book of
Wisdom 6:12-22; 7:22--8:8). It is precisely the same with
God, I think. [1]

You cannot even imagine something or do something until
you first have an image of it in your being. This is surely
why Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than
intelligence." [2] We each have constructed our own
imaginarium of inner symbols, meanings, archetypes, and
memories that have formed us. This is almost entirely
unconscious but visibly operative in all of our choices and
preferences; the imaginarium is foundationally real for us
and has very concrete effects.

All the logic and reason in the world will not change us
unless we allow that logic to change our inner symbolic
universe. You can observe the deep power of the
imaginarium when you try to change a person's deep
sexual fascinations or their need for security or certitude.
Christians were probably right when we said that "Only
God can do this" by rearranging our inner symbolic world.
Such transformation might be called radical conversion,
and it is somewhat uncommon in my experience.

Let me give a strong example. For many Christians
(mostly Catholic and Orthodox), the very word "Mary"
evokes an entire imaginarium in the soul, and from there
does its very real good work. If you have no Mary
imaginarium, "Mary" probably cannot "save" you. All of
the Marys in the Gospels--we are not even sure how many
there are--exercise a transformative, "bridal mysticism" on
the prepared human psyche. They feminize, sweeten, and
give eros and pathos to the spiritual journey. They work
on you in a hundred unconscious ways--according to how,
when, why, and with what readiness we read the text or
look at the image. A heart open to the power of metaphor
("that which carries you across"), a heart open to the
feminine and open to intimacy, will leap every time. A
heart trapped in historical literalism, or closed to the power
of poetry, will remain bored, reactive, and trapped in
critique. [3]
A true symbol is not only a pointer to "a more absolute

reality," but by that very fact awakens us to the deepest
level of our own life too. Good symbolism and imagery
moves us into contact with our True Self, with others, and
with Everything--"God." After radical conversion, after
you have once fallen through the ego and into the
collective unconscious, the whole world starts becoming
symbolic.

Both C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell, spent much of their
lives trying to unpack these archetypal symbols for
Western linear people. Campbell even quotes Thomas
Merton in this regard:

"One cannot apprehend a symbol unless one is able to
awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which
respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament'
and 'presence.' The symbol is an object pointing to a
subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness,
far beyond the level of subject and object." [4] [We call
that unitive, or non-dual consciousness.]

. . . Mythologies and religions, are great poems and, when
recognized as such, point infallibly through things and
events to the ubiquity of a "presence" or "eternity" that is
whole and entire in each. In this function all mythologies,
all great poetries, and all mystic traditions are in accord;
and where any such inspiriting vision remains effective in
a civilization, everything and every creature within its
range is alive.

And, I would add, this vision is trustworthy and has a
message for the soul. When mythologies and religions are
no longer effective, all transformation ceases and you have
a quickly declining culture, with a high degree of mental
illness and neuroses. One must ask if this is not our present
situation.
Myths
Western rationalism no longer understands myths and their

importance. Although almost all historic cultures valued
myths, we are the obvious exception. Western culture has
replaced these effective and healing story lines with
ineffective, cruel, and disorienting narratives like
communism, fascism, terrorism, capitalism, and
consumerism. Each in its own way is a watertight
explanation and refuses any outside critique.

Each human has a de facto worldview that determines
what is important and what is not important to us, and we
largely operate unconsciously--until we are awakened
from our sleep. Worldviews usually have a symbolic story
to hold them together, such as that of "Honest Abe"
chopping wood in Kentucky and educating himself in
Illinois. Clever "myths" like this become a standing and
effective metaphor for the American worldview of self-
determination, hard work, and achievement. Whether they
are exact historical truth is not even important. We want
and need them to be true. And that is okay.

Such myths proceed from the deep and collective
unconscious of humanity. Our myths are stories or images
that are not always true in particular but entirely true in
general. They are usually not historical fact, but invariably
they are spiritual genius. They hold life and death, the
explainable and the unexplainable together as one. They
hold together the paradoxes that the rational mind cannot
process by itself. Myths, as do good poems and art, make
unclear and confused emotions brilliantly clear and even
life changing.

Myths are true basically because they work! A sacred
myth keeps a people healthy, happy, and whole--even
inside their pain. They give deep meaning and pull us into
"deep time," which encompasses all time, past and future,
geological and chronological, and not just our little time or
culture. Such stories are the very food of the soul. When
we start fairy tales with lines like "Long ago, in a faraway
land" we are reaching for deep time truth. We Catholics
used to say at the end of our Latin prayers, Per omnia
saecula saeculorum, loosely translated as "through all the
ages of ages." Somehow deep time orients the psyche,
gives ultimate perspective, realigns us, grounds us, and
thus heals us.

We belong to a Mystery far grander than our little selves
and our little time. Great storytellers and spiritual teachers
always know this. The postmodern world has rejected
most myths except two, and these are especially lethal for
the soul and for the poor and for the future: "I produce
therefore I am" and "I consume therefore I am." This will
never work for the soul, but we--believers and clergy
included--have drunk this fairly new version of Kool-Aid.

Remember, the opposite of rational is not necessarily
irrational, but it can also be transrational or bigger than
the rational mind can process. Things like love, death,
suffering, God, and infinity are transrational experiences.
Both myth and mature religion understand this. The
transrational has the capacity to keep us inside an open
system and a larger horizon so that the soul, the heart, and
the mind do not close down inside of small and suffering
times.

The merely rational mind is dualistic and divides the field
of the moment between what it can presently understand
and what it deems "wrong" or untrue. Because the rational
mind cannot process love or suffering, for example, it
tends to avoid them, deny them, or blame somebody for
them, when in fact they are the greatest spiritual teachers
of all, if we but allow them. Our loss of mythic
consciousness has not served the last few centuries well
and has overseen the growth of rigid fundamentalism in all
the world religions. Now we get trapped in destructive and
"invisible" myths because we do not have the eyes to see
how the great healing myths like the Exodus, Cross and
Resurrection, Krishna and Arjuna in the chariot, and
Buddha under the Bodhi Tree function and transform. [1]

In closing, let me offer this wish from Jungian analyst
Clarissa Pinkola Estés: "I hope you will go out and let
stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work
with these stories from your life . . . water them with your
blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you
yourself burst into bloom." [2]
Gateway to Silence
"To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild
flower."
--William Blake
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for
the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass: 2011), xxix-xxxi.
[2] Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths
and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (Ballantine Books: 1996),
511.
Last chance to register!

Breathing Under Water: A Spiritual Study of the Twelve Steps
A self-paced, online course
October 21-December 16, 2015

Learn more and register at cac.org.

Registration closes October 7 or when the course is full. Note that financial
assistance may be available if you are unable to pay the full course fee. Please apply
for financial assistance before registering for the course.
The Winged Deer (tapestry detail), French School (15th century), Musee des Antiquities,
Rouen, France, Peter Willi, The Bridgeman Art Library.
Art and Music

Joseph Campbell writes: "Myths are clues to the spiritual

potentialities of the human life. . . . Mythology teaches you
what's behind literature and the arts, it teaches you about
your own life. . . . I think of mythology as the homeland of
the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To
see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is
what the myth does for you." [1] Often, various forms of
wordless art and music precede the mythic story. We often
know things imaginally, aesthetically, or harmoniously
before we know them rationally or conceptually.

As long as humans have existed, it seems that we've turned
to art to express the inexpressible. Mircea Eliade (1907-
1986), Romanian historian of religion, writes that "sacred
art seeks to represent the invisible by means of the
visible. . . . Even in archaic and 'folk' cultures, lacking any
philosophical system and vocabulary, the function of
sacred art was the same: it translated religious experience
and a metaphysical conception of the world and of human
existence into a concrete, representational form. This
translation was not considered wholly the work of man:
the divinity also participated by revealing himself to man
and allowing himself to be perceived in form or
figure." [2]

In my opinion, whenever we see an iconoclastic form of
reformation, it is an angry regression and an overreacting
constriction. It is not good news. Examples include 8th
century Orthodoxy, most 16th century Protestants, and
presently ISIS. This is not to say that both the Orthodox
and the Catholics did not substitute lots of mass produced
madonnas with cherubs and predictable icons for the kind
of art that shouts "You must change your life!" as the poet
Rainer Maria Rilke describes in "Archaic Torso of
Apollo."

We don't need a reason for art. Beauty is for beauty's sake.
Art and music are not simply objects, but an experience of
opening to mystical awareness. In David Loy's words, ". . .
perhaps the profound pleasure we sometimes experience
from listening to a Bach fugue or a Mozart piano concerto
is not a distraction from that process of attuning, nor even
a side-effect of it, but is that attuning. What is the non-dual
experience if not such an attunement? Nor need that
enjoyment be understood subjectively. If the whole of
creation groans and travails in pain together (Romans
8:22), does it not also leap for joy together, in us--or
rather, as us?" [3]

My first thirteen years of Franciscan formation included
daily, well-disciplined singing of magnificent Gregorian
chants. People would arrive early in the dark morning just
to listen to the friars climb and descend our calm but
mellifluous scales of pure tonality, and often left when we
started the wordy parts of the service. They had already
received the healing message--it is a good and coherent
world and I am a part of it.
The Winged Deer (tapestry detail), French School (15th century), Musee des Antiquities,
Rouen, France, Peter Willi, The Bridgeman Art Library.
Poetry and Religion

Thursday, October 1, 2015
Robert Frost wrote that great poetry "begins as a lump in

the throat . . . a homesickness, a lovesickness." Poetry stirs
something you can't explain. When it comes, you just
know that it is given out of nowhere. That's when you
experience radical grace. Poets try to find the perfect word
to name the inner experience. The goal of great poetry is to
get right to the heart of the experience so that it resonates
with your own inner knowing and you can say, "Yes! That
is true!"

Before 500 BCE, religion and poetry were largely the
same thing. People did not presume to be able to define the
Mystery. They looked for words that could describe the
mystery. Poetry doesn't claim to be a perfect description as
dogma foolishly does. It's a "hint half guessed," to use T.
S. Eliot's phrase. That's why poetry seduces you and
entices you into being a searcher for the Mystery yourself.
It creates the heart leap, the gasp of breath, inspiring you
to go further and deeper; you want to fill in the blanks for
yourself.

Poetry does this by speaking in metaphors. All religious
language is metaphor by necessity. It's always pointing
toward this Mystery that you don't know until you have
experienced it. Without the experience, the metaphors
largely remain empty. I think this has led to the
ineffectiveness of much organized religion. The metaphors
religions use are usually true, but we too often defend the
words instead of seeking the experience itself. Merton
once said that when you hear Jesus say that you must "eat
my flesh and drink my blood" you are supposed to stop
breathing for a few minutes. Instead we just argue about it.

The word metaphor comes from the Greek and means "to
carry across"--to carry a meaning across, to carry you
across. If you're still living mostly out of the left brain, you
think that the word has to perfectly define. But the right
brain realizes that the better way to describe the moment is
through a metaphor, indirectly. Probably the most quoted
lines from Emily Dickinson are, "Tell all the truth but tell
it slant -- / . . . / The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or
every man be blind --." [1]

I'm convinced this is the present impasse with so much of
institutional religion: that we have for centuries "perfectly"
defined, delineated, and described the Mystery. And all
you have to do is believe your denomination's dogmatic
definitions and you are a member in good standing. This is
not working. It is not transforming people.

C. G. Jung--whom I'll introduce during the next two weeks
of meditations--did not consider himself an opponent of
Christianity, but wanted to be its "pastor" to re-enliven its
life changing myths and metaphors. He looked at his father
and his six uncles, who were all Swiss Reformed pastors,
and he knew they were not happy, generative, or in love.
For them it was all just "a human commandment, a lesson
memorized" (Isaiah 29:13). Jung believed that the course
of Jesus' life was the perfect map for the transformative
journey--if only people would go inside their own souls.

I think poetry gives you resonance more than logical
proof, and resonance is much more healing and
integrating. It resounds inside of you. It evokes and calls
forth a deeper self. That is the power of good poetry and
why poetry can work so deeply. When religion becomes
mere philosophy, accurate definitions, moralisms about
others, rituals and dogmas in the head--that is the
beginning of the end of religion as actual transformation.
Now no one knows what to do with their pain except
project it onto other people.

Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets, says, "Poetry is a
life-cherishing force, for poems are not words, after all,
but fires for the coal, ropes let down to the lost, something
as necessary as bread for the hungry." [2]
Poetry as Gateway

Friday, October 2, 2015
In a recent webcast here, Mirabai Starr said, "Poetry is a

gateway into unitive consciousness. It knocks on the doors
of the heart and the heart opens. Poets speak truth in a very
naked way that bypasses the rational mind. Poetry evokes,
rather than describes." [1]

I believe poetry can help us connect with our True Self,
uninhibited by ego's needs for certitude and security. A
good poem can open us to experience Reality and let it
shatter the walls that protect our falsity. Kabir (c. 1440-
1580) was a religious reformer who "achieved a
remarkable synthesis of Hindu, Muslim, and even
Christian belief." [2] He was an artist and musician, and
his poems were probably originally songs. Sit with Kabir's
metaphor of unitive consciousness: "All know that the
drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean
merges into the drop."

Now let your heart open as you read this poem by Rainer
Maria Rilke (1875-1926). It may be worth learning
German, just to read this poem in its original form!

I'm too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy.
I'm too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing--
just as it is.

I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones--
or alone.

I want to mirror your immensity.
I want never to be too weak or too old
to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

I would describe myself
like a landscape I've studied
at length, in detail;
like a word I'm coming to understand;
like a pitcher I pour from at mealtime;
like my mother's face;
like a ship that carried me
when the waters raged. [3]
References:
[1] Mirabai Starr, Unitive Consciousness: An Eastern Perspective, an unpublished
webcast (Center for Actionand Contemplation: 2015).
[2] Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and
West, (Penguin Compass: 2002), 209.
[3] Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, trans., Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
(Riverhead Books: 1996), 67-68. Used with permission.

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Death and Heaven

Authentic mystical experience connects us and just keeps connecting at

Adapted from Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

When Paul says to “pray always” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), he can’t mean to

Adapted from The Eternal Now—and how to be there! (MP3 download)

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Death and Heaven

James Finley writes in “Ripening,” an issue of CAC’s journal, Oneing:

“The lifelong process of ripening brings about a corresponding ripening of

“However, as a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in

Adapted from "Ripening," Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 2

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Death and Heaven

Elizabeth Lesser, author and co-founder of Omega Institute, offers ways of

• Become an “I don’t know it all.”

• Disengage from the ego.

• Take birth and death back from the experts.

Because we are more frightened of what is not known to us, it makes

Adapted from "Five Ways of Practicing Dying" by Elizabeth Lessler

For Further Study:

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

“Every moment we live through is like an ambassador that declares the

De Caussade continues, “We find all that is necessary in the present

Adapted from The Eternal Now—and how to be there! (MP3 download)

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

When Paul says to “pray always” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), he can’t mean to

Adapted from The Eternal Now—and how to be there! (MP3 download)

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Sadly, we’re almost programmed (perhaps by childhood conditioning) to

Adapted from "To Be Awake Is to Live in the Present,"

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Thomas Merton entered the monastery in Kentucky on this day when he

How do you be present? Jesus describes it rather profoundly: “You must

Adapted from "To Be Awake Is to Live in the Present,"

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For Further Study:

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

On his cane he had strung a string of battery-powered, blinking Christmas

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Adapted from Franciscan Mysticism (an unpublished talk)

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation