Wednesday, October 26, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The life of Richard Rohr (so far)
Let all your works give you thanks, O Lord, and let your faithful ones bless you. Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom and speak of your might. The Lord is faithful in all his words.
I have been sharing the writing of Richard Rohr often lately. For me, his devotions have been knocking it out of the park (go Phillies and Astros!). Since 1990 or so, when I first heard his tapes on church life in a car headed for Promise Keepers, I’ve read most of his books and listened to most of his talks. His thinking and commitment to Christianity has helped shape my life more than anyone else’s.
Here are his devotional thoughts from October 9-15, a week of reflections on the eight core principles of his Albuquerque Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC):
Only the second gaze sees fully and truthfully. It sees itself, the other, and even God with God’s own compassionate eyes. It is from this place true action must spring …
Most of history has been content with cultural truth, denominational truth, national truth, scientific truth, rational truth, factual truth, personal truth, etc. These are all needed and helpful, but true religion affirms the Big Truth beyond any of these smaller truths …
The depth and mystery of God leaves all of us as perpetual searchers and seekers, always novices and beginners. It is the narrow and dark way of faith …
Few Christians have ever been seriously taught about their inherent union with God and will find all kinds of self-hating reasons to deny it. Only the True Self can dare to believe the gospel’s Good News …
We do not think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. Before new experience, new thinking is difficult and dangerous. Afterward, new thinking is natural and even necessary.
A few days ago Fr. Richard stepped down from his leadership roles at CAC. Months ago he received a lymph node cancer diagnosis. What will happen next? When will he die? Those questions don’t concern him much, so I hope they won’t concern me.
A 2020 New Yorker article described him. “Rohr is slight, with a white beard and the starry eyes of a person who spends long periods in silence.” That silence might deepen, and his eyes surely will only get more still. Eugene Peterson’s words from Paul in Philippians 3 surely describe Father Richard as well:
I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
CAC is offering what they call “virtual sits” on Fridays for the next few weeks, via Facebook and YouTube. In other words, Fr. Richard is inviting us to join him in his silence and his prayer. Like the rest of us, he wants to join the host at the heavenly table as often as he can.
People will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the Kingdom of God. For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.
(Ephesians 6, Psalm 145, 2 Thessalonians 2, Luke 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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