The Beloved Community

 

 

 

Welcome and Good Morning!

I'm sharing another wonderful article by Fr. Richard Rohr. Enjoy!

The Beloved Community
Tuesday, May 8, 2018

 

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. —Martin Luther King, Jr. [1]

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw clearly in the last years of his life, we face a real choice between chaos and community—we need a moral revolution. If that was true fifty years ago, then we must be clear today: America needs a moral revival to bring about beloved community. —William J. Barber II [2]

I believe that “moral revival” is a natural outgrowth of realizing how connected we already are: what we do unto others or to the earth, we really do to ourselves. All created beings are included in this one Body of God. Protestant pastor and political leader Rev. Dr. William Barber writes:

The main obstacle to beloved community continues to be the fear that people in power have used for generations to divide and conquer God’s children who are, whatever our differences, all in the same boat. [3]

It takes a contemplative, nondual mind to see foundational oneness—that we truly are “in the same boat.” The first philosophical problem of “the one and the many” is overcome in God as Trinity. The Trinity reveals that God is precisely diversity maintained (“Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit”) and yet that same diversity overcome (God is One by reason of the infinite love shared between the Three). Each of the Three perfectly loves and is perfectly loved. And all is created in imitation of this divine shape of Reality. As of yet, we humans have neither done unity nor diversity very well. We have not solved the essential problem that was already resolved in God. (Please read that until it sinks in!)

The goal of the spiritual journey is to discover and move toward connectedness and relationship on ever new levels, while also honoring diversity. We may begin by making connections with family and friends, with nature and animals, and then grow into deeper connectedness with those outside our immediate circle, especially people of races, religions, economic classes, gender, and sexual orientation that are different from our own. Finally, we can and will experience this full connectedness as union with God. For some it starts the other way around: they experience union with God—and then find it easy to unite with everything else.

Without connectedness and communion, we don’t exist fully as our truest selves. Becoming who we really are is a matter of learning how to become more and more deeply connected. No one can possibly go to heaven alone—or it would not be heaven.

Inherent Goodness can always uphold you if you can trust it. I call that goodness “God,” but you don’t have to use that word at all. God does not care. It is the trusting that is important. When we fall into Primal Love, we realize that everything is foundationally okay—and we are a part of that everything!

 

Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.

 

 

[1] Martin Luther King, Jr. used these words (with slight changes) in essays and speeches from early 1958 to his last Sunday morning sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC on March 31, 1968.  See A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Melvin Washington (HarperCollins: 1991), 52, 88, 207, 252, 277, 460.

[2] Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, in the foreword to Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion (InterVarsity Press: 2018), 3.

[3] Ibid.

Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, ed. Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books: 2018), 102, 104-105.

Image credit: Welcome (detail), Canticle Farm, Oakland California. To learn more about Canticle Farm, visit https://canticlefarmoakland.org/.

Balancing Act

Welcome and Good Morning!

Life is a constant balancing act for me and maybe, for you, too. Right now I'm trying to find my spiritual balance. It's funny how something not so big, like a friend on vacation, can throw you off balance spiritually. But when it is a spiritual mentor, well it just does.
This spiritual quest I am on is being fed by God, in one way, through a series of meditations by Fr. Richard Rohr. They are speaking to me in a deeper part of my soul. I like when that happens. I feel full; like I've eaten a very satisfying banquet. This year Fr. Rohr is focusing on the Divine in Nature. I'm sharing today's meditation with you. I hope if feeds your soul as well.

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Eleven

The Natural World

The Substance of God
Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Many indigenous spiritualities, Franciscans, and Celts saw creation as good, as a theophany or revelation of God’s very being, just as Genesis taught. How did Christianity come to be so divorced from nature? John Philip Newell (b. 1953), a poet and scholar known for his work in the field of Celtic spirituality, traces the roots and impact of the doctrine creatio ex nihilo. He offers an alternative, still orthodox, view of creation based on the writings of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon:

Irenaeus [130-202] . . . taught that the whole of creation flows from the very “substance” of God. [1] All things carry within them the essence of the One. Irenaeus . . . signaled his concern about the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. . . . This was to become the standard of Western Christianity’s approach to creation. Creation would be viewed not as coming forth from the substance of God but as fashioned from afar by a distant Creator, made out of nothing from on high.

Irenaeus intuited that this would be a disaster, that to neutralize matter, to teach that creation does not come from holy substance, would lead to the abuse of creation. It was a convenient “truth” . . . [meaning] that the empire could do whatever it wished to matter. Matter was not holy. It had not come forth from the womb of God’s Being. Rather it was made from nothing. It was essentially devoid of sacred energy. So, every imperial mind could ravage the earth’s resources with impunity. It could disparage the rights of creatures and subordinate the physical well-being of its subjects. Religion had become the accomplice of the state’s subordination of the earth. It had sanctioned the separation of spirit and matter.

Irenaeus . . . passionately taught that the substance of the earth and its creatures carries within itself the life of the Holy One. God, he said, is both “above us all and in us all.” [2] God is both transcendent and immanent. And the work of Jesus, he taught, was not to save us from our nature but to restore us to our nature and to bring us back into relationship with the deepest sound within creation. In his commentary on the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, in which all things are described as spoken into being by God, Irenaeus sees Jesus not as speaking a new word but as uttering again the first word, the sound at the beginning and the heart of life. He describes Jesus as “recapitulating” the original work of the Creator, as articulating again what we have forgotten and what needs to be repeated, the Sound from which all life has come. [3] Jesus re-sounds the beginning. He resounds with what is deepest in the matter of the universe.

. . . The Christ story is the universe story. The birth of the divine-human child is a revelation, a lifting of the veil to show us that all life has been conceived by the Spirit in the womb of the universe, that we are all divine-human creatures, that everything that has being in the universe carries within itself the sacredness of Spirit.

 "Just as Genesis taught." 
That is what Genesis teaches us, isn't it? He gave everything he created to Adam and Eve to care for. As a whole, we are not doing a very good job of that command, are we? Many individuals, yes. As a whole, not so good.
Good food for thought.

I happen to agree with this meditation that says nature comes from God's very being, His sacred energy. How could you read Genesis any other way?

And the Psalms tell us that, too.
Psalm 33:6  By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth.
Heady stuff.

Gratitude
1. God's creation of nature.
2. Starry nights
3. Animals

Blessings,
Deborah

Looking Out From God Instead of at God

I am currently reading a book called "Immortal Diamond" by Richard Rohr. The book is deepening my faith and making me look at some things differently. Both are good. He says many eye opening thoughts that have left me gobsmacked. Be prepared for future posts on this book. :)

One of things he said was, "We must return to practice based spirituality where the vantage point switches from looking at God to looking out from God." I figuratively smacked my forehead! How simple and yet how profound. How would the world change if we practiced this? If we started looking at people, places, events, all things "from God's vantage point?" I'm thinking the world would change in ways we can't even imagine.

He also says, "Spirituality tends to be more about unlearning than learning." I believe this with all my heart. I've had it happen over and over. We learn, we grow, we learn some more that enhances or changes our previous way of thinking.  Every time I read the Bible I learn something new, something I didn't understand the first time through or didn't apply yet.

God continues to lead me in new directions to help me grow closer to Him. It's an exciting journey. I'll follow Him anywhere He leads.

Psalm 118:1
Give thanks to the Lord,
for He is good;
His love endures forever.

Gratitude List (prompts from aholyexperience.com)
3 Gifts Moving
1. My car
2. My journey
3. The clouds

Phil 1:4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.

Blessings, Deborah