THE PATH OF DESCENT

The spirituality behind the Twelve-Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous is a  ¢â‚¬Å“low Church ¢â‚¬  approach to evangelization and healing that is probably our only hope in a suffering world of six-and-a-half billion people.

Our suffering is psychological, relational and addictive: the suffering of people who are comfortable on the outside but oppressed and empty within. It is a crisis of meaninglessness, which leads us to try to find meaning in possessions, perks, prestige, and power, which are always outside of the self. It doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t work. So we turn to ingesting food, drink or drugs, and we become mass consumers to fill the empty hole within us.

The Twelve-Step Program walks us back out of our addictive society. Like all steps toward truth and Spirit, it leads us downward. Bill Wilson and his A.A. movement have shown us that the real power is when we no longer seek, need, or abuse outer power because we have found real power within. They rightly call it our  ¢â‚¬Å“Higher Power. ¢â‚¬ 

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 315, day 327

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Isn ¢â‚¬â„¢t it wonderful news, brothers and sisters, that we come to God not by our perfection, but by our imperfection? That gives all of us an equal chance, and utterly levels the human playing field. No pretending is necessary.

Deep within each of us lives both a leper and a wolf; in Franciscan imagery, Francis embraced the leper on the road, and called it his conversion; and Francis tamed the wolf in Gubbio in his later years. The stories did happen historically, but first of all they were revealed in his soul.

It is on the inside of us that lepers and wolves first live. If we haven ¢â‚¬â„¢t been able to kiss many lepers, if we haven ¢â‚¬â„¢t been able to tame many wolves, it ¢â‚¬â„¢s probably because we haven ¢â‚¬â„¢t first of all made friends with our own leprosy and the ferocious wolf within all of us. It is always there in some form, waiting to be tamed and forgiven.

From Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 276, day 287

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In a Navajo rug there is always one clear imperfection woven into the pattern. And interestingly enough, this is precisely where the Spirit moves in and out of the rug! The Semitic mind, the Eastern mind (which, by the way, Jesus would have been much closer to) understands perfection in precisely that way. The East is much more comfortable with paradox, mystery, and non-dual thinking than the Western mind which is formed by Greek dualistic logic.

Perfection is not the elimination of imperfection, as we think. Divine perfection is, in fact, the ability to recognize, forgive, and include imperfection! ¢â‚¬”just as God does with all of us. Only in this way can we find the beautiful and hidden wholeness of God underneath the passing human show. This is the  ¢â‚¬Å“pearl of great price ¢â‚¬  in my opinion. Non-dual thinking and seeing is the change that changes everything. It makes love, mercy, patience, and forgiveness possible.

~ Richard Rohr

Lent 2012

Prayer:   I am falling into Love.

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The third human temptation is the need for control, importance, and power. The devil tells Jesus to bow down before the power systems of this world:  ¢â‚¬Å“All of these I will give to you ¢â‚¬  (Matthew 4:8). Make these into your actual belief and security system. Formal atheism is rare, but this kind of practical daily atheism is almost the norm.

Jesus refuses to bow down before these little kingdoms, the corporations, the idols of militarism and materialism, race and nationality, and all imperialistic thinking. He knows that the price of such love of power is to  ¢â‚¬Å“fall at Satan ¢â‚¬â„¢s feet and worship him! ¢â‚¬  (Matthew 4:9).

That ¢â‚¬â„¢s a very heavy judgment on all the security systems of this world. These will finally and inevitably demand your full allegiance, loyalty, and attention, but it will all feel like you  ¢â‚¬Å“are just doing your job. ¢â‚¬  When Jesus saw through this one and said,  ¢â‚¬Å“You must worship the Lord your God, and serve God alone, ¢â‚¬  then the devil left him (Matthew 4:10-11). When you can face these kinds of well-disguised demons, Satan doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t have a chance.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 296, day 310

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The second temptation of Jesus is another one that all of us must face. Satan takes Jesus up to the pinnacle of the Temple, symbolizing the top of the religious world itself, and tells him to play  ¢â‚¬Å“righteousness games ¢â‚¬  with God.  ¢â‚¬Å“Throw yourself off and He ¢â‚¬â„¢ll catch you ¢â‚¬  (Matthew 4:6). It ¢â‚¬â„¢s the only time in the Bible where the devil quotes Scripture. Holy words can be used for evil purposes, it surely says. This second temptation is to think of yourself as saved, superior to others, the moral elite on the side of God and religion, and to quote arguable Scriptures for your own purpose ¢â‚¬”being against God in the name of God. Actually it is quite common.

As Mother Teresa loved to say,  ¢â‚¬Å“We were not created to be successful [even spiritually successful!], but to be obedient. ¢â‚¬  True obedience to God won ¢â‚¬â„¢t always make us look or feel right (that is why it takes faith!), so be careful before you stand on the pinnacle of any Temple, Scripture, or Sacrament. It is the common temptation of actually loving ourselves under the guise of loving God.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 295, day 309

THE PATH OF DESCENT

Monday, March 19, 2012

Feast of St. Joseph

I believe that all would-be Christians must face the same three temptations as Jesus did. These same demons are in all of us. The first temptation of Christ was to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:3). Sounds good, but this is likely our need to be immediately impressive and effective, successful, relevant, and make things happen right now. It is our natural desire to look good.

The false self tells you what it immediately wants and seldom knows what it really needs. You can be a very popular and successful person when you operate at this level, and you will easily think very well of yourself. That is why Jesus has to face that temptation first, to move us beyond what we first want to what we really need. In refusing to be immediately relevant, in refusing to respond to people ¢â‚¬â„¢s immediate requests, Jesus says, Go deeper. What do you really desire? It is not usually what you first think.  ¢â‚¬Å“It is not by bread alone that we live ¢â‚¬  (Matthew 4:4).

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 294, day 308

Prayer:  I am falling into Love.

LETTING GO

Risk all for love, Jesus tells us, even your own life. Give that to me and let me save it. The healthy religious person is the one who allows God to do the saving, while I do my part to bring up the rear. It always feels like a loss of power and certitude at the beginning, which is why it is called faith, and why true Biblical faith is probably somewhat rare.

Mary, the Mother of Jesus, sums up in herself the attitude of one of the  ¢â‚¬ little poor ones ¢â‚¬  whom God is able to save because they are not self-entitled (the anawim as in Zephaniah 2:3, 3:12). She is deeply aware of her own emptiness without God (Luke 1:52). She longs for the fulfillment of God ¢â‚¬â„¢s promise (1:54); she has left herself open, available for God ¢â‚¬â„¢s work (1:45, 49). And when the call comes, she makes a full personal surrender:  ¢â‚¬Å“Let it be! ¢â‚¬  (1:38).

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations , p. 322, day 333

Prayer:   Let go . . . let God.

THE PATH OF DESCENT

Jesus commanded us to love, so we know it is not just a feeling, since you cannot command feelings. Love is a decision.

Jesus did not say:

When you get healed, love;

When you grow up, love; when you feel loving, love;

When you get it together and have dealt with all your mother/father/husband/children wounds,

then you are able to love.

No, the commandment for all of us is to LOVE now.

I think we know the love of God is within us when we ourselves can  ¢â‚¬Å“do love ¢â‚¬  much more than when people tell us we are loveable (that just feels good!). We can always disbelieve the second, but the first is an unexplainable power from Beyond ourselves. We know we are being used, and the  ¢â‚¬Å“Living Water is flowing ¢â‚¬  through us (John 7:38).

Adapted from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction (CD)

Prayer:

I am falling into Love.

LETTING GO

The Hebrew people entered the desert feeling themselves as a united and strong people, and you’d think that perhaps they would have experienced greater strength as they continued, but not so: They experienced fragmentation and weariness; they experienced divisions among their people. They were not the people they thought they were. The Jewish exodus is a rather perfect metaphor for spirituality.

When all of our idols are taken away, all our securities and defense mechanisms, we find out who we really are. We’re so little, so poor, so empty ¢â‚¬”and a shock to ourselves. But God takes away our shame, and we are eventually able to present ourselves in an honest and humble form. Then we find out who we really are and who God is for us ¢â‚¬”and it is more than enough. That is how an enslaved people became God ¢â‚¬â„¢s people, Israel.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations , p. 130, day 140

Prayer:

Let go . . . let God.

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Soul knowledge sends you in the opposite direction from consumerism. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s not addition that makes one holy, but subtraction: stripping the illusions, letting go of the pretense, exposing the false self, breaking open the heart and the understanding, not taking one ¢â‚¬â„¢s private self too seriously. Conversion is more about unlearning than learning.

In a certain sense we are on the utterly wrong track. We are climbing while Jesus is descending, and in that we reflect the pride and the arrogance of Western civilization, always trying to accomplish, perform, and achieve. We transferred much of that to our version of Christianity and made the Gospel into spiritual consumerism. The ego is still in charge. There is not much room left for God when the false self takes itself and its private self-development that seriously.

All we can really do is get ourselves out of the way, and honestly we can ¢â‚¬â„¢t even do that. It is done to us through this terrible thing called suffering.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations , p. 46, day 49

Prayer:

Let go . . . let God.

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Real holiness doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t feel like holiness; it just feels like you ¢â‚¬â„¢re dying. It feels like you ¢â‚¬â„¢re losing it. And you are! You are losing the false self, which you foolishly thought was permanent, important, and you!

You know God that is doing this in you and with you when you can somehow smile, and trust that what you lost is something you did not need anyway. In fact, it got in the way of what was real.

Many of us were taught to say no without the deep joy of yes. We were trained to put up with all  ¢â‚¬Å“dying ¢â‚¬  and just take it on the chin. Saying no to the self does not necessarily please God or please anybody. There is too much resentment and self-pity involved. When God, by love and freedom, can create a joyous yes inside of you ¢â‚¬”so much so that you can absorb the usual noes ¢â‚¬”then it is God ¢â‚¬â„¢s full work. The first might be resentful dieting; the second is a spiritual banquet.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations , p. 334

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We fear nothingness. That ¢â‚¬â„¢s why we fear death, of course, which feels like nothingness. Death is the shocking realization that everything I thought was me, everything I held onto so desperately, was finally nothing (read Kathleen Dowling Singh ¢â‚¬â„¢s The Grace in Dying).

The nothingness we fear so much is, in fact, the treasure and freedom that we long for, which is revealed in the joy and glory of the Risen Christ. We long for the space where there is nothing to prove and nothing to protect; where I am who I am, in the mind and heart of God, and that is more than enough.

Spirituality teaches us how to get naked ahead of time, so God can make love to us as we really are.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations , p. 333, day 344

Prayer: Let go . . . let God.

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A common saying is,  ¢â‚¬Å“God helps those who help themselves.” I think the phrase can be understood helpfully; but in most practical situations it is not true. Scripture clearly says, in many ways, that God helps those who trust in God, not those who help themselves.

We need to be told that very strongly because of our “do-it-yourself” orientation. As educated people, as Americans, as middle-class people who have practiced climbing, we are accustomed to doing it ourselves. It takes applying the brakes, letting go of our own plans, allowing Another, and experiencing power from a Larger Source to really move to higher awareness. Otherwise, there is no real transformation, but only increased willpower. As if the one with the most willpower wins! Willfulness is quite different than willingness. They are two different energetic styles and normally yield very different fruit.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 77, day 84

Prayer: Let go . . . let God.

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The notion of a spirituality of subtraction comes from Meister Eckhart (c.1260-1327), the medieval Dominican mystic. He said the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition. Yet I think most Christians today are involved in great part in a spirituality of addition.

The capitalist worldview is the only one most of us have ever known. We see reality, experiences, events, other people, and things ¢â‚¬”in fact, everything ¢â‚¬”as objects for our personal consumption. Even religion, Scripture, sacraments, worship services, and meritorious deeds become ways to advance ourselves ¢â‚¬”not necessarily ways to love God or neighbor.

The nature of the capitalist mind is that things (and often people!) are there for me. Finally, even God becomes an object for my consumption. Religion looks good on my r ƒ ©sum ƒ ©, and anything deemed  ¢â‚¬Å“spiritual ¢â‚¬  is a check on my private worthiness list. Some call it spiritual consumerism. It is not the Gospel.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations , p. 114, day 123