CONTEMPLATION IN ACTION
Abraham Maslow points out in his  ¢â‚¬Å“hierarchy of needs ¢â‚¬  that one cannot meet higher needs at any level of depth if the lesser needs are not first tended to. One cannot do an  ¢â‚¬Å“end run ¢â‚¬  to levels of communion and compassion, for example, when one ¢â‚¬â„¢s basic security and survival needs have not been met. As Jesus put it, when you are  ¢â‚¬Å“worried about many things ¢â‚¬  (Luke 10:41), you cannot have faith. When you cannot enjoy the lilies of the field or the sparrows in the sky, don ¢â‚¬â„¢t waste time thinking you can enjoy God. Start at the bottom; try to love a rock.

Otherwise, we end up trying to be spiritual before we have learned how to be human! It is a major problem. Maybe this is why Jesus came to model humanity for us ¢â‚¬”much more than divinity. Once we get the human part down,  ¢â‚¬Å“stop slamming doors ¢â‚¬  and start loving rocks, God will most assuredly take it all from there. Get the ordinary human thing down, and you will have all the spirituality that you can handle.

Adapted from Contemplation in Action, pp. 83-84

~~

 ¢â‚¬Å“How can I be more holy? ¢â‚¬  We don ¢â‚¬â„¢t have to make ourselves holy. We already are, and we just don ¢â‚¬â„¢t know it yet. In Christian terminology this inherent holiness is called the Divine Indwelling or the gift of the Holy Spirit. That proclamation, and the awakening of the True Self in God, is the essential foundational and primary task of all religion. Thus authentic religion is more about subtraction than addition, more letting go of the false self than any attempt at engineering our own True Self. You can ¢â‚¬â„¢t create what you already have.

We become the One we gaze upon. And the  ¢â‚¬Å“eyes by which we look back at God are the same eyes by which God has first looked at us ¢â‚¬  (Meister Eckhart). This reciprocal gaze is the True Self, perfectly given to us, and always waiting to be perfectly received. It is so dear and so precious that it needs no external payoffs whatsoever. The True Self is abundantly content as it is.

Adapted from Contemplation in Action, pp. 84-85
Prayer:
Teach me to hold the paradox
of being contemplative in my actions.
Contemplation teaches a different mind which leaves itself open so when the  ¢â‚¬Å“biggies ¢â‚¬  come along (love, suffering, death, infinity, contradictions, God, and probably sexuality), we still remain with an open field. We just don ¢â‚¬â„¢t close down when it doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t make full sense, or we are not in full control. That mind is called contemplative, or non-dual thinking.

The lowest level of consciousness is entirely dualistic (win/lose) ¢â‚¬”reproduction, me versus the world, and basic survival. Many, I am afraid, never move beyond this. The higher levels of consciousness are more and more able to deal with contradictions, paradoxes, and all Mystery. This is spiritual maturity. At the higher levels, we can teach things like compassion, mercy, forgiveness, selflessness, even love of enemies. Any good contemplative practice quickly greases the wheels of the mind toward non-dual consciousness. This is exactly why saints can overlook offenses and love enemies! We must be honest enough to admit that this has not characterized most Christian clergy or laity up to now. It is not really their fault; no one taught them how to pray, even in seminaries.

Adapted from Contemplation AND Action: An Informal Session with Interns (CD)

~~

THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD

Most people (though not all) have experienced unconditional love not through the image of a man, but through the image of their mother. She therefore became the basis for many people’s eventual God image, presuming it was a good God image. (I am convinced that many people sour on religion because the God they are presented with is actually less loving than their mother and/or father!)

For much of the human race, the mother is the one who parts the veil for us. She gives us that experience of grounding, of intimacy, of tenderness, of safety that most of us hope for from God. However, many people also operate from a toxic and negative image of God. For those people, little that is wonderful is going to happen as long as that is true. Early growth in spirituality is often about healing that inner image, whether male-based or female-based.

Most of us know that God is beyond gender. When we look at the Book of Genesis, we see that the first thing God is looking for is quite simply  ¢â‚¬Å“images ¢â‚¬  by which to communicate who-God-is (Genesis 1:26-27). God is not looking for servants, for slaves, or for people who are going to pass loyalty tests. God is just looking for images ¢â‚¬” ¢â‚¬Å“images and likenesses ¢â‚¬  of the Inner Mystery. Whoever God  ¢â‚¬Å“is, ¢â‚¬  is profoundly and essentially what it means to be male and female in perfect balance. We have to find and to trust the feminine face of God and the masculine face of God. Both are true and both are necessary for a full relationship with God. Up to now, we have strongly relied upon the presented masculine images while, in fact, our inner life was more drawn to our mother’s energy. That is much of our religious problem today.

Adapted from The Maternal Face of God
(available in On Transformation: Collected Talks, Volume 1 (CD))

Prayer:
Oh God, show me your Your face.

~~

Rohr
THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD
Historically speaking, in our culture the role of men has been to create, to make new things, to fix broken things, and to defend us from things which could hurt us. All of these are wonderful and necessary roles for the preservation of the human race.

However, most children saw their mother in a different way. She was not a creator, a fixer, or a defender, but rather a transformer. Once a woman has carried her baby inside of her body for nine months and brought it forth, through the pain of childbirth, into the world, she knows the mystery of transformation at a cellular level. She knows it intuitively, yet she cannot verbalize it. She just holds it at a deeper level of consciousness. She knows something about mystery, about miracles, and about transformation that men will never know (which is why males had to be initiated!). Women who are not mothers often learn it by simply being in the  ¢â‚¬Å“community of women. ¢â‚¬ 

The feminine body can be seen as a cauldron of transformation. Her body turns things into other things ¢â‚¬”her body turns a love act into a perfect little child. Yet, in her heart, she knows SHE did not do it. All she had to do was to wait and eat well, to believe and to hope for nine months. This gives a woman a very special access to understanding spirituality as transformation ¢â‚¬”if she is able to listen.
~~
All this  ¢â‚¬Å“women-stuff ¢â‚¬  is not only important; it is half of conversion, half of salvation, half of wholeness, half of God ¢â‚¬â„¢s work of art. I believe this mystery is imaged in the woman of the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse:  ¢â‚¬Å“pregnant, and in labor, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth . . . and finally escaping into the desert until her time ¢â‚¬  (Revelation 12:1-6).

Could this be the time? It is always the time! The world is tired of Pentagons and pyramids, empires and corporations that only abort God ¢â‚¬â„¢s child. This women-stuff is very important, and it has always been important, more than this white male priest ever imagined or desired! My God was too small and too male.

Much that the feminists have said is very prophetic and necessary for the Church and the world. It is time for the woman to come out of her desert refuge and for the men to welcome her. As we see in the Roman Church today, this is still quite difficult, if you have been an  ¢â‚¬Å“alpha male ¢â‚¬  all of your life. No surprise that Jesus came  ¢â‚¬Å“meek and humble of heart ¢â‚¬  (Matthew 11:29) to undo the male addiction to power.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 279, day 290

Prayer: Oh God, show me your Your face.
Adapted from The Maternal Face of God
(available in On Transformation: Collected Talks, Volume 1 (CD))
~~

In one generation after 1531, under the mother symbol of Our Lady of Guadalupe, almost all of the native peoples of Mexico accepted Christianity. A new level of Christianity unfolded in the New World, exactly as it was fighting and dividing in the Old World. I believe that Christ takes on the face and features of each people God loves. In this case God knew that the face and features had to be feminine and compassionate, after centuries of a tyrannical Sun god and Catholic-Spanish machismo. The Lady of Guadalupe is the eternal feminine, the heart, hope, and strength of all new life revealed in a marvelous brown and pregnant image ¢â‚¬”to people who could not read.

The Mother believes in this little one, Juan Diego, who cannot believe in himself. She challenges him, yet she makes him special and beloved in a love that he can understand. She empowers him to face again and again the distant father (bishop), finally revealing the inner and transcendent woman on his own chest ¢â‚¬”and the disbelieving father (bishop) finally kneels at the boy ¢â‚¬â„¢s feet. No logic is offered, no theological subtleties ¢â‚¬”just December roses given and received. God knew all along what feminist theologians are only recently saying ¢â‚¬”that sometimes God ¢â‚¬â„¢s face must be feminine. Maybe it is only  ¢â‚¬Å“the Eternal Feminine ¢â‚¬  who will be able to heal the wars, the oppression, the mistrust and the status symbols that divide the children of God. (We have only started seeing women at international peace talks in very recent years. Could that be why they seldom succeeded in the past?)

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 325, day 337;
p. 216, day 226

Prayer:
Oh God, show me Your face.
~~

The twentieth century will be known for the emergence of the feminine mind into the mainstream. Before this time the feminine mind had never been in the mainstream of most cultures and religions, but was invariably demeaned or dismissed as inferior. However, in many of the erotic writings of the saints and mystics, and in Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ life, where he lived in a male body but with a beautifully feminine soul, we do find some fine ways to appreciate and love the feminine face of God.

Lady Julian of Norwich, my favorite mystic, calls Jesus  ¢â‚¬Å“our Mother. ¢â‚¬  She says,  ¢â‚¬Å“Jesus is our true mother in Whom we are endlessly carried and out of Whom we will never come. ¢â‚¬  For many Christians Mary became the archetypal image of the maternal face of God. It was the only way they could break through, especially if they never had a good man in their life. Many Catholics, especially in macho cultures, actually loved Mary much more than Jesus, or God  ¢â‚¬Å“the Father, ¢â‚¬  or the neutered Holy Spirit. It was bad theology, but predictable and brilliant psychology.

Adapted from The Maternal Face of God
(available in On Transformation: Collected Talks, Volume 1 (CD))
~~
Much of what we find in the eyes of Jesus must first have been in the eyes of Mary. The mother ¢â‚¬â„¢s vision is powerfully communicated to her children. Mary had to be his first  ¢â‚¬Å“spiritual director, ¢â‚¬  the one who humanly gave a life vision to Jesus, who taught Jesus how to believe. What was in Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ eyes was somehow first in hers. And in both of their eyes is what they both believe about God.

The Eternal Feminine holds us naked at each end of life: the Madonna first brings us into life, and then the grief-stricken mother of the Piet ƒ ¡ hands us over to death. She expands our capacity to feel, to enter the compassion and the pain of being human. She holds joy deeply, where death cannot get to it. Jesus learns by watching her, and he protects her Motherhood almost in his very last words (John 19:26) from the cross.

Not a word is spoken in either place, at his birth or at his death. Did you ever think about that? Mary simply trusts and experiences deeply. She is simply and fully present. Faith is not for overcoming obstacles; it is for experiencing them ¢â‚¬”all the way through!

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, pp.153-154, day 163
Sara Ruddick, in her book Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, speaks of the attentive love of a mother. In summary, Ruddick says mothers are characterized by attentive love. They have to keep watching this new life; they have to keep listening and adjusting to the needs of the child. It is necessary to recognize a new agenda with the growth of the child. If the mother cannot transform herself into attentive love, she quite simply cannot be a mother. She has to learn early on that life is about change, not about  ¢â‚¬Å“standing your ground, ¢â‚¬  which is not going to help a child. All growth is about changing and adjusting to what is needed at this moment, with these tears, and by this child. The mother cannot run to abstract truths. Philosophy and theology courses at that point would probably be boring to her.

I cannot help but think that the present persecution of the Religious Sisters by the Vatican reflects this difference. The Sisters, by and large, went toward human need and pain with  ¢â‚¬Å“attentive love. ¢â‚¬  The clergy, I being one of them, can easily stay in abstract theories and theologies and never get to love at all.

Adapted from The Maternal Face of God
(available in On Transformation: Collected Talks, Volume 1 (CD))
~~
THE COSMIC CHRIST
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Feast of the Ascension
I remember once seeing a painting in a European museum of the Ascension. It was rather huge, and at the very top, right beneath the frame, were the bare feet of Jesus as He ascended into heaven. It almost felt comic. Most of the painting was the apostles looking up in various poses of fear, confusion, and awe. It struck me that the Ascension was the final stage of His human life, and every human life, when the material world returns to its spiritual Source.

The Ascension is about the final reunion of what appeared to be separated for a while: Earth and Heaven, human and divine, matter and Spirit. They are again one, and it was important that we see ordinary human feet going into heaven! If the Christ is the archetype of the full human journey, now we know how it all resolves itself in glory.

 ¢â‚¬Å“So that where I am, you also will be. ¢â‚¬ 
~ John 14:3
~ Richard Rohr

Prayer:
My life is a joyful participation in the Cosmic Christ.
~~

To more fully understand the concept of the Cosmic Christ we must be ready to receive a mystery that is too good to be true. God is saving everything and everybody until, as Paul says,  ¢â‚¬Å“Christ will be all in all ¢â‚¬  (1 Corinthians 15:28). Or, as St. Augustine put it,  ¢â‚¬Å“In the end there will only be Christ, loving Himself. ¢â‚¬  Now this may sound like a shocking statement at first, but we are talking on a mystical level, about where history is going. Most of us did fairly well with the passion and death, but any comprehensive theology of what we mean by the Risen Christ has not really been developed.

Christ in His risen presence is pervading all of creation, all of humanity. The metaphor used in the New Testament is that we as Christians are the firstfruits, the adopted sons and daughters. Jesus is the Son and we are the inheritance, like the Jews were for history. To use the language of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians:  ¢â‚¬Å“Before the world began, we were chosen in Christ to live through love in His presence ¢â‚¬  (1:3).

Adapted from The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3)

Jesus is the microcosm; Christ is the macrocosm. There is a movement from Jesus to the Christ that you and I have to imitate and walk, as well. A lot of us have so fallen in love with the historical Jesus that we worship Him as such and stop there. We never really followed the same journey He made, which is the death and resurrection journey ¢â‚¬”Jesus died and Christ rose.

Unless we make the same movement that Jesus did ¢â‚¬”from His one single life to His risen and transformed state ¢â‚¬”we probably don ¢â‚¬â„¢t really understand, experientially, what we mean by the Christ ¢â‚¬”and how we are part of the deal! That is why He said,  ¢â‚¬Å“Follow me. ¢â‚¬  The Jesus that you and I participate in, and are graced by and redeemed by, is the risen Jesus Who has become the Christ, which is an inclusive statement about all of us and all of creation. Stay with this startling truth in the days ahead, and it will rearrange your mind and heart, and change the way you see everything, because you are the Christ Mystery too!

Adapted from The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3)