“Talk is cheap” and “what you actually do” is far more telling than the words you speak.
Today’s message from Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation reminds us that the proof of our credibility lies in our actions more than our words. We make a far greater impact when our words and actions send a congruent message.
Authentic Experience and Transformation (excerpts)
Father Richard Rohr names transformation as the fruit of an authentic spiritual path:
I’ve been trying to facilitate transformation—conversion, change of consciousness, change of mind. The transformed mind lets us see how we process reality. It allows us to step back from our own personal processor so we can be more honest about what is really happening.
Transformation isn’t merely a change of morals, group affiliation, or belief system—although it might lead to that—but a change at the very heart of the way we receive and pass on each moment.
Authentic (spiritual) experience always leadstoward service, toward the depths, the margins, toward people suffering or considered outsiders.
Our motivation foundationally changes from security, status, and control to generosity, humility, and cooperation. [1]
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Authentic Transformation (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2016), CD. No longer available.
Washing out the toxins. Shedding the pains of our life and our world.
I’m not a crier by nature (or is it nurture?) so tears are not something I enjoy or receive comfort from. Yet, tears can be healing.
Below are excerpts from today’s meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation. Perhaps it will bring a welcome tear to your eyes. cac.org/daily-meditations/the-healing-of-tears/
The Healing of Tears
Friday, June 28, 2024
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. —Matthew 5:4
There’s a therapeutic, healing meaning to tears.
those who can grieve, those who can cry, are those who will understand.
Weeping over our sin and the sin of the world is an entirely different mode than self-hatred or hatred of others.
recognize the sad reality
That might seem ridiculous, and it is especially a stumbling block for many men in our culture. Young men have often been told not to cry because it will make us look vulnerable. So, we men—and many women too—stuff our tears.
He was falling apart, becoming his most radiant, his most needful. And little did I know, he was showing me how to do the same. [2]
To truly know anything, we must first feel everything. It takes courage to feel.
I’ve tried my damnedest not to feel yet those feelings won’t pass until I let them.
Why should we acknowledge our feelings?
Because “emotions ought to be allowed to run their course.They are not right or wrong; they are merely indicators of what is happening.”
Today’s excerpts come from Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Job’s Emotional Courage
Monday, June 24, 2024
Richard Rohr notes the lessons on grief and lament we can learn from Job:
why should I be happy about being born?”
“May that day be darkness. May God on high have no thought for it, may no light shine on it. May murk and deep shadow claim it for their own” (Job 3:4–5). It’s beautiful, poetic imagery. He’s saying: “Uncreate that day. Make it not a day of light, but darkness. Let clouds hang over it, eclipse swoop down on it.” Where God in Genesis speaks “Let there be light,” Job insists “Let there be darkness.”
if we’re willing to feel and participate in the pain of the world, part of us will suffer that kind of despair.
Many people learn that the hard way—through depression, addictions, irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course or to find some appropriate place to share them. Job is unafraid to feel his feelings. He acts and speaks them out. Emotions ought to be allowed to run their course. They are not right or wrong; they are merely indicators of what is happening.
I am convinced that people who do not feel deeply finally do not know deeply either.
The Center for Action and Contemplation provides another message of diversity and inclusion. Check out the excerpts from their message below and the two contributing authors as well.
The Spirit Is for All
Thursday, May 23, 2024 at cac.org/daily-meditations/the-spirit-is-for-all/
Author Lisa Sharon Harper describes the diversity of the early church:
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit rushed in and caused all those present to speak in languages that were not their own. Each person understood the others…. God established the confusion between languages at the Tower of Babel (see Genesis 11). At Pentecost, God brought the languages together, but not in the way we would imagine. God did not unite the world under one imperial language. Rather, the power of God made it possible to have unity in the midst of diversity. God made it possible for people to speak languages that were not their own and to understand one another.
In other words, all the cultural, economic, and gender barriers between them were broken down. [1]
Theologian Luke Powery names how the Holy Spirit’s presence is given for all, not just some:
No human voice or body is denied the presence and fire of God. Humans, regardless of ethnicity or race, speak a multiplicity of languages to reveal the diversity of God from the beginning, which is the vision of the end….
Pentecost… creates a new world. It is a new creation ignited by the Spirit. The Spirit may be “unsought” or “unwanted” but is “intent on making all things new.” [3] This includes new flesh, a new body for the people of God. [4]
References: [1] Lisa Sharon Harper, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right (New York: Waterbrook, 2016), 183–184.
[2] Zora Neale Hurston, The Sanctified Church (Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island, 1981), 91.
[3] Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, The Holy Spirit (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2015), 35.
[4] Luke A. Powery, Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2022), 70–71, 73, 75.
Are you lovable? Do you have a perspective worth sharing? Is the world better off for you being here?
Today’s meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation includes a challenge from Jacqui Lewis to “really see.” See an excerpt below and read the full meditation on cac.org.
jacquilewis.com
A Heart-Centered Revolution Excerpt
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis writes of the solidarity necessary to transform our culture and our world:
In order to live a moral life, a good life, an ubuntu life, we must commit to a life of love that means seeing all the things ..…
Friend, you are the only one standing where you stand, seeing what you see, with your vantage point, your story. You are right there for a reason: to have, as my dear friend Ruby Sales says, “hindsight, insight, and foresight.” I want us to learn to see, with our eyes wide open, how best to be healers and transformers. I want us to really see, to fully awaken to the hot-mess times we are in and to the incredible power we have to love ourselves into wellness….
I want us open to revelation, not afraid of it, and open to the ways that it will provoke us to believe assiduously in how lovable we each are, and in the love between us and among us because, actually, believing is seeing. [2]
[2] Jacqui Lewis, “Apocalypse Now: Love, Believing, and Seeing,” Oneing 10, no. 1, Unveiled (Spring 2022): 44–45. Available in print and PDF download.
Author Kaitlin Curtice writes about the sacred legacy of home:
May we always return to the places where the stories begin, to challenge them, to accept and honor them, and to whisper to ourselves and one another that we are always, always arriving.
Don’t forget, my love, to live.
Don’t forget to love yourself, all of you, from every season and every place, because you never know when they will come knocking for a cup of coffee and an overdue hug.
“Felicia Murrell acknowledges that our first homes are not always safe …
How are you preparing a home of unconditional acceptance for yourself?“
Today’s Center for Action And Contemplation message offers a provocative post on where we can find our true home. Check out this beautifully written message by Felicia Murrell and her quotes from The Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum.
“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.”
Felicia Murrell acknowledges that our first homes are not always safe:
For some, home is terror, a place to flee with no desire to return or revisit.
Often, when we think of home, we think only of an external place,
Love is home.
Home is both an external dwelling and an internal abode. Home is the place where we belong, our place of acceptance and welcome. There, in this shame and judgment-free embryonic cocoon of love, we practice unconditional acceptance; we learn to relate to ourselves and the world around us.
How are you preparing a home of unconditional acceptance for yourself?
“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.” [3]
[3] Joel Schumacher, The Wiz: Screenplay, adapted from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (New York: Studio Duplicating Service, 1977).
Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation offer another provocative post at their Daily Meditation site: cac.org/daily-meditations/the-departure-and-the-return/
Below are a few excerpts that especially interest me, and hopefully you as well.
“We are created with an inner drive and necessity that sends all of us looking for our True Self, our true home, whether we know it or not. This journey is a spiral and never a straight line. …
We dare not try to fill our souls and minds with numbing addictions, diversionary tactics, or mindless distractions. (We are) found, precisely in the depths of everything, even and maybe especially in the deep fathoming of our fallings and failures. …
If we go to the depths of anything, we’ll begin to knock upon something substantial, “real,” and with a timeless quality. We’ll move from the starter kit of “belief” to an actual inner knowing. This is most especially true if we have ever (1) loved deeply, (2) accompanied someone through the mystery of dying, or (3) stood in genuine life-changing awe before mystery, time, or beauty. …
Like Odysseus, we leave from Ithaca and we come back to Ithaca, but now it is fully home because all is included and nothing wasted or hated: even the dark parts are used in our favor. … What else could homecoming be?
Poet C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) expressed this understanding most beautifully in his famous poem “Ithaca”:
Ithaca has now given you the beautiful voyage. Without her, you would never have taken the road. With the great wisdom you have gained on your voyage, with so much of your own experience now, you must finally know what Ithaca really means. [1] “
References: [1] See C. P. Cavafy, “Ithaca,” in The Complete Poems of Cavafy, trans. Rae Dalven (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), 36–37. Paraphrased by Richard Rohr.
Fr. Richard Rohr, and his staff, remind us that “Now, in the last season of my life, I realize that what’s in front of me is still largely darkness—but it doesn’t matter anymore.”
God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you. —Meister Eckhart, sermon on 1 John 4:9
Father Richard describes the spiritual discipline of detachment as the practice of “letting go”:
In the larger-than-life people I have met, I always find one common denominator: in some sense, they have all died before they died—and thus they are larger than death, too! Please think about that. At some point, they were led to the edge of their private resources, and that breakdown, which surely felt like dying, led them into a larger life. They went through a death of their various false selves and came out on the other side knowing that death could no longer hurt them. They fell into the Big Love and the Big Freedom—which many call God.
Throughout most of history, the journey through death into life was taught in sacred space and ritual form, which clarified, distilled, and shortened the process. Today, many people don’t learn how to move past their fear of diminishment, even when it stares them down or gently invites them. This lack of preparation for the “pass over,” the absence of training in grief work and letting go, and our failure to entrust ourselves to a bigger life, have contributed to our culture’s spiritual crisis.
All great spirituality is about letting go. Instead, we have made it to be about taking in, attaining, performing, winning, and succeeding. True spirituality echoes the paradox of life itself. It trains us in both detachment and attachment: detachment from the passing so we can attach to the substantial. But if we do not acquire good training in detachment, we may attach to the wrong things, especially our own self-image and its desire for security. [1]
Each time I learn to let go of what I thought was necessary for my own happiness, I invariably find myself in a larger place, a larger space, a deeper union, a greater joy. I’m sorry I can’t prove that to you ahead of time. We only know it after the fact. I used to read every book I could as a young man thinking if I understood good theology, good philosophy, good psychology, I’d know how to live the so-called perfect life and it would show me how to open the door in front of me. Now, in the last season of my life, I realize that what’s in front of me is still largely darkness—but it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s because letting go has taught me that I can look back, not forward, back at the past of my life and I can truthfully say, “What have I ever lost by dying? What have I ever lost by losing?” I have fallen upward again and again. By falling I have found. By letting go I have discovered, and I find myself in these later years of my life still surprised that that is true. [2]
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 199.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2010).
Truth-telling can be a very difficult journey on the way to freedom. —Jacqui Lewis, Fierce Love
CAC friend Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis writes about the ways both prophetic and personal truth-telling challenge us and the systems to which we belong:
In my faith tradition we call that speaking the truth—in love. As a clergyperson, I have many truth-telling strategies. Sometimes I’m gentle, needing to take good care of the one who is listening. Sometimes I’ve got my fists in the air while marching for the truth, for justice and liberation. Always my intention is to free up the energy that’s caught in the story, to liberate myself and the other with whom I’m in relationship to find a way forward. Can we win this action? Will the politician change policy or give in to demands? Will the congregant or colleague hear my point of view, and can I hear theirs? Can I change the story in the public square in a compelling way and open eyes, hearts, and minds to new worldviews? Will [my husband] John and I become stronger because of this difficult talk? Telling the truth is an act of love, an act of resistance, an act of courage. Its end is liberation, freedom, and, if possible, reconciliation. But there can be no reconciliation without truth.…
The historian Howard Zinn wrote, “The most revolutionary act one can engage in is […] to tell the truth.” [1] Indeed! I think the revolutionary part of truth is that it can free us and those around us to live with greater certainty about what is real, even when it hurts, because we are no longer shackled to the energy lying requires of us. Lying demands the continuation of the lie and the amplification of the lie to keep the truth hidden.… Telling the truth creates ripples of authenticity that change the world.…
I believe truth is revolutionary; it’s part of the work of fierce love. Truth makes a personal, spiritual, ethical, and moral demand upon us. It wants to be said, known, told. It hurts and it’s inconvenient, but it’s essential to our well-being. It cleanses our spiritual palate and restores our souls. Truth is a drink of water to a parched traveler. It lubricates relationships. It liberates us from bondage. It builds trust and connections. It’s the beginning of authentic living and joy. Truth eludes us at times, and we have to pursue it. Truth invites us to be honest about who we are, about our flawed-but-beautiful, broken-but-healing selves. Truth leads to reconciliation and peace; without truth, there is no peace. In the light of truth, we are able to honor our journey and love ourselves. Truth-telling is a spiritual discipline that requires practice. We must not lie to others and, as Fyodor Dostoevsky suggested, we mustn’t lie to ourselves. Being honest with ourselves about ourselves is to love ourselves unconditionally, to love ourselves fiercely.
[1] Howard Zinn, “Marx in Soho: A Play on History,” in Three Plays: The Political Theater of Howard Zinn (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), 115.
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