Leaven of Denver

Richard Rohr in Denver
Originally published in E-Leaven, March 11, 2009, Issue 5
by Kathy Coffey

Sponsored by a local group of spiritual directors, Franciscan author Richard Rohr spoke January 16 & 17 at the Arvada Center for the Arts. A prophetic voice, he is author of many books such as SOUL BROTHERS, EVERYTHING BELONGS, and founder/director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. He began by praising what the lay group was doing. Re-positioning spiritual authority by-passes the whole struggle over ordination. Truth is no longer top-down, but experiential. No longer do we need titles, vestments and office for authority. Converging with this realignment is our current rediscovery of the contemplative stance.

Rohr spent a long time describing the dualistic mind, which simply can’t understand mysteries like the Trinity. The Asian mind deals better with contradiction and grey areas. Contemplation is impossible if we’re trying to prove we’re right. There’s too much agenda, adversarial energy, covering bases and attacking. When we oppose something, we become just like it.

The energetic Franciscan criticized our contemporary mistrust of poetry and right brain activity. For Christ, religion and poetry were the same thing; he left space to fill in the gaps. A classic example of his non-dualistic thinking is “God makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, the sun to shine on both…”

Fundamentalism, on the other hand, is a huge mental game played by people terrified of inner experience. Those who don’t have full inner authority rely on external forms. The dualistic mind divides experiences, knowing everything by comparison: for instance, the good guys and bad guys. Yet we all need a basis in clear dualistic thinking as children before we can proceed to non-dualistic.

Rohr devoted the rest of his time to the stages of spiritual development and how we move from one to another. He explained that the moments of enlightenment are great love and great suffering—the privileged portals for transformation because there’s no easy tool kit to fix such times.

The closest we can come to the core of Biblical faith is living with a dilemma, not demanding instant resolution. Scriptural faith meant living without knowing. Ironically, we’ve turned faith into certainty, having an answer for everything. We’ve never been taught that it’s OK to live without answers. The history of religion is violent because people filled with absolute certitude are dangerous.

While Rohr’s scaffolding was levels of development, he used these as launching points for a free-ranging discussion. He sees the main direction of maturation as moving away from the “lizard brain”—devoted to sex and survival, pleasure and safety. In early stages, people see everything as either/or, fight/flight and eliminate opposition—e.g., “if you’re not on my team, you’re excommunicated.”

Then, through a process of becoming powerless or an experience of shock, defeat or humiliation, they move to a detachment from self image which lives in the serenity and freedom of nonduality. They live in God’s image of themselves, which includes and loves both the good and the bad. God loves us where we’re broken—or it’s not grace.

Within that framework, these were some of Rohr’s marvelous nuggets:

The work of the homily is not to feed the ego, but to subvert it.
Transformation doesn’t happen in the old room or the new, but only on the insecure threshold.
With only two exceptions in scripture, people have theophanies outdoors—places beyond their control. Jesus goes to the desert, not the synagogue. John the Baptist goes to the river, not the temple.
Christianity should revere the body; we’re the only religion that believes God became enfleshed. Yet embodiment is where we hold our shame. Church leaders quickly learned that a way to control the laity was to make them ashamed of their bodies.
The Eucharist continues the incarnation, the embodiment of Christ in time and space. For the church’s first 1000 years, the corpus verum was the people; the corpus mysticum was the bread. Now we’ve reversed it—are we embarrassed by physicality?
Why have we localized all moral energy in one issue, abortion? Rohr’s answer: it asks nothing of priests or bishops, since it’s rarely a personal issue for them.
More suffering comes into the world from people taking offense than from giving offense.
Organized religion panders to the false self: “when you’re good, obedient, perfect, etc., you’re accepted.” Problem is, we never get there! Furthermore, the leadership arrogantly proclaims they have God in the back pocket—rather than being humble before mystery. Any attempt by any religion to try to control God is idolatry.
“Luminous dark” is our best teacher, since we don’t change until we must. That’s also why we learn more from silence than from “happy clappy religion.”
There is no wisdom if there’s no growth, no leadership in holding onto old beliefs.
If we spend our lives on diversionary tactics or self promotion, we never collapse into the naked self, “hidden with Christ in God.”
BIG mysteries must be put on a sacramental stage—where we can touch them, dance them, sculpt them: the arts are a way to experience the divine.

Rohr invited his audience to hope that someday we’ll reach the “holy fool” stage, doing a back float in the infinite sea of God’s love. Then we’ll have nothing to prove, and simply enjoy the freedom of God’s children.

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