Wisdom of God through Richard Rohr

I've been catching up on all my emails including the Richard Rohr meditations that are posted to me.

Richard is so deep and gutsy and his meditations often hit me between the eyes. I've gathered a few of snippets to share with you, but don't read them all at once! Richard serves meat, not milk and it needs to be chewed over!

You came from God and will return to God. Your deepest DNA is divine. You are already a spiritual being—the much more difficult question is how to be human! That is what we have yet to learn. I believe that's why Jesus came as a human being: he didn't come to teach us how to go to heaven but to teach us how to be simple, loving human beings here on this earth. Some “non-religious” people do this much better than us “spiritual” folks.

Adapted from the CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action
(Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer (CD, DVD, MP3).

The contemplative mind is the most absolute assault on the secular world view, because it really is an altogether different mind. The ego cannot rely upon it to do its bidding.

The calculating mind of the “small self” reads everything in terms of personal advantage, short-term effort, and “What's in it for me?”—“How will I look?”, “How can I look good?”. It cannot see things in a new, imaginative, or disinterested way. It is still “all about me.”

All the great religions have taught that we need an utterly different perspective, a different vantage point, and a different starting point to see things as God sees them. It cannot start with “me,” or it will end with “me,” too.

Unfortunately, in the West prayer became something functional; something you did to achieve a desired effect—which puts you back in charge. As soon as you make prayer a way to get something, you’re not moving into a new state of consciousness. It's the same old consciousness. “How can I get God to do what I want God to do?” It's the egocentric self still deciding what it needs, but now often trying to manipulate God too. This is one reason religion is in such desperate straits today. It really isn't transforming people, but leaving them in their separated and egocentric state. It pulls God inside of my agenda instead of letting God pull me inside of his. This is still the small old self at work. What the Gospel is talking about is the emergence of “a whole new creation” and a “new mind,” as Paul variously calls it. Adapted from the CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action (Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer (CD, DVD, MP3) Prayer: Clear my mind for your truth.