I love Richard Rohr - if I had been exposed to this kind of spirituality in the Catholic Church, I may not have found the idea of God so absurd. When I read Rohr, it's easy for me to substitute more universal language for the traditional terms and not lose the meaning.

For example, he says, "When your mental judgmental grid and all its commentaries are placed aside, God finally has a chance to get through to you, because your pettiness is at last out of the way." As I read this, in my head I read "love" in place of "God," and nothing is lost in doing so.

His message is about the essential union of spirituality, as we often find in Eastern traditions, not the individual separation from "Source" we find in Western religion. This is a much more welcoming and inclusive perspective.

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation - The Narrow Road

Meditation 39 of 52

Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy - Seventh Theme: Reality is paradoxical and complementary. Non-dual thinking is the highest level of consciousness. Divine union, not private perfection, is the goal of all religion (Goal).

Contemplation is meeting as much reality as we can handle in its most simple and immediate form, without filters, judgments, and commentaries. Now you see why it is so rare and, in fact, “the narrow road that few walk on” (Matthew 7:14). The only way you can contemplate is by recognizing and relativizing your own compulsive mental grids—your practiced ways of judging, critiquing, blocking, and computing everything.

This is what we are trying to do by practicing contemplative prayer, and people addicted to their own mind will find contemplation most difficult, if not impossible. Much that is called thinking is simply the ego’s stating of what it prefers and likes—and resistances to what it does not like. Narcissistic reactions to the moment are not worthy of being called thinking. Yet that is much of our public and private discourse.

When your mental judgmental grid and all its commentaries are placed aside, God finally has a chance to get through to you, because your pettiness is at last out of the way. Then Truth stands revealed! You will begin to recognize that we all carry the Divine Indwelling within us and we all carry it equally. That will change your theology, your politics, and your entire worldview. In fact, it is the very birth of the soul.

Adapted from CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action

(Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer (CD, DVD, MP3)

The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available 

in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, And . . . .

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Fr. Richard Rohr - Simplicity as a Path to Social Justice

Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fr. Richard's teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy--practices of contemplation and lived kenosis (self-emptying), expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.
The passage below is from his daily meditations email, which one can sign up for at his site. He is wonderful teacher of the Christian dharma.

Simplicity As Central
Meditation 8 of 51

We are all complicit in and benefitting from what Dorothy Day called “the dirty rotten system.” That’s not condemning anybody; it’s condemning everybody because we are all complicit in and enjoying the fruits of domination and injustice. (Where were your shirts and underwear made? What wars allow us to have cheap food and gas?) Usually the only way to be really non-complicit in the system is to choose to live a very simple life. That’s the only way out of the system!

Thus most of the great wisdom teachers like Gandhi, Saints Francis and Clare, Simone Weil, Dorothy Day, Jesus and Buddha—lived voluntarily simple lives. That’s almost the only way to stop bending the knee before the system. This is a truly transfigured life in cultures which today are almost always based on climbing, consumption, and competition (1 John 2:15-17).

Once we idealize social climbing, domination of others, status symbols, power, prestige, and possessions, we are part of a never-ending game that is almost impossible to escape. It has its own inner logic that is self-maintaining, self-perpetuating, and self-congratulating, as well as elitist and exclusionary. It will never create a just or happy world, yet most Christians never call it into question. Jesus came to free us from this lie, which will never make us happy anyway, because it’s never enough, and we never completely win.

Adapted from Spiral of Violence: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
(CD, DVD, MP3)
The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available
in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, And . . .

Fr. Richard Rohr - Jesus Is Smaller than Christ

I post a lot of Buddhist material here, so when possible, I want to try to balance that with wisdom teachings from other traditions. Today, I offer this "daily meditation" from Father Richard Rohr, one of the next generation of teachers in the mystical tradition of Christianity (following Father Thomas Keating and Brother David Steindl-Rast).

Fr. Rohr is the author of Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation (2004), From Wild Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality (2005), The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (2009), and Unitive Consciousness: Beyond Gender (2013, An Essay, Kindle only).

Jesus Is Smaller Than Christ 

Fr. Richard Rohr
Meditation 21 of 53

To understand Jesus in a whole new way, you must first know that Christ is not his last name, but the pre-existent Christ Consciousness that existed from all eternity (Colossians 1:15-20) and his omnipresent identity after the Resurrection—which now includes humanity and all of creation along with it (Ephesians 1:9-11). Jesus became the Christ (Acts 2:36) by his own process of transformation, and now wonderfully includes us in this sweeping, historical, and victorious identity!

That’s why Paul will then create a shocking new term: “the body of Christ,” which clearly now includes all of us (1 Corinthians 12:12-30) and all of creation, too (Romans 8:18-21). What hope this offers everything!

So think of the good Jesus, who has to die to what seems like him—so that he can rise as the larger Christ. It is not a “bad” man who must die on the cross, but a good man (false self)—so that he can be a much larger man (True Self), or Christ. Jesus dies, Christ rises. The false self is not a bad self; it is just not the true self. It is inadequate and small, symbolized by Jesus’ human body, which he readily lets go of.

~ Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 191

The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, and...: Daily Meditations