Color-Coding Republican Comments on Rape - The GOP Rape Advisory Chart

Thanks to  Progressive Participatory Enaction for originally sharing this disturbing graphic.

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

Glimpse of the Day - Our True Nature

Whatever our lives are like, our buddha nature is always there. And it is always perfect. We say that not even the buddhas can improve it in their infinite wisdom, nor can sentient beings spoil it in their seemingly infinite confusion.

Our true nature could be compared to the sky, and the confusion of the ordinary mind to clouds. Some days the sky is completely obscured by clouds. When we are down on the ground, looking up, it is very difficult to believe that there is anything else there but clouds. Yet we have only to fly in a plane to discover above the clouds a limitless expanse of clear blue sky. From up there, the clouds we assumed were everything seem so small and so far away down below.

We should always try to remember: The clouds are not the sky and do not “belong” to it. They only hang there and pass by in their slightly ridiculous and nondependent fashion. And they can never stain or mark the sky in any way.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."

~ Marcus Aurelius

Tags: men, Good Men, quotes, Marcus Aurelius