October 20, 2020

On the first day of Fall (September 21), I sent you a letter with the heading “Some simple but urgent guidance to get us through these next months.”

Many responded that we should continue with such guidance in this apocalyptic time [from the Ancient Greek apokalúptō,which means to disclose or reveal].

It seems we now require some necessary falling, so that is what I hope to share with you whenever an inspiration arises. I would like to entitle this series of communications Letters from Outside the Camp. If my meaning is not immediately apparent, I expect it will become so in the coming months.

Many of you are probably familiar with my use of the paradigm of Order > Disorder > Reorder to describe the universal pattern of change and transformation. After my last letter, a CAC staff member pointed out to me that I tend to apply this paradigm in one of two ways.

In the first case, I try to show Americans (and other nationalities by association) how to spiritually thrive amid the DISORDER of Empire and the Imperial Church, a version of Christianity that has allowed itself to be co-opted and distorted by the illusions of “Empire.” Regardless of whether you are Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant, this is what most of us were handed—largely without knowing what we were being given. Consider: the wholesale toleration and support of the enslavement of human beings, the Doctrine of Discovery that allowed us to colonize and oppress indigenous peoples, the deep Disorder of two World Wars and the Holocaust, the perpetuation of Jim Crow and white supremacy by major cultures of denial. Only in hindsight, as we are able to chart the arc of history and recognize the depth of our blindness, do the consequences of this co-option become so humiliatingly apparent.

In the second case, I use this paradigm to encourage and guide those who are ready to move out of Disorder and into REORDER. In my various books and meditations, I often refer to this as the Second Half of Life, or Resurrection, Recovery, Salvation, the Nonviolent Life, the Third Way, or just Enlightenment. I’m afraid this group has always been a minority in every age, as conservatives tend to hide in a presumed perfect Order and progressives often get lost in a perpetual Disorder that lacks any Center. To use Jesus’ metaphor, when one blind person tries to lead another, they both fall into the pit (Matthew 15:14). I am not saying all people were lost for the last 2000 years—not at all; but, I am saying we have failed to reveal to the world more than a pittance of the great Good News that is the Gospel. They will surely be able to accuse me of the same 2000 years hence. God always fills in the gaps by grace and mercy and this will never change. There seems to be no utopian age.

But now, what I will try to do is lead people consciously and lovingly into a necessary and conscious DISORDER—which is part of what I think John Lewis meant by “Good Trouble” and the Hebrew prophets by EXILE.

Below is an updated version of a brief meditation I wrote and offered to our CAC staff shortly after the pandemic began this past March. At that point, I suspected this might be What the Pandemic Is Saying to the World.

Humanity, you are all One.
You are one beloved community,
and you are one global sickness.
You are all contagious—and always have been,
unconsciously infecting and yet able to also bless one another.

There are no higher and lower in this world.
There is no smart or stupid; no totally right or totally wrong.
The only meaningful division is between those who serve
and those who allow themselves to be served.
All the rest is temporary posturing.

Many to whom you look for power and leadership
have shown themselves to have empty hands, minds, and hearts.
We are bereft of all satisfying explanations,
all ledgers of deserving and undeserving.
There are no perfect answers or absolute heroes.
We must all wear a mask to protect the other from “me.”

Don’t play the victim!
Victimhood is always a waste of time—God’s time and yours.
Instead, try to learn the important lessons.
We are all in the same elementary school now.
Here, we must learn to stand in two different places
and to change places often.
The served must also be the servants,
and the servants must also be the served.

Just stay in the eternal circle of the Suffering and the Servants.
Christians call it the Body of Christ.
We are not the first or the last generation
that gets to suffer and to serve on this earth.

A great deal has happened since the beginning days of the pandemic, yet the fundamental reality of humanity’s interconnectedness remains as true now as it has been at every moment in our history. But, as Pope Francis said in his recent encyclical (Fratelli Tutti [1] or All Brothers—and Sisters by implication),

If everything is connected, it is hard to imagine that this global disaster is unrelated to our way of approaching reality, our claim to be absolute masters of our own lives and of all that exists.

DISORDER is already upon us by reason of our planet, our history, our politics, our economy, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the widespread increase in mental and emotional unhealth. Our job is to make “Good Trouble”—and probably even “Necessary Trouble”—so that humanity can spiritually and politically mature.

It is about falling—but, as always, falling upward.
 

Richard Rohr

[1] Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 34.

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