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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Forty-two

Ways of Knowing

Doing the Homework
Sunday, October 13, 2019

Contemplation is an entirely different way of knowing reality that has the power to move us beyond mere ideology and dualistic thinking. Mature religion will always lead us to some form of prayer, meditation, or contemplation to balance out our usual calculating mind. Believe me, it is major surgery, and we must practice it for years to begin to rewire our egocentric responses. Contemplation is work, so much so that most people give up after their first futile attempts. But the goal of contemplation is not success, only the continuing practice itself. The only people who pray well are those who keep praying! In fact, continued re-connecting is what I mean by prayer, not occasional consolations that we may experience.

The capacity for nondual knowing that is developed through contemplation allows us to be happy, rooted in God, comfortable with paradox and mystery, and largely immune to mass consciousness and its false promises. This is true wisdom knowing, and it is the job of elders to pass it on to the next generation so we need not start at zero.

Contemplation is meeting as much reality as we can handle in its most simple and immediate form—without filters, judgments, or commentaries. The ego doesn’t trust this way of seeing, which is why it is so rare, “a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:14, New Jerusalem Bible). The only way we can contemplate is by recognizing and relativizing our own compulsive mental grids—our practiced ways of judging, critiquing, blocking, filtering, and computing everything. But we first have to catch ourselves in the act and recognize how habitual our egoic, dualistic thinking is. Each person must do this homework for themselves. It cannot be achieved by reading someone else’s conclusions.

When our judgmental mind and all its commentaries are placed aside, God finally has a chance to get through to us, because our pettiness and self-protective filters are at last out of the way. Then Truth stands revealed on its own—quite simply—and we will experience a rebirth of the soul.

Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And . . . : Daily Meditations (Franciscan Media: 2013), 398, 407.

Image credit: Tableau No. 2/Composition No. VII (detail), Piet Mondrian, 1913, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York.

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News from the CAC

New Faculty

We are delighted to announce the addition of two faculty members to the Center for Action and Contemplation: Barbara Holmes and Brian McLaren. Many of our Living School students and Daily Meditation readers are already familiar with their powerful teaching.

Author of Joy Unspeakable, Dr. Holmes is committed to the struggle for justice, healing the human spirit, and the art of relevant and radical creativity. As Richard says, “There are people who talk about God, and there are people who know God. Barbara is the latter.”

A former pastor and English teacher, McLaren seeks to nurture "a new kind of Christianity" that is just and generous and collaborates with people of all faiths for the common good. Brian engages in contemplative activism focused on caring for the planet, seeking justice for the poor, and working for peace.

We look forward to hearing from Barbara, Brian, and the rest of our faculty—Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, and James Finley—at the final CONSPIRE conference in May 2020. Sign-up to receive more detailed event information when it’s available.

Old and New: An Evolving Faith

2019 Daily Meditations Theme

As you witness so much division, fear, and suffering in our world, you may wonder what path—if any—there is toward healing and hope. Perhaps your church or faith has been important to you, but now you may be questioning if it is still a trustworthy or relevant guide. Does Christianity have anything of value left to offer?

Franciscan Richard Rohr suggests that there are good, beautiful, and true gems worth holding on to. At the same time, there are many unhelpful and even harmful parts of what has passed for Christianity that we need to move beyond. In his Daily Meditations, Father Richard helps us mine the depths of this tradition, discerning what to keep and what to transcend.

Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Click the video to learn more about the theme and to find meditations you may have missed. We hope that reading these messages is a contemplative, spiritual practice for you.

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Inspiration for this week's banner image: Perhaps it was the strangeness of the setting, perhaps it was the power of the moment, but, as I stood there, those stones began to speak. It was a clacking sound, a clattering sound, like the fluttering of wings, the descent of birds, the pounding of a hundred thousand hooves across the frozen tundra. —Kent Nerburn