Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Thirty-four

Order, Disorder, Reorder:
Part Three

Repairing and Restoring
Thursday,  August 27, 2020

Barbara Holmes, a member of our Living School faculty, writes about what I’m calling Reorder as a cosmological fact. When we return to the original Order—the unbroken unity of all of creation with and in God—with new eyes, we see the gifts of abundance, diversity, and interconnectedness always available to us.

Any community that we construct on earth will be only a small model of a universe whose community includes billions of stars and planetary systems. Are we alone? We don’t know, but if we don’t know how to become a community with our own species, how shall we find harmony with other life forms in the cosmos? Our ideas of community begin with fragmentation, difference, and disparity seeking wholeness.

Our beloved community is an attempt to hot-glue disparate cultures, language, and ethnic origins into one mutually committed whole. The universe tells a completely different story—that everything is enfolded into everything. [1] . . .

Even though the languages of the new physics and cosmology discard mechanistic understandings of the universe in favor of potential, we love order. We see it where it doesn’t exist and impose it through our narratives. Everything that we do conceals the unity that seems to be intrinsic to our life space. We take pictures of objects that seem to be outside of self, we demarcate national boundaries, we align with friends and break with enemies, we give and receive in what seem to be neat sequential packets of life and experience.

By contrast, [physicist David] Bohm [1917–1992] described the universe as a whole or implicate order that is “our primary reality . . . the subtle and universal reservoir of all life, the wellspring of all possibility, and the source of all meaning.” [2] The life space, Bohm wrote, is the . . . order that unfolds as a visible and discernable aspect of this unseen wholeness. . . .

We are one, and our wars and racial divisions cannot defeat the wholeness that lies just below the horizon of human awareness. . . . Diversity may not be a function of human effort or justice. It may just be the sea in which we swim. To enact a just order in human communities is to reclaim a sense of unity with divine and cosmological aspects of the life space. As Hebrew Scripture scholar Terence Fretheim suggests, the “Let us” discourse in Genesis [1:26] is a statement of the community of God. [3]

God is creating and ordering the universe, but does not do it alone. . .

Perhaps in ways that we don’t yet understand, the struggle for justice on many fronts is an enfolding image of the whole—the embodiment of a holistic and unfragmented community. This community . . . would not be the logical outcome of progressive movements toward an ascertainable external goal, but would be the sum of past, present, and future expectations and disappointments. Then the community-called-beloved becomes all that we can and cannot conceive, all that lies beyond the horizon of apprehension but is available to us as part of the matrix of wholeness.

Gateway to Action & Contemplation:
What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?

Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.

Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer.

Story from Our Community:
​I have always, when stymied, had to deal with my temper and anger. I can cut someone to shreds verbally. I always regret it, but have been unable to stop so many of these false self behaviors. I am now taking Fr. Richard’s Immortal Diamond course about the false and the true self. Amazingly, I have had many situations lately that normally would upset me a lot. However, I have not become upset. In fact, I am halfway through dealing calmly with the situation, before I am aware that what is happening would normally leave me totally frazzled. I know it is God—the Trinity—acting in my life. I have never been able to do this before. —Carol K.

Share your own story with us.

[1] David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Routledge: 2002, ©1980), 225.

[2] Diarmuid Ó Murchú, Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics, rev. ed. (Crossroad: 2004), 62.

[3] Terence E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Abingdon Press: 2005), 42–43.

Adapted from Barbara A. Holmes, Race and the Cosmos: An Invitation to View the World Differently, 2nd ed. (CAC Publishing: 2020), 194-195, 196.

Image credit: Garden of Wish Fulfilment (detail), Arshile Gorki, 1944, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon Portugal.

News from the CAC

Admissions are now open for the Living School for Action and Contemplation

Are you ready to come alive in service of the world? The Living School is an immersive experience, going deep to the roots of faith to nurture a generative and compassionate life. Our faculty—Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley, Barbara Holmes, Brian McLaren, and Richard Rohr—guide students through a formation experience rooted in a Christian lineage of contemplative practice, rigorous study, and meaningful engagement. The two-year program includes online course work and four gatherings in New Mexico. Apply today!

The Wisdom Pattern

Understanding and embracing the pattern of order, disorder and reorder can give us hope in difficult times. With this new lens, Richard Rohr gives us the courage to push through great chaos to find a new way of being in the world. Learn more about ways to trust we will find reorder in The Wisdom Pattern.

Interior Castle with James Finley and Mirabai Starr

Be inspired to see God in all things, to find hope and love even amidst suffering—in the cosmos, nature, oneself, and others with Interior Castle, an 8-week online course with James Finley and Mirabai Starr. Learn why Teresa of Ávila is a revered spiritual writer and teacher and discuss course content with fellow learners from around the world. Apply for financial assistance by Aug. 26. Registration closes Sept. 2 or when full.

Action & Contemplation

2020 Daily Meditations Theme

What does God ask of us? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. —Micah 6:8

Franciscan Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation. If we pray but don’t act justly, our faith won’t bear fruit. And without contemplation, activists burn out and even well-intended actions can cause more harm than good. In today’s religious, environmental, and political climate our compassionate engagement is urgent and vital.

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Inspiration for this week's banner image: Only the whole self is ever ready for the whole God, so Reorder always involves moving beyond the dualistic mind toward a more spacious, contemplative knowing. —Richard Rohr