Becoming Agents of Change

Arab-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye recalls a transformative, unexpected occasion of generous acceptance:

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal … I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. “Help,” said the flight service person. “Talk to her.… We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment.… I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother … and would ride next to her.… She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought … why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free beverages … and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

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“The best way to stay hopeful is to do hopeful things.“

– Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit Priest, Poet, and Activist

This past week I revisited a book called Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings.  It is marvelous.  I have not finished it yet, but his poetry and prose have claimed my imagination.  Over the years, I have come into contact with people who knew him personally and said that he was the real deal.  He fought against the Vietnam War, mopped hospital floors on his days off, protested, prayed, wrote poetry, and so much more.

In many ways, he was one of the best examples of what a Christian could look like in the modern age.

He was also known for saying, “If you follow Jesus, you better look good on wood!”  By this, he was referencing that if you follow Jesus, you better expect to be crucified for it.  Dan seemed willing to take his joke seriously.

Mending the World

CAC teacher Mirabai Starr writes of Judaism’s affirmation of tikkun olam—human participation in the world’s restoration: 

There is a kabbalistic story in which the boundless, formless, unified Holy One wished to know its Holy Self, and so it contracted and poured itself into vessels. But the Divine Radiance was too much for these limited containers, and so they shattered, scattering shards of broken light across the universe, giving birth to all that is.

This sounds like modern cosmology, which also asserts that the universe expanded from an exceedingly high-density state, resulting in the full spectrum of material phenomena. I’ve dubbed this vessel-shattering version of the origins of the universe “the Jewish big bang.” It comes from a teaching Rabbi Isaac Luria offered in the sixteenth century to illustrate how form arises from formlessness, how light gets trapped inside darkness, and how the Holy One needs us to participate in the unfolding goodness of creation. Humans, as the teaching goes, were created to excavate and lift the shards of light from the dense predicament of existence and restore the vessels to wholeness.

In mystical Judaism, this teaching is known as tikkun olam, the mending of the world. How are we to do this? The answer is: with every act of chesed (loving-kindness) and tzedakah (generosity). It means observing the directives found in the Torah…. It means cultivating a contemplative practice to nurture intimacy with the Divine, making an effort to welcome the stranger and care for the Earth. It means bending close to listen for what it is our sisters and brothers on the margins might need (and being willing to forgo our notions of what “helping” looks like, since our preconceived ideas of service sometimes get in the way of authentically serving). It means pressing our ear to the land to hear the heartbeat of the Mother, learning to read her pulses, diagnose her ailments, intuit healing remedies. It means slowing down enough to let the pain of the world all the way into our hearts, allowing our hearts to break open, and acting from that broken-open space. It means stepping up with humility, with curiosity, with love. [1]

Starr encouraged students at the CAC’s Living School: 

Our task is to mend the broken world. This is our job: to mend this shattered vessel, to repair the brokenness of the world. How do we do this? You might ask yourself this every single day, if you’re anything like me. We do this through every act of loving kindness, every act of chesed. And we do this through every act of tzedakah, which is, for lack of a better translation, generosity, hospitality. It’s sometimes translated as charity; it’s an offering of ourselves, even when it’s not convenient and not comfortable. The nice thing about Judaism, and this is true in Islam as well, is that our loving, kind thoughts count too. The actions [count], certainly, of course, but our loving thoughts make a difference. They help mend the world. [2]

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“We do injury to children if we bring them up in a narrow Christianity that prevents them from ever becoming capable of perceiving the treasures of purest gold found in non-Christian civilizations.“

– Simone Weil, French Philosopher

Only an insecure faith is incapable of seeing the good beyond its own borders or boundaries.  A faith that is grounded and charitable is able to notice the beauty of another way of life.

For Simone to connect this sentiment with the formation of young children, drives home the point even more.  Tribalistic approaches to Christianity that exclude and demonize the Other are the antithesis of being Christlike charity and hospitality.

Joan Chittister, Murshid Saadi Shakur Chishti, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, writing from their traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, believe we all share equally in God’s image, even amid our joint history of violence. 

All our traditions—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—teach that the human race and every human being are created in the image of God. Rabbinic midrash says that when Caesar puts his image on a coin, each coin comes out identical—but that when the One who is beyond all rulers puts the divine image on the coin of every human being, each “coin” comes out unique.…

Today, the various Caesars of our planet insist that we must fit into a single mold, the mold of uniformity and death.… The pain of these deaths and of this destruction drives some of the children of Hagar, through Ishmael, and some of the children of Sarah, through Isaac, to forget that they are all children of Abraham. That we are all children of Noah and his wife, Naamah, who suffered through the danger that human violence imposes on all who dwell on our planet.…

If we are to celebrate [the Infinite God], we must in the same breath resist the idolatrous Caesars who think to impose upon us their murders. In our banks, our kindergartens, our picket lines and voting booths, as we worship in our graceful sacred buildings and in our quiet forests and on our frenzied streets, through the seasons of our joy and of our sorrow—in all these, we must remember to welcome ourselves, each other, and all who begin as strangers into the Tent that is open to all. [1]

Richard Rohr describes how each person is created in the Divine image, and is called to participate in the process of growing into God’s likeness: 

What does it mean that everything created—everything our eyes can see or have ever seen—is somehow a partial reflection of the image of God? How can something be diverse as all of creation, and at the same time say that reality is more one than many? We say it of God, and we say it of everything our eyes have ever seen.

If we don’t view everything as created in the image of God, what happens? We start picking and choosing: well, that’s created in the image of God, but that is not. But everything, everything, is created in the image of God.

What, then, does likeness mean? In the early centuries of Christianity, the Church Fathers concluded: image was our objective, unquestionable creation as a child or image of God. Likeness was our personal appropriation of that reality. Two people might equally be images of God, but perhaps only one chooses to become kind, forgiving, inclusive, accepting, and patient, full of the great virtues. We already have image, but we grow in likeness. There is a dynamism toward growth, universality, and an infinite love that we can’t get rid of. [2]

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“What is difficult or impossible in one paradigm is easy, even trivial, in another.“

– Joel Barker, Author and Futurist

Over the years, I have come to appreciate the various developmental theories that study how we change and grow throughout our lifetimes.  More than a few focus on our worldviews/value systems and reaffirm this comment from Barker…

Sometimes what we need is not so much a quick fix, but an upgrade on the way that we see the world around us.  Upgrade the way we see things, and the solution may have been blatantly in front of us the whole time.

Imagine you have a screw that needs tightening, but you have no screwdriver.  Perhaps your worldview demands that you find the right screwdriver.  However, if you upgrade and are willing to use something other than a screwdriver, perhaps you can use the dime in your pocket or the knife in your drawer to tighten it.  Turns out, you didn’t need to have a screwdriver to tighten the screw!

Richard Rohr affirms God’s plan to draw all of creation into the intimacy and celebration of Love: 

Jesus often uses the metaphor of a wedding to describe what God is doing—preparing and drawing us toward deeper intimacy, belonging, and union. The Eastern Fathers of the Church affirmed this belief; they called it the process of “divinization” (theosis). They saw it as the whole point of the incarnation and the very meaning of salvation. The much more practical and rational church in the West seldom used the word divinization. It was just too daring for us, despite the rather direct teachings from Peter (1 Peter 1:4–5; 2 Peter 1:4) and Jesus in John’s Gospel: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:20–21).

Jesus came to give us the courage to trust and allow our inherent union with God, and he modeled it for us in this world. Union is not merely a place we go to later—if we are good. It is a place of deep goodness that we naturally exist inside of—now.

For persons—and for creation—transformation must be real and in this world. Paul’s most used phrase, “en Christo,” suggests a shared embodiment. The Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12) then takes the form of a meal so we can be reminded frequently of our core identity (1 Corinthians 11:23–26). [1] As Augustine preached, “We are what we eat! We are what we drink!” [2]

I am convinced this development of unitive consciousness is the true Second Coming of Christ. Our union with God will finally be experienced and enjoyed, despite our relentless resistance and denial. When God wins, God wins! God doesn’t lose. Apokatastasis (universal restoration) has been promised to us (Revelation 3:20–21) as the real message of the Universal Christ, the Alpha and the Omega of all history (Revelation 1:4, 21:6, 22:13). It will be a win-win for God—and surely for humanity! What else would a divine victory look like?

The clear goal and direction of biblical revelation is toward full, mutual indwelling. We see this movement toward union as God walks in the garden with naked Adam and Eve and “all the array” of creation (Genesis 2:1). The theme finds its shocking climax in the realization that “the mystery is Christ within you, your hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). As John excitedly puts it, “You know him because he is with you and he is in you!” (John 14:17). The eternal mystery of incarnation will have finally met its mark, and “the marriage feast of the Lamb will begin” (Revelation 19:7–9). History isn’t heading toward Armageddon or a “Left Behind” conclusion. Jesus says, in any number of places, it will be a great wedding banquet. [3]

Love Now and Later

CAC staff member Mike Petrow connects God’s plan for the universal healing of the world with the prophetic work we do: 

Father Richard often reminds us that the CAC’s Living School was conceived of as “a school for prophets.” For him, this idea is the beating heart of our curriculum…. While prophecy is often defined as “speaking truth to power,” this is an incomplete notion, being merely social criticism. Prophecy is speaking truth to power on behalf of a divine vision of wholeness. This vision comes from contemplation and the love it reveals. 

Tracing our alternative orthodoxy back to its roots in the prophetic tradition, we see that action and contemplation are, in fact, inseparable. They are the inhalation and exhalation of divine love. Contemplation calls us to active love. Our Jewish family identifies this as the tikkun olam, the fixing of the world. The early church termed it the apokatastasis, or the restoring of all things.

The Living School [and the CAC as a whole] teaches that this begins with us individually. If it is true that hurting people hurt people, then it must also be true that healing people heal people. Origen (185–254 CE) claimed the skandala—the scars and scandals in our lives—dig out the deep meaning. Our hurts become “health-bestowing wounds,” the source of our individual spiritual genius, which shapes the unique work we are called to do in the world. It’s our wounds that lead to wisdom and teach us, ultimately, how to love and heal the world.

Like Kintsugi—the Japanese method of repairing pottery using gold, silver, or platinum to fill in the cracks—this doesn’t hide our brokenness but makes it beautiful. Thus, we all work to repair the world in a similar way. [1]

Richard emphasizes the importance of beginning with a healing and hopeful image of God:  No one can be more loving than God; it’s not possible. If we understand God as Trinity—the fountain fullness of outflowing love—there’s no theological possibility of any hatred or vengeance in God. Divinity, which is revealed as Love Itself, will always eventually win (John 6:37–39).

(We could read this and the rest of Jn 6 here and discuss…. djr)

We are all saved totally by mercy. God fills in all the gaps. A “geographic” hell or purgatory are unnecessary, though this doesn’t mean there is no time or place for change, growth, and reconciliation.

Knowing this absolute truth ahead of time gives us courage: we don’t need to live out of fear, but from this endlessly available love. Love, grace, and mercy are given undeservedly here, so why would they not be given later as well? Do we have two different gods? One who forgives and teaches a 70 x 7 policy before death, but then counts and punishes every jot and tittle afterward? It just does not work! As Jesus puts it, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living—for to him everyone is alive” (Luke 20:38). In other words, growth, change, and opportunity never cease. [2]

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“Jesus wasn’t talking about how to be good within the framework of a domination system.

He was a critic of the domination system itself.“

– Marcus Borg, NT Scholar and Theologian

One of the things that is subtly interesting to me is how people understand the relationship of Jesus to Empire.

For some, Jesus wants people to be good citizens who pay their taxes to Caesar.  For others, Jesus teaches people to push back against oppressive regimes in creative, non-violent activity.  It is possible that both can be true, but the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ teachings ought not be overlooked.

As a member of the Jewish people in a region that was under Roman speaking occupation, it is no wonder that his followers originally believed he would help evict the Roman Empire from the Holy Land.

However, Jesus is not interested in exchanging one dominating empire for another, even if it is one that he is put in charge of.  At every turn, Jesus shows no interest in being a dominating, violent king who replaces Nero.

The Kingdom of God (βασιλεια του θεου) is one that is built upon Beatitudes rather than bullying.  The Kingdom of God is a Pax Christi that includes even enemies rather than a Pax Romani that obliterates opposition.  The ethics of Jesus absolutely critique dominating systems and empires.

CAC teacher Brian McLaren identifies awe and wonder as essential to encountering creation: 

The first pages of the Bible and the best thinking of today’s scientists are in full agreement: it all began in the beginning, when space and time, energy and matter, gravity and light, burst or bloomed or banged into being. In light of the Genesis story, we would say that the possibility of this universe overflowed into actuality as God, the Creative Spirit, uttered the original joyful invitation: Let it be! And in response, what happened? Light. Time. Space. Matter. Motion. Sea. Stone. Fish. Sparrow. You. Me. Enjoying the unspeakable gift and privilege of being here, being alive…. 

The Creator brought it all into being, and now some fourteen billion years later, here we find ourselves: dancers in this beautiful, mysterious choreography that expands and evolves and includes us all. We’re farmers and engineers, parents and students, theologians and scientists, teachers and shopkeepers, builders and fixers, drivers and doctors, dads and moms, wise grandparents and wide-eyed infants.  

Don’t we all feel like poets when we try to speak of the beauty and wonder of this creation? Don’t we share a common amazement about our cosmic neighborhood when we wake up to the fact that we’re actually here, actually alive, right now?… 

The romance of Creator and creation is far more wonderful and profound than anyone can ever capture in words. And yet we try, for how could we be silent in the presence of such beauty, glory, wonder, and mystery? How can we not celebrate this great gift—to be alive?  

To be alive is to look up at the stars…. and to feel the beyond-words awe of space in its vastness. To be alive is to look down from a mountaintop … and to feel the wonder that can only be expressed in “oh” or “wow” or maybe “hallelujah.” To be alive is to look out from the beach toward the horizon at sunrise or sunset and to savor the joy of it all in pregnant, saturated silence. [It’s] to gaze in delight at a single bird, tree, leaf, or friend, and to feel that they whisper of a creator or source we all share.  

Genesis means “beginnings.” It speaks through deep, multilayered poetry and wild, ancient stories. The poetry and stories of Genesis reveal deep truths that can help us be more fully alive today. They dare to proclaim that the universe is God’s self-expression, God’s speech act. That means that everything everywhere is always essentially holy, spiritual, valuable, meaningful. All matter matters…. 

Genesis describes the “very goodness” that comes at the end of a long process of creation…. That harmonious whole is so good that the Creator takes a day off, as it were, just to enjoy it. That day of restful enjoyment tells us that the purpose of existence isn’t money or power or fame or security or anything less than this: to participate in the goodness and beauty and aliveness of creation.

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A Note from Bethany….from Sarah Young

It is my prayer that I may learn to walk in love with friends, family, coworkers, strangers, and those who are difficult to love – the ones who have a lot of rejection or the world see as unloveable. 1 John 4:11, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

In closing I thought I would share something that I have pinned next to my mirror. It’s written on a random piece of paper from over a year ago. At the time I didn’t fully believe the words but oh, I so wanted to. I’m not exactly sure where I got it from, I believe it wrote it down while listening to a particular broadcast on the radio my mom recommended. I treasure the things that I write on random pieces of paper the most. It’s believe it’s the most authentic expression of our heart cry. I’m happy to say that in a year’s time my belief has caught up to my longing. Christ is my everything. You can take away whatever you want, including my body, but nothing will touch what I carry inside. My love relationship with my Savior.

• Christ is my significance
• Christ is my self-worth
• Christ is my security
• Christ is my life

Dear Lord, thank you for giving me life and all that I need to experience it fully! Teach me to always draw my life from you. Amen

I prayed for wonders instead of happiness, and You gave them to me.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God: Man

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) is known for his prophetic action and commitment to “radical amazement.” Theologian Bruce Epperly explains: 

Heschel lived out a holistic balance of delight and awe, radical amazement, and prophetic challenge.

At the heart of Heschel’s mystical vision is the experience of radical amazement.… Wonder is essential to both spirituality and theology: “Awe is a sense for the transcendence.… It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine.” [1]

Wonder leads to the experience of radical amazement at God’s world. Created in the image of God, each of us is amazing. Wonder leads to spirituality and ethics. As Heschel noted, “Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy. The moment is the marvel.” [2]

Heschel considers the significance of a worldview of radical amazement: 

The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face.

We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.

All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it….

Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. 

Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery. 

Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. 

Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God. [3]

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1. Teaching

An interesting thing happens in the United States when we cross the calendar threshold of Thanksgiving.

We enter the unofficial season of Frenzy.

Beginning with Thanksgiving, we pack this time of year with loud and outgoing festivities: Black Friday, tree lightings, visits to outdoor malls blasting Mariah Carey, the Christmas holiday itself (often filled with people and yearly rituals), and then we cap it with the raucous New Year celebration.

All with the steady drumbeat of “buy-buy-buy” texturing the energetic soundtrack of the season.

But if we pause, we might notice something else happening: nature all around us is constricting and pulling in, protecting and quieting down.

In this context, it makes sense so many of us feel frazzled and anxious during this season of Frenzy. 

Because we, too, are a part of nature, also made cold by the wind and in need of holding ourselves close.

And yet, we’ve manufactured a season of busyness, social obligations, and energetic outflow, disconnecting ourselves from the softness of our animal bodies.

There is a tension in this – in striving to keep pace with the season of Frenzy while our bodies yearn for slow movement, quiet evenings, and the soft glow of warm fires. 

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2. Questions

1. What is this time of year like for you? How does this tension, if present for you, show up in your body?
2. How were you taught to see yourself as separate and distinct from “the natural world?” What experiences do you have that have broken down or challenged this sense of separateness?

Author Judy Cannato (1949–2011) emphasizes the importance of amazement as the starting point for contemplation.  

In The Silent Cry German theologian Dorothee Sölle [1929–2003] writes “I think that every discovery of the world plunges us into jubilation, a radical amazement that tears apart the veil of triviality.” [1] When the veil is torn apart and our vision is clear there emerges the recognition that all life is connected—a truth not only revealed by modern science but resonant with ancient mystics. We are all one, connected and contained in a Holy Mystery about which, in all its ineffability, we cannot be indifferent.

Sölle maintains that radical amazement is the starting point for contemplation. Often we think of contemplation as a practice that belongs in the realm of the religious, some esoteric advanced stage of prayer that only the spiritually gifted possess. This is not the case…. The nature of contemplation as I describe it here is one that lies well within the capacity of each of us. To use a familiar phrase, contemplation amounts to “taking a long loving look at the real.”…

The contemplative stance that flows out of radical amazement catches us up in love—the Love that is the Creator of all that is, the Holy Mystery that never ceases to amaze, never ceases to lavish love in us, on us, around us.

Cannato names the difficulty we face trying to recognize and hold on to what’s “real”: 

Contemplation is a long loving look at what is real. How often we are fooled by what mimics the real. Indeed, we live in a culture that flaunts the phony and thrives on glittering fabrication. We are so bombarded by the superficial and the trivial that we can lose our bearings and give ourselves over to a way of living that drains us of our humanity. Seduced by the superficial, we lose the very freedom we think all our acquisitions will provide. When we are engaged in the experience and practice of radical amazement, we begin to distinguish between the genuine and the junk. Caught up in contemplative awareness and rooted in love, we begin to break free from cultural confines and embrace the truth that lies at the heart of all reality: We are one.

The invitation to be contemplative is nothing new, but it now carries with it an urgency particular to our time. This call to live contemplatively is offered to everyone. Often we want to relegate such a practice or lifestyle to the “religious” or “spiritual” in our midst, but the simple truth is that we have all been given eyes to see. We simply need to choose to live with vision. What is becoming more apparent by the day is that we must all become contemplatives, not merely in the way we reflect or pray, but in the way we live—awake, alert, engaged, ready to respond in love to the groanings of creation.

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“If everything around you seems dark, look again, you may be the light.”…..– Rumi

There have been dark times in my own life in which I wondered if there was any good happening.  This line from Rumi rather pierced me as I read it.  Not necessarily because it affirms that I was the light in those situations, but that I MIGHT be the light.

You might be the light in your situation!

And, if we aren’t yet, then there is always the chance to re-orient and to re-ground and become the very light that we think is needed!

The roots of ultimate insights are found…. on the level of wonder and radical amazement, in the depth of awe, in our sensitivity to the mystery.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man

Richard Rohr teaches that awe, wonder, and amazement are foundational spiritual experiences:

I believe the basic, primal, foundational religious intuition is a moment of awe and wonder. We say, “God, that’s beautiful!” Why do we so often say “God!” when we have such moments? I think it’s a recognition that this is a godly moment. We are somehow aware that something is just too good, too right, too much, too timely. When awe and wonder are absent from our life, we build our religion on laws and rituals, trying to manufacture some moment of awe. It works occasionally, I guess.

I think people who live their lives open to awe and wonder have a much greater chance of meeting the Holy than someone who just goes to church but doesn’t live in an open way. We almost domesticate the Holy by making it so commonplace. That’s what I fear happens with the way we ritualize worship. I see people come to church day after day unprepared for anything new or different. Even if something new or different happens, they fit it into their old boxes. Their stance seems to be, “I will not be awestruck.” I don’t think we get very far with that kind of resistance to the new, the Real, and the amazing. That’s probably why God allows most of our great relationships to begin with a kind of infatuation with another person—and I don’t just mean sexual infatuation, but a deep admiration or appreciation. It allows us to take our place as a student and learner. If we never do that, nothing new is going to happen. [1]

I think Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn understood this when he wrote, “the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive.” [2] It’s a telling judgment. The Western mind almost refuses to be in awe anymore. It’s only aware of what is wrong, and seemingly incapable of rejoicing in what is still good and true and beautiful. The only way out is through a new imagination and new cosmology, created by positive God-experience. Education, problem-solving, and rigid ideology are all finally inadequate by themselves to create cosmic hope and meaning. Only great religion can do that, which is probably why Jesus spent so much of his ministry trying to reform religion.

Healthy religion gives us a foundational sense of awe. It re-enchants an otherwise empty universe. It gives people a universal reverence toward all things. Only with such reverence do we find confidence and coherence. Only then does the world become a safe home. Then we can see the reflection of the divine image in the human, in the animal, in the entire natural world—which has now become inherently “supernatural.” [3]

We Are What We See

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
—Mary Oliver, “When Death Comes”

For Father Richard, contemplation teaches us how to see, which deepens our capacity to be amazed.

Moments of awe and wonder are the only solid foundation for the entire religious instinct and journey. Look, for example, at the Exodus narrative: It all begins with a murderer (Moses) on the run from the law, encountering a paradoxical bush that “burns without being consumed.” Struck by awe, Moses takes off his shoes and the very earth beneath his feet becomes “holy ground” (see Exodus 3:2–6) because he has met “Being Itself” (Exodus 3:14). This narrative reveals the classic pattern, repeated in different forms in the varied lives and vocabulary of all the world’s mystics.

I must admit that we are usually blocked against being awestruck, just as we are blocked against great love and great suffering. Early-stage contemplation is largely about identifying and releasing ourselves from these blockages by recognizing the unconscious reservoir of expectations, assumptions, and beliefs in which we are already immersed. If we don’t see what is in our reservoir, we will understand all new things in the same old-patterned way—and nothing new will ever happen. A new idea held by the old self is never really a new idea, whereas even an old idea held by a new self will soon become fresh and refreshing. Contemplation actually fills our reservoir with clear, clean water that allows us to encounter experience free of our old patterns.

Here is the mistake we all make in our encounters with reality—both good and bad. We do not realize that it wasn’t the person or event right in front of us that made us angry or fearful—or excited and energized. At best, that is only partly true. If we had allowed a beautiful hot air balloon in the sky to make us happy, it was because we were already predisposed to happiness. The hot air balloon just occasioned it—and almost anything else would have done the same. Howwe see will largely determine what we see and whether it can give us joy or make us pull back with an emotionally stingy and resistant response. Without denying an objective outer reality, what we are able to see and are predisposed to see in the outer world is a mirror reflection of our own inner world and state of consciousness at that time. Most of the time, we just do not see at all, but rather operate on cruise control.

It seems that we humans are two-way mirrors, reflecting both inner and outer worlds. We project ourselves onto outer things and these very things also reflect back to us our own unfolding identity. Mirroring is the way that contemplatives see, subject to subject rather than subject to object.

In a sermon on Matthew 16:13–20, Father Richard speaks of our universal mandate to live out the gospel in our lives:

On many occasions, Jesus asks his disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Son of God, the Messiah. Why might that be? The only reason I can imagine is that he’s saying every one of us has to come to that knowledge for ourselves. We can’t let someone else do our spiritual homework for us, but many of us do. We Catholics let the pope, bishops, and priests give us all the answers and then we just parrot them back. Has there been any experience of it ourselves? Often, the answer is “usually not.” Many Christians believe what we’re supposed to believe. But here Jesus says, “Who do you say that I am?” What have you experienced? What have you personally discovered? What knowledge do you have?

This passage is most often used to preach the primacy of the papacy since Jesus tells Peter, “You are the rock upon which I will build my church.” That’s true, but a couple chapters later Jesus says the identical thing to the whole community: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). Jesus is not only talking about the pope; he’s talking about the people of God, all of us. Peter as the symbolic leader has to do it first, but then we all participate in passing on the message.

People who live their prophetic vocation are those who choose this life of love and transformation:

Without a constant infusion of the Holy Spirit, without a constant desire and trust—Lord, give me your Holy Spirit!—we all close down. We do! It’s the nature of life to circle around the smaller and smaller self, to take fewer and fewer risks, and to never go outside our own comfort zone of people who are just like us. Friends and siblings in Christ, don’t do that! We’re all going to be gone in a few years. We only get one chance to live this life of love. Every day is a lesson in love, learning how not to bind up ourselves and our neighbors, but in fact to free ourselves and others. What Jesus is saying here to Peter and to all of us is that he will back up what we do. We are Jesus’ emissaries. As St. Teresa says, “We are the only hands and feet, the only eyes and ears that Jesus has.” [1] Jesus has handed over the mission and the mystery and the wonder of the realm of God to each of us.

Until we can live every day of our lives motivated by love, rather than by fear or people in authority, this Gospel will not work. It will not change you or me, and it will not change the people around us. Let’s begin anew.

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Story From Our Community
My contemplative practice centers on my breath. Each morning, I sit in stillness for what I call, “coming home to myself.” Sometimes, though rarely, I feel a part of the greater whole which evokes great tenderness within me. I don’t know whether to softly cry in surrender to such love or whether to bubble up with a quiet joy. For the last couple of years, I recognize how quiet yet strong I have become. I am content and at peace within myself. More importantly, I can now be amused by people and actions I would have judged harshly before. This is my experience of divinity.