Richard Rohr shares his paradigm for the transformative process of spiritual maturity:
It seems quite clear that we grow spiritually by passing beyond some perfect Order, through an often painful and seemingly unnecessary Disorder to an enlightened Reorder or “resurrection.” This is the “pattern that connects” and solidifies our relationship with everything around us.
ORDER: At this first stage, if we are granted it (and not all are), we feel innocent and safe. Everything is basically good. It is our “first naïveté.” Those who try to stay in this first satisfying explanation of “how things should be” tend to refuse and avoid any confusion, conflict, inconsistencies, or suffering. Disorder or change is always to be avoided, the ego believes, so let’s just hunker down and pretend that my status quo is entirely good, should be good for everybody, and is always “true” and even the only truth.
DISORDER: At some point in our lives, we will be deeply disappointed by what we were originally taught, by where our choices have led us, or by the seemingly random tragedies that take place in all our lives. There will be a death, a disease, a disruption to our normal way of thinking or being in the world. It is necessary if any real growth is to occur.
This is the Disorder stage, or what we call from the Adam and Eve story the “fall.” Some people try to return to the original Order and do not accept reality, which prevents them from further growth. Others, especially today, seem to have given up and decided that “there is no universal order,” or at least no order to which they will submit. That’s the postmodern stance, which distrusts all grand narratives, including often any notions of reason, a common human nature, social progress, universal human norms, absolute truth, and objective reality. Permanent residence in this stage tends to make people rather negative and cynical, usually angry, and quite opinionated and dogmatic as they search for some solid ground. [1]
REORDER: Only in the final Reorder stage can darkness and light coexist, can paradox be okay. We are finally at home in the only world that ever existed. This is true and contemplative knowing. Here death is a part of life, and failure is a part of victory. Opposites collide and unite, and everything belongs. [2]
At the Reorder stage, we come to that true inner authority where I know something, and the only nature of the knowing is that it is okay because God is in every moment no matter what happens. Nothing needs to be excluded. I can live and work with all of it because apparently God can. For some unbelievable reason, contrary to logic and common sense, everything belongs. [3]
Growing in Faith
Richard Rohr describes his own life’s journey from Order, through Disorder, to Reorder:
Beyond rational and critical thinking, we need to be called again. To use Paul Ricœur’s phrasing, this can lead to the discovery of a “second naïveté,” which is a return to the joy of our “first naïveté” (original belief or understanding), but now with totally new, inclusive, and mature thinking. Ricœur’s language helps me understand what happened on my own spiritual and intellectual journey. I began as a very conservative, pious, and law-abiding pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic, living in 1940s and 1950s Kansas, buffered and bounded by my parents’ stable marriage and many lovely liturgical traditions that sanctified my time and space. This was my first wonderful simplicity or period of Order. I was a very happy child and young man, and all who knew me then would agree.
Yet, I grew in my experience and was gradually educated in a much larger world of the 1960s and 1970s, with degrees in philosophy and theology, and a broad liberal arts education given to me by the Franciscans. That education was the second journey into rational complexity and critical thinking. I had to leave the garden, just as Adam and Eve had to do (Genesis 3:23–24)—even though my new Scripture awareness made it obvious that Adam and Eve were probably not historical figures, but important archetypal symbols. I was heady with knowledge and “enlightenment,” but definitely not at peace. It is sad and disconcerting for a while outside the garden, and some lovely innocence dies in this time of Disorder. Many will not go there, precisely because it is a loss of seeming “innocence”—things learned at our “mother’s knee,” as it were.
Father Richard describes his experience of Reorder:
As time passed, I became simultaneously very traditional and very progressive, and I have probably continued to be so to this day. I found a much larger and even happier garden (note the new garden described at the end of the Bible in Revelation 22:1–2). I fully believe in Adam and Eve now, but on about ten more levels. (Literalism is usually the lowest and least level of meaning.) I no longer fit in with either staunch liberals or strict conservatives. This was my first strong introduction to paradox, and it honed my ability to hold two seemingly opposite positions at the same time. It took most of midlife to figure out what had happened—and how and why it had to happen.
This “pilgrim’s progress” was, for me, sequential, natural, and organic as the circles widened; as I taught in more and more countries, I was always being moved toward greater differentiation and larger viewpoints, and simultaneously toward a greater inclusivity in my ideas, a deeper understanding of people, and a more honest sense of justice. God always became bigger and led me to bigger places where everything could finally belong.
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Friday Five from John Chaffee on Monday.
1.
“Let me fall, if I must fall. The one I will become will catch me.”
– Baal Shem Tov, Jewish Mystic and Founder of Hasidic Judaism
I think that before we “fall”, we are terrified of “falling.” The process of becoming who we will be can feel like a death, and it is because to become someone new the person we used to be has to end.
However, there is wisdom in the fact that when everything falls away and we are left with no other resources, then we are forced to finally transform, to change, to grow.
2.
“Prophets believe that what they proclaim on any day can be transformed into real action.”
– Rev. William J. Barber II, Pastor and Founder of Repairers of the Breach
Rev. William Barber has been coming to mind recently. I know a few people who have interacted with him and said that he is the real deal. He seems to me as the embodiment of the prophetic tradition and a modern example of how preaching is a prophetic task.
Of course, this is all dependent on your understanding of being a prophet. If being a prophet is merely a matter of foresight and telling what the future will be, then no, he does not fit that description.
However, if being a prophet is a matter of critiquing both the conservative and liberal ideologies and imagining a potential path forward if both sides could listen to the word of the Lord as He speaks to us today and through the Scriptures of old, then yes, William Barber just might be a prophet among us.
3.
“The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.”
– JRR Tolkien, Author of The Lord of the Rings
Looks like someone else believed in the restoration, reconciliation, and renewal of all things in Christ.
No less such a figure as JRR Tolkien… However, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising given that Tolkien’s imagination was formed through the works of George MacDonald (who in my mind is on the same par as the early Patristics)!
4.
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then… I contradict myself; I am large… I contain multitudes.”
We are all walking contradictions and paradoxes. We are all struggling with what it means to exist as something between the beasts and the angels.
Perhaps spiritual maturity is not that we dissolve or resolve all contradictions and paradoxes within us, but that we learn to reconcile, accept, and embrace all of what we are.
5.
“Tenderness is the highest form of spiritual maturity.”
– Father Greg Boyle, Jesuit Priest and Founder of Homeboy Industries
This one rocked me when I heard it. Father Greg said it during an interview with Rainn Wilson for the Soul Boom podcast. It rocked me because I know I am so very far from this.
Father Greg is the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation program in the world. It is based in Los Angeles, California, and is to me the best example of what Christian prophetic activity looks like when it gets its feet on the ground and asks “How can I help?”
Homeboy Industries is known to have helped former gang members turn their lives around, learn to forgive and embrace their enemies, overcome addiction, attend therapy, get training, and find another source of income for their families. It truly is a remarkable initiative.
I have long believed that spiritual maturity is that we exist in some kind of defiant joy and trust that God is in all things and all things are in God. However, as a result of Father Greg I am confronted by the possibility that I have missed the point to some degree and must learn to embody tenderness as well.
Thanks, Father G.
