Fullness of Time
Friday, October 31, 2025
Richard Rohr honors the significance of “thin times” that draw us nearer to the threshold between this realm and the next:
What some call “liminal space” or threshold space (in Latin, limen means a threshold) is a very good phrase for those special times, events, and places that open us up to the sacred. It seems we need special (sacred) days to open us up to all days being special and sacred. This has always been the case and didn’t originate with Christianity. Ancient initiation rites were intensely sacred time and space that sent the initiate into a newly discovered sacred universe.
What became All Saints Day and All Souls Day (November 1–2) was already called “thin times” by the ancient Celts (as were February 1–2: St. Bridget’s Day and Candlemas Day, when candles were blessed and lit). The veil between this world and the next world was considered most “thin” and easily traversed during these times. On these days, we are invited to be aware of deep time—that is, past, present, and future time gathered into one especially holy moment. We are reminded that our ancestors are still in us and work with us and through us. We call it the “communion of saints.” The New Testament phrase for this is “when time came to a fullness,” as when Jesus first announces the reign of God (Mark 1:15) or when Mary comes to the moment of birth (Luke 2:6). We are in liminal space whenever past, present, and future time come together in a full moment of readiness. We are in liminal space whenever the division between “right here” and “over there” is obliterated in our consciousness.
Deep time, along with the communion of saints professed in Christian creeds, means that our goodness is not just our own, nor is our badness just our own. We are intrinsically social animals. We carry the lived and the unlived (and unhealed) lives of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents as far back as DNA and genomes can trace them—which is pretty far back. It does take a village to create a person. We are the very first generation to know that this is literally and genetically true. There is deep healing and understanding when we honor the full cycle of life. No wonder so many are intrigued today by genealogy searches and ancestry test kits.
Living in the communion of saints means that we can take ourselves very seriously (we are part of a Great Whole) and not take ourselves too seriously at all (we are just a part of the Great Whole) at the very same time. I hope this frees us from any unnecessary individual guilt—and, more importantly, frees us to be full “partners in God’s triumphant parade” through time and history (2 Corinthians 2:14). We are in on the deal and, yes, the really Big Deal. We are all a very small part of a very Big Thing!
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John Chaffee 5 on Friday
1.
“I have renounced spirituality to find God.”
– Thomas Merton, Catholic Monk and Activist
Thomas Merton frequents these Friday newsletters, I know, I know.
You can’t deny it, though, this one is still just golden. It is almost a Christian version of a Koan…
It is not that someone “gives up faith” to find God, it is more that God is larger than our concepts, frameworks, rites, and rituals. God is willing to be experienced within them, but at some point, we butt up against the limitations of those things.
For me, there is a season in which it makes sense to “learn” religion, and then to “unlearn” it, to then “relearn” it in a larger, more mysterious sense. (This might be similar to Brueggemann’s idea of “orientation, disorientation, reorientation”, which Rohr then calls “order, disorder, reorder.”)
It may be the wisdom of the Dark Night of the Soul that first formulated it, but there is a point at which we may need to “repent” of our own limiting understandings of God!
2.
“Individuation is the process of becoming a ‘person,’ a fully integrated and relational being… That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of one’s inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.”
– Sr. Ilia Delio, Franciscan Theologian
This quote stopped me in my tracks. This week I finished reading The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole. It was not exactly an easy read, but it certainly connected some dots for me.
The possibility that all of our external conflict is the result of externalization of internal conflict is striking. That which we cannot handle within ourselves, we seek to eliminate outside of ourselves.
Every division, every separation, every conflict, and every war is the result of an internal division, separation, conflict, or war we are dealing with. This means that for there to be world peace that lasts, there must be the teaching of internal peace/shalom.
The book leans heavily into the idea of the Whole and how to be properly “catholic” means to be concerned (kata) with the whole (holos) of everything.
3.
“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
Not a few.
Not some.
Not most.
ALL.
4.
“I take my cue from Jesus Christ who told me and told all of us to love each other, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit those in prison. If you can’t do that, you’re not a believer—I don’t care what church you go to.”
– James Baldwin, Civil Right Activist
Any “Christianity” that does not lead toward loving one’s neighbor enough that one can’t help but do acts of compassionate justice while respecting the inherent dignity of the other… is not Christianity.
5.
“You’ve made a holy fool of me and I’ve thanked You ever since.”
– In a Sweater, Poorly Knit by mewithoutYou
I think that this singular line from mewithoutYou completely encapsulates my personal spirituality.
