Rightful and Radical Amazement
Friday, December 19, 2025
Richard Rohr insists we thrive when we understand our rightful place in the cosmic order:
Our ordinary lives are given extraordinary significance when we accept that our lives are about something much larger. Our pain is a participation in God’s redemptive suffering, and our creativity is God’s passion for the world. I don’t need to be the whole play or even understand the full script. It’s enough to know that I have been chosen to be one actor on the stage, playing my part as well as I can.
The word disaster comes from a Latin word meaning “to be disconnected from the stars.” The stars represented the great and universal story. Our lives are usually a disaster unless we live under these stars. When we sense that our little story is part of the great story, we are basically content. No amount of psychology and therapy can offer us such a cosmology; I believe only good religion can. [1]
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972), known for his prophetic work for justice, also modeled a commitment to “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….
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. [2]
_________________________________
John Chaffee 5 On Friday
1.
“Your accumulated offenses do not surpass the multitude of God’s mercies; your wounds do not surpass the great physician’s skill.”
– Cyril of Jerusalem, 4th Century Early Church Father
The second sentence here is what gets me.
There is hope.
There is always hope.
No matter how bad or terrible, how broken or wounded we feel, there is always the opportunity for things to heal.
My lovely wife once said, “You know, some people’s understanding of God can’t live up to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.”
She’s right. (She is often right.)
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
2.
“Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion really means.”
– Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Activist
The intersection of religion and politics is a tricky one today.
Even I admit that I do not like the way that I see politics and religion mixing in the public discourse of America. However, I think this is born out of a simplistic and impoverished understanding of religion.
For many, religion is a means of identifying what “tribe” or “group” you are a part of.
However…
Healthy and mature religion does not draw tribal lines of Us vs Them. Healthy and mature religion says to “love thy neighbor as yourself.” This means that a healthy and mature understanding of religion will want to call out and challenge abusive or oppressive laws that trample on the “least of these” and remind those at the top of political hierarchies to live with wisdom, patience, integrity, and humility.
Religion is not supposed to be an endorser of whatever the government does, religion is supposed to remind us that we are all connected and need one another.
3.
“To be born again is not to become someone else, but to become ourselves.”
– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk
In the modern world, we are often being told who to be. We are told what is lovable and desirable. We are told how to be, what to do, how to dress, how to talk, and how to walk.
No wonder that when people convert to a new value system (preferably one built on unconditional love), there is a massive sense of freedom and becoming.
In the New Testament, the phrase “born again” can also be translated as “born from above.”
Imagine that…
Being born into another value system, another framework, another mode of living than that of our modern culture? What does it look like for us to be born of the virtues of God rather than the vices of a culture?
4.
“The people who know God well, the mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God always meet a lover, not a dictator.”
– Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan Friar
No one comes back from an authentic experience of God and reports that we are all in trouble.
5.
“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”
– Maya Angelou, American Poet and Activist
Now that’s just funny.
I have also heard it said that you can know a person rather well by how they respond to whether the Wi-Fi is working.
That said, the tangled knot that is Christmas lights is a good gauge of whether they are patient, methodical problem-solvers, or have latent anger issues.
