Forgiveness…An Unfolding Mystery (From Richard Rohr)

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God. —Matthew 5:9

The Spirit within us creates an unrelenting desire toward forgiveness and reconciliation. The entire Gospel reveals the unfolding mystery of forgiveness; it is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the Gospel’s transformative message. The energy of being forgiven—in our unworthiness of it—first breaks us out of our merit-badge mentality. The ongoing experience of being forgiven (when we don’t even think we need it) is necessary to renew our flagging spirit and keep us in the infinite ocean of grace. Toward the end of life a universal forgiveness of everything for being what it is becomes the only way we can see and understand reality and finally live at peace.
Zechariah said that God would “give God’s people knowledge of salvation through forgiveness of sin” (Luke 1:77). Only when we experience undeserved love does this inward and outward flow begin to happen. Before that we are a dry, dead cistern. Before that, we are into “religion” perhaps, but not really any dynamic notion of God or even our self. Forgiveness given and forgiveness received are always the pure work of uncreated grace. Such unearned and undeserved forgiveness is necessary to break down the quid pro quo world that I call meritocracy.
Grace re-creates all things. Nothing new happens without forgiveness. We just keep repeating the same old patterns, illusions, and half-truths.
Sometimes grace does not come immediately, but like Job we “sit in the ashes scraping our sores” (Job 2:8). Sometimes neither the desire nor the decision to forgive is present. Then we must grieve and wait. We must sit in our poverty, perhaps even admitting our inability to forgive the offender. That is when we learn how to pray and how to “long and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6).
True Spirit-led forgiveness always frees and heals at least one of the parties involved, and hopefully both. If it only preserves my moral high ground—as a magnanimous “Christian” person—I doubt if it is true forgiveness at all. It must also quicken and invite the hearts of others, especially the offender. True forgiveness does not leave the offender feeling small and judged, but liberated and loved.
At the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati I had “70 x 7” painted over the main doorway. New mail carriers thought it was the address! It was our address, in a way. It is the distinctive hallmark of a people liberated by Christ. Community is not where forgiveness is unnecessary or unneeded. It is where forgiveness is very free to happen. And if it doesn’t happen—on a daily basis—there will be no community; without forgiveness the logic of victimhood and perpetrator rules instead of the illogic of love.

Gateway to Silence:
Create in me a clean heart. —Psalm 51:12

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The Purpose of Prayer (From Oswald Chambers)

…one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray…” —Luke 11:1

Prayer is not a normal part of the life of the natural man. We hear it said that a person’s life will suffer if he doesn’t pray, but I question that. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food, but by prayer. When a person is born again from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve or nourish that life. Prayer is the way that the life of God in us is nourished. Our common ideas regarding prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.

“Ask, and you will receive…” (John 16:24). We complain before God, and sometimes we are apologetic or indifferent to Him, but we actually ask Him for very few things. Yet a child exhibits a magnificent boldness to ask! Our Lord said, “…unless you…become as little children…” (Matthew 18:3). Ask and God will do. Give Jesus Christ the opportunity and the room to work. The problem is that no one will ever do this until he is at his wits’ end. When a person is at his wits’ end, it no longer seems to be a cowardly thing to pray; in fact, it is the only way he can get in touch with the truth and the reality of God Himself. Be yourself before God and present Him with your problems— the very things that have brought you to your wits’ end. But as long as you think you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.

To say that “prayer changes things” is not as close to the truth as saying, “Prayer changes me and then I change things.” God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.

Love and Mercy
Friday, August 25, 2017 (Daily Devotional from Richard Rohr)

The law was given to multiply our opportunities for falling. —Romans 5:20

The pattern of necessary falling or the “myth of transgression” made less and less sense to Western Christianity as it came to think that religion’s purpose was to teach and maintain social and imperial order. The Christian mind eventually had little respect for the ubiquitous disorder in the universe, unlike most native religions—for example, as here in New Mexico where the Puebloan clown deliberately breaks the perfect symmetry and seriousness of the sacred dance or the intentional imperfection that must be woven into the authentic Navajo rug (this imperfection is wisely called “the spirit line”).

After almost 50 years as a priest teaching in many countries, I believe that many if not most people are attracted to religion because they want order in their own lives and in the world. This is not bad; it is a first-half-of-life need and task. But it is simply the warm-up for the real Gospel (see Galatians 3:24). Today even science demonstrates rather convincingly that asymmetry is what breaks the dead patterns and moves all elements, species, and ages forward. Life itself proceeds by the radical asymmetry of life and death: no new forms will form unless the old ones die out.

This is how the transgression myth was revealed through the Gospel: Jesus, who is judged—by objective criteria—to be a sinner/offender/failure/transgressor by both high priest and Roman Empire is, in fact, the one who “redeems the world”! Paul repeats this message and calls it the “mystery of the crucified,” which forever discounts both “the Law” (his Jewish religion) and “reason” (Greek philosophy) which at that point were the two great ways to achieve order in their world. Yet these are so deep in our psyche that Christianity went right back to both of them—with a vengeance!

The Gospel and the cross say that the only honest and healing order is the acceptance of disorder. This is God’s surprising and scandalous plan. It is much of the import of Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Galatians.

Both Jesus and Paul believed that necessary and predictable transgression—and the need for mercy that follows—is the pattern of transformation. This is the way God “justifies,” or executes divine justice. This is how God realigns reality inside the only absolute there is: the eternal love of God. Pope Francis is the first pope I am aware of who has had the insight and courage to say that Divine Love is the only absolute, not law, Scripture, church, or moral behavior. Law and reason can never achieve their own goals perfectly, but love and mercy can and do. “Where are your philosophers now? Where are the scribes?” Paul shouts (1 Corinthians 1:20). Love alone, he says, is the “fulfillment” of the law (Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14), which of course is what Jesus said (see Matthew 22:40).

Gateway to Silence:
I am hidden in the love and mercy of God.

Sacrifice and Friendship (Daily Devotional from Oswald Chambers)

I have called you friends… —John 15:15

We will never know the joy of self-sacrifice until we surrender in every detail of our lives. Yet self-surrender is the most difficult thing for us to do. We make it conditional by saying, “I’ll surrender if…!” Or we approach it by saying, “I suppose I have to devote my life to God.” We will never find the joy of self-sacrifice in either of these ways.

But as soon as we do totally surrender, abandoning ourselves to Jesus, the Holy Spirit gives us a taste of His joy. The ultimate goal of self-sacrifice is to lay down our lives for our Friend (see John 15:13-14). When the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, our greatest desire is to lay down our lives for Jesus. Yet the thought of self-sacrifice never even crosses our minds, because sacrifice is the Holy Spirit’s ultimate expression of love.

Our Lord is our example of a life of self-sacrifice, and He perfectly exemplified Psalm 40:8, “I delight to do Your will, O my God….” He endured tremendous personal sacrifice, yet with overflowing joy. Have I ever yielded myself in absolute submission to Jesus Christ? If He is not the One to whom I am looking for direction and guidance, then there is no benefit in my sacrifice. But when my sacrifice is made with my eyes focused on Him, slowly but surely His molding influence becomes evident in my life (see Hebrews 12:1-2).

Beware of letting your natural desires hinder your walk in love before God. One of the cruelest ways to kill natural love is through the rejection that results from having built the love on natural desires. But the one true desire of a saint is the Lord Jesus. Love for God is not something sentimental or emotional— for a saint to love as God loves is the most practical thing imaginable.

“I have called you friends….” Our friendship with Jesus is based on the new life He created in us, which has no resemblance or attraction to our old life but only to the life of God. It is a life that is completely humble, pure, and devoted to God.

The Myth of Transgression

First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God. —Julian of Norwich (c. 1343­­–c. 1416) [1]

It is in falling down that we learn almost everything that matters spiritually. As many of the parables seem to say, you have to lose it (or know that you don’t have it) before you will really seek it, then find it, and fittingly celebrate (see all three parables of Luke 15). The message is sort of hard to miss.

It seems that we must fail, and even “transgress,” and then need mercy, forgiveness, and love because of that very transgression. Up to then, all God talk is largely academic and formal. We don’t really know love until we need love.  Until then we have no way of knowing that the long, lonely distance between God/Reality and ourselves is overcome and fully spanned from the other side.

The common “myth of transgression” found in universal literature operates on many levels. (By myth I mean an archetypal message, expressed in story, that has many layers of meaning beyond the literal.) Both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures reveal transgression to be the most common pattern of human transformation (consider Adam and Eve, Moses, Jacob, Jesus, Paul, and Peter). The old must always be revealed as inadequate or even wrong for the new to be born. Our first attempt to love God by following rules is eventually revealed to be much more love of self and love of some kind of order—but we can’t know that yet! (See Philippians 3:6+.) It is our failure to live up to these egoic attempts at love that drives us toward an ever-higher love, where we are not in charge but actually in love!

The actor here is what some call the trickster, the clown, the anti-hero and, in biblical literature, “the sinner” who is again and again shown to be the hero, especially in the stories of Jesus. “Her many sins have been forgiven her or she would not have shown such great love,” says Jesus of “the woman who was a sinner” (Luke 7:47). The law-abiding Pharisee is deemed ridiculous while the grasping tax collector, with no spiritual resume whatsoever, goes home “justified” (Luke 18:9-14). We must deal with this. It is indeed shocking, but only to the self-satisfied ego.

Do you realize how counterintuitive this is? Do you realize how hopeful this is? The playing field is now utterly leveled. It is our mistakes that lead us to God. We come to divine union not by doing it right but by doing it wrong, as we all most surely do anyway.

Gateway to Silence:
I am hidden in the love and mercy of God.

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The Spiritual Search

Oswald Chambers

What man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? —Matthew 7:9

The illustration of prayer that our Lord used here is one of a good child who is asking for something good. We talk about prayer as if God hears us regardless of what our relationship is to Him (see Matthew 5:45). Never say that it is not God’s will to give you what you ask. Don’t faint and give up, but find out the reason you have not received; increase the intensity of your search and examine the evidence. Is your relationship right with your spouse, your children, and your fellow students? Are you a “good child” in those relationships? Do you have to say to the Lord, “I have been irritable and cross, but I still want spiritual blessings”? You cannot receive and will have to do without them until you have the attitude of a “good child.”

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Now let’s look at “The Fall,” as we usually refer to the pivotal event described in Genesis 3. The Fall is not simply something that happened in one historical moment to one archetypal couple, Adam and Eve. It happens in all moments and lives. It is the shape of creation. It sets the plot line.

After Adam and Eve took their identity as separate from their Source, “the eyes of both of them were opened” to a split universe of suspicion, subterfuge, doubt, and alienation (Genesis 3:7). And “they realized that they were naked.” This is indeed the lie and the “fall” from original grace and innocence. Teachers of prayer call this the “subject-object split” where most humans live their whole lives.

This happens to each of us whenever we stand over and against Reality, apart and analytical, and can no longer know things by affinity, likeness, or natural connection (“love”), but we merely know things as objects out there and apart from us. Then we are no longer in the garden, or even part of the garden, but we “eat” the garden like a possession. It is this alienation that all religion is trying to overcome.

The split begins in all human beings quite early, and for abused or neglected children even earlier. By the age of seven most have “left the garden” and have begun to live largely in their minds—looking over at the garden. Before that time, we exist in unitive consciousness, when “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30), or my mother and I are one, as we enjoy in the first months of life.

Enneagram teacher Russ Hudson describes the inevitable split:

At the root of our ego patterns is a profound suffering caused by our alienation from ourselves and from God—from our direct sense and experience of the Divine, moment by moment. We learn how this suffering drives us to do many things we would not choose to do, and to not do many things we would choose to do [see Romans 7:15]. In this sense, it is telling us that, without presence and awareness, we transgress against our own heart, our own truth, often without realizing that this is what we are doing. [1]

That’s why I often say we are not punished for our sins; we are punished by our sins.

Hudson further clarifies this by explaining the roots of the word “sin”:

The Greek word hamartia was most often translated as “sin” in the New Testament. But this word did not imply transgression in the sense of breaking a rule or defying an authority. It meant “to miss the mark” as in an arrow that misses its target. Hamartia is the way we lose balance and “self forget”—the way we fall away from the direct experience of Divine Grace. . . . Our ego then becomes a way of covering up this suffering rather than addressing it. [2]

Gateway to Silence:
I am hidden in the love and mercy of God.

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Prayer—Battle in “The Secret Place”

When you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. —Matthew 6:6

Jesus did not say, “Dream about your Father who is in the secret place,” but He said, “…pray to your Father who is in the secret place….” Prayer is an effort of the will. After we have entered our secret place and shut the door, the most difficult thing to do is to pray. We cannot seem to get our minds into good working order, and the first thing we have to fight is wandering thoughts. The great battle in private prayer is overcoming this problem of our idle and wandering thinking. We have to learn to discipline our minds and concentrate on willful, deliberate prayer.

We must have a specially selected place for prayer, but once we get there this plague of wandering thoughts begins, as we begin to think to ourselves, “This needs to be done, and I have to do that today.” Jesus says to “shut your door.” Having a secret stillness before God means deliberately shutting the door on our emotions and remembering Him. God is in secret, and He sees us from “the secret place”— He does not see us as other people do, or as we see ourselves. When we truly live in “the secret place,” it becomes impossible for us to doubt God. We become more sure of Him than of anyone or anything else. Enter into “the secret place,” and you will find that God was right in the middle of your everyday circumstances all the time. Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless you learn to open the door of your life completely and let God in from your first waking moment of each new day, you will be working on the wrong level throughout the day. But if you will swing the door of your life fully open and “pray to your Father who is in the secret place,” every public thing in your life will be marked with the lasting imprint of the presence of God.

Richard Rohr

Mixed Blessings
Tuesday, August 22, 2017

The humiliation that you and I carry and that most people refuse to accept is that we humans are a mass of contradictions. We are first of all a blessing, but everyone knows we are also a mixed blessing. Some called this quality of human existence the state of “original sin,” a term and doctrine that many do not like. Maybe original “shame” would have described it better. All I know is that most humans have a sense of being inadequate or even broken. Yet shame is inferiority projected by others. It is never inherent.

For most humans, it often feels like there is a tragic flaw somewhere near our core. Greek and Shakespearean drama attest to this, as does Paul in heart-wrenching fashion (see Romans 7:14-25). And who of us have not had days when we feel worthless and miserable? We do all we can to cover it up or overcome it.

Unfortunately, the word “sin” in our vocabulary implies culpability or personal fault. In fact, the precise meaning of original sin is that we are not personally culpable for it, but it was somehow passed on to us and all people share in it. The supposed “doctrine” of original sin was actually meant to be a consolation; because if we know our own self as a mixed blessing, and that each of us is filled with contradictions and is a mystery to self, then we won’t pretend that we can totally eliminate or even hide all that we consider unworthy or inferior within. This provides a program for human humility. As Jesus said in the parable of the weeds and the wheat, we can even “let them both grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:30). Let God decide what is truly good and what is really bad, because even our judgments are infected with “original sin.”

It seems all God wants are useable instruments who will carry the mystery, the weight of glory and the burden of sin simultaneously, who can bear the darkness and the light, who can hold the paradox of incarnation—flesh and spirit, human and divine, joy and suffering—at the same time, just as Jesus did.

Jesus himself says, “God alone is good” (Mark 10:18), implying all else is merely a partial good. Such a text gives humans an honest, wonderful, but non ego-inflating agenda. There is no appeal to the ego here, only to our deep, deep need and desire for union—with our own selves and with God. And, remember, union is a very different goal than private perfection.

Gateway to Silence:
I am hidden in the love and mercy of God.

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“I Indeed. . . But He”

I indeed baptize you with water…but He…will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. —Matthew 3:11

Have I ever come to the point in my life where I can say, “I indeed…but He…”? Until that moment comes, I will never know what the baptism of the Holy Spirit means. I indeed am at the end, and I cannot do anything more— but He begins right there— He does the things that no one else can ever do. Am I prepared for His coming? Jesus cannot come and do His work in me as long as there is anything blocking the way, whether it is something good or bad. When He comes to me, am I prepared for Him to drag every wrong thing I have ever done into the light? That is exactly where He comes. Wherever I know I am unclean is where He will put His feet and stand, and wherever I think I am clean is where He will remove His feet and walk away.

Being Your True Self
Monday, August 21, 2017

It would be absurd to suggest that someone go into a room she is already in! —Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) [1]

“Sin” primarily describes a state of living outside of union, when the part poses as the Whole. It’s the loss of any experience of who you are in God, of what many call your soul. That “who” is nothing you can earn or obtain; that room is nothing you can build. Why? Because you already live within it, as St. Teresa says.

The full biblical revelation is about awakening, not accomplishing. In this it is quite similar to ancient Hinduism and later Buddhism and Sufi Islam. The spiritual journey is about realization, not perfection. You cannot get there, you can only be there. But for some reason, that foundational Being-in-God is too hard to believe, too good to be true. Only the humble can receive it because it affirms more about God than it does about us. The ego does not like that.

The ego makes life all about achievement and attainment. As long as your egoic self acts as your primary guide, religion becomes a worthiness contest in which everybody loses or gives up. Many, if not most people, never even try the spiritual journey when they see that they can’t live up to today’s culturally created performance principles. I see this especially in the males of the human species. Rather than lose, they do not try at all.

Yet union with God is really about awareness and realignment. It is a Copernican revolution of the mind and heart—conversion. (Sixteenth-century Copernicus made the shocking claim that the Earth revolves around the sun, not vice-versa!) Following conversion, that deep and wondrous inner knowing, a whole new set of behaviors and lifestyle will surely emerge. It is not that if I am moral, then I will be loved by God; rather, I must first come to experience God’s love, and then I will—almost naturally—be moral. To continue the Copernican metaphor, now the sun is central and we draw our energy from its light.

Before conversion, we view sin as any kind of moral mistake; afterward, sin is a mistake about who you are and whose you are. In that sense, only the false self can and will sin. The false self only lies because it somehow is a lie. The True Self is consciousness itself. The false self lives in unconsciousness, and we do evil only when we are unconscious. Jesus naturally forgave those who were killing him, because they literally “do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Most people are not sinners; they are just ignorant.

Gateway to Silence:
I am hidden in the love and mercy of God.

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Today’s Counterpoint from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest

Blessed are the poor in spirit… —Matthew 5:3

The New Testament notices things that do not seem worthy of notice by our standards. “Blessed are the poor in spirit….” This literally means, “Blessed are the paupers.” Paupers are remarkably commonplace! The preaching of today tends to point out a person’s strength of will or the beauty of his character— things that are easily noticed. The statement we so often hear, “Make a decision for Jesus Christ,” places the emphasis on something our Lord never trusted. He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to Him— something very different. At the foundation of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is the genuine loveliness of those who are commonplace. I am truly blessed in my poverty. If I have no strength of will and a nature without worth or excellence, then Jesus says to me, “Blessed are you, because it is through your poverty that you can enter My kingdom.” I cannot enter His kingdom by virtue of my goodness— I can only enter it as an absolute pauper.

The true character of the loveliness that speaks for God is always unnoticed by the one possessing that quality. Conscious influence is prideful and unchristian. If I wonder if I am being of any use to God, I instantly lose the beauty and the freshness of the touch of the Lord. “He who believes in Me…out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). And if I examine the outflow, I lose the touch of the Lord.

Who are the people who have influenced us most? Certainly not the ones who thought they did, but those who did not have even the slightest idea that they were influencing us. In the Christian life, godly influence is never conscious of itself. If we are conscious of our influence, it ceases to have the genuine loveliness which is characteristic of the touch of Jesus. We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.

When he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich. —Luke 18:23

The rich young ruler went away from Jesus speechless with sorrow, having nothing to say in response to Jesus’ words. He had no doubt about what Jesus had said or what it meant, and it produced in him a sorrow with no words with which to respond. Have you ever been there? Has God’s Word ever come to you, pointing out an area of your life, requiring you to yield it to Him? Maybe He has pointed out certain personal qualities, desires, and interests, or possibly relationships of your heart and mind. If so, then you have often been speechless with sorrow. The Lord will not go after you, and He will not plead with you. But every time He meets you at the place where He has pointed, He will simply repeat His words, saying, “If you really mean what you say, these are the conditions.”

“Sell all that you have…” (Luke 18:22). In other words, rid yourself before God of everything that might be considered a possession until you are a mere conscious human being standing before Him, and then give God that. That is where the battle is truly fought— in the realm of your will before God. Are you more devoted to your idea of what Jesus wants than to Jesus Himself? If so, you are likely to hear one of His harsh and unyielding statements that will produce sorrow in you. What Jesus says is difficult— it is only easy when it is heard by those who have His nature in them. Beware of allowing anything to soften the hard words of Jesus Christ.

I can be so rich in my own poverty, or in the awareness of the fact that I am nobody, that I will never be a disciple of Jesus. Or I can be so rich in the awareness that I am somebody that I will never be a disciple. Am I willing to be destitute and poor even in my sense of awareness of my destitution and poverty? If not, that is why I become discouraged. Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus— not love for Jesus Himself.

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James Finley
True Self and False Self: Week 2

Living in God
Friday, August 18, 2017

Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues exploring insights on the true self and false self that he gleaned from Thomas Merton.

In ways known only to God, the one seeking God in silence unexpectedly falls through the barriers of division and duplicity to discover, as Merton writes, that:

. . . here, where contemplation becomes what it is really meant to be, it is no longer something infused by God into a created subject, so much as God living in God and identifying a created life with His [sic] own Life so that there is nothing left of any significance but God living in God. [1]

This “disappearance” is the antithesis of loss of self. Rather it is an expression of the true self’s final consummation as a created capacity for perfect union with God. Thus, this disappearance is actually a manifestation of ourselves as radically one with God. The only self that actually vanishes is our false self, the separate self we thought ourselves to be. Within the context of this contemplative awareness, we actualize Jesus’ words: “He who loses his life shall find it” (Matthew 10:39).

Merton says the contemplative realizes that the ego-self is:

not final or absolute; it is a provisional self-construction which exists, for practical purposes, only in a sphere of relativity. Its existence has meaning in so far as it does not become fixated or centered upon itself as ultimate, learns to function not as its own center but “from God” and “for others.” [2]

This is why Christ came, that through him and in the Spirit we might find our fulfillment in union with the Father. Merton relates this contemplative transformation of consciousness to the whole of Christian life, saying:

This dynamic of emptying and of transcendence accurately defines the transformation of the Christian consciousness in Christ. It is a kenotic transformation, an emptying of all the contents of the ego-consciousness to become a void in which the light of God or the glory of God, the full radiation of the infinite reality of His Being and Love are manifested. [3]

Gateway to Silence:
I am one with God.

He calls his own…by name… —John 10:3

True Self and False Self: Week 2

The Illusion of Our False Self
Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues exploring insights on the true self and false self that he gleaned from Thomas Merton.

In the following text, Merton makes clear that the self-proclaimed autonomy of the false self is but an illusion:

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.

This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love—outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves—the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin. [1]

The false self, sensing its fundamental unreality, begins to clothe itself in myths and symbols of power. Since it intuits that it is but a shadow, that it is nothing, it begins to convince itself that it is what it does. Hence, the more it does, achieves and experiences, the more real it becomes. Merton writes:

All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface. [2]

Eventually and inevitably that which was too awful even to think about finally happens. Death reveals in us that eventually tomorrow is today and that we have run out of time. We discover by force of death that, as Merton describes:

But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasure and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake. [3]

Gateway to Silence:
I am one with God.

________________________________________

Oswald Chambers

From My Utmost for His Highest

You must be born again. —John 3:7

Note: Today’s selections are in reverse order from our previous custom. The first is from Richard Rohr’s daily devotional…. Followed by My Utmost For His Highest.

Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues exploring insights on the true self and false self that he gleaned from Thomas Merton.

For Merton, the spiritual life is a journey in which we discover ourselves in discovering God, and discover God in discovering our true self hidden in God. Merton writes:

The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God.

But whatever is in God is really identical with Him [sic], for His infinite simplicity admits no division and no distinction. Therefore I cannot hope to find myself anywhere except in Him.

Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to become identified with Him in whom is hidden the reason and fulfillment of my existence.

Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him. [1]

So it is that the spiritual life centers around the one problem of an identity found in faith. Our true self is a self in communion. It is a self that subsists in God’s eternal love. Likewise, the false self is the self that stands outside this created subsisting communion with God that forms our very identity. As Merton puts it:

When we seem to possess and use our being and natural faculties in a completely autonomous manner, as if our individual ego were the pure source and end of our own acts, then we are in illusion and our acts, however spontaneous they may seem to be, lack spiritual meaning and authenticity. [2]

Gateway to Silence:
I am one with God.

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The Discipline of the Lord

My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him. —Hebrews 12:5

It is very easy to grieve the Spirit of God; we do it by despising the discipline of the Lord, or by becoming discouraged when He rebukes us. If our experience of being set apart from sin and being made holy through the process of sanctification is still very shallow, we tend to mistake the reality of God for something else. And when the Spirit of God gives us a sense of warning or restraint, we are apt to say mistakenly, “Oh, that must be from the devil.”

“Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19), and do not despise Him when He says to you, in effect, “Don’t be blind on this point anymore— you are not as far along spiritually as you thought you were. Until now I have not been able to reveal this to you, but I’m revealing it to you right now.” When the Lord disciplines you like that, let Him have His way with you. Allow Him to put you into a right-standing relationship before God.

“…nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him.” We begin to pout, become irritated with God, and then say, “Oh well, I can’t help it. I prayed and things didn’t turn out right anyway. So I’m simply going to give up on everything.” Just think what would happen if we acted like this in any other area of our lives!

Am I fully prepared to allow God to grip me by His power and do a work in me that is truly worthy of Himself? Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me— sanctification is God’s idea of what He wants to do for me. But He has to get me into the state of mind and spirit where I will allow Him to sanctify me completely, whatever the cost (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord,
Today’s selections have some commonality. This conclusion by Chambers…

“sanctification is God’s idea of what He wants to do for me. But He has to get me into the state of mind and spirit where I will allow Him to sanctify me completely, whatever the cost” and this by James Finley…

“So it is that the spiritual life centers around the one problem of an identity found in faith. Our true self is a self in communion. It is a self that subsists in God’s eternal love.”

These two seem to be two lenses looking at the sanctification process aka becoming one with God. Here’s some scripture that provides some view of that same process:

Col 3:3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Acts 17:28 for in Him we live and move and have our being