{"id":27832,"date":"2026-11-02T11:46:33","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T16:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=27832"},"modified":"2026-11-02T12:09:36","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T17:09:36","slug":"27832","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=27832","title":{"rendered":"Maturity and Patience\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Leaves Don&#039;t Drop They Just Let Go\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3c4mW9MRe-k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Sunday, November 1, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>All Saint&#8217;s Day<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard Rohr uses the language of \u201cripening\u201d to describe the process of aging with wisdom and grace:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The word \u201cripening\u201d helps us move beyond any exclusive concern with physical aging, because our concerns are much more than that. We want to talk about notions of maturity, eldership, staging, sequencing, growth, and direction. <strong>Where is this thing we call \u201clife\u201d headed? Who sets the standard? Is\u202fthere any\u202fstandard? <\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unless we can somehow chart this trajectory, we have no way to discern growth or maturity, and no ability to discern what might be a full, fuller, or fullest human response. Neither do we have any criteria for discerning an immature, regressive, or even sick response. There must be a direction to ripening, but we must also recognize that<strong>&nbsp;<em>any steps toward maturity are by necessity immature<\/em>. An understanding of ripening\u202fbasically teaches\u202fus the wisdom of timing, love, and patience, and allows us to be wise instead of judgmental.\u202f&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I am to believe the novels, myths, poems, and people I have met in my life, old age is almost never described as an apex of achievement as one sits atop a summit with the raised arms of a victorious athlete. It is almost always something else\u2014and usually something other than what was initially imagined or even hoped for.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ripening reveals much bigger or very different horizons than we realize. The refusal to ripen leads to what T.S. Eliot spoke of in \u201cThe Hollow Men,\u201d lives that \u201cend not with a bang but with a whimper.\u201d I trust that we are willing to move toward our own endless horizons and not waste time in whimpering, trusting that we are, in fact, being led. Life\u2014your life, my life, all life\u2014is going somewhere, and somewhere good. We do not need to navigate the river, for we are already flowing within it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ripening, at its best, is a slow, patient learning, and sometimes even a happy letting go\u2014a seeming emptying out to create readiness for a new kind of fullness\u2014which we are never sure about<\/strong>. If we do not allow our own ripening, <strong>an ever-increasing resistance and denial sets in, an ever-increasing protection around an over-defended self.<\/strong> At our very best, we learn how to hope as we ripen, to move outside and beyond self-created circles. Youthful hopes have concrete goals, whereas the <strong>hope of older years is usually aimless hope, hope without goals, even naked hope\u2014perhaps real hope.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such stretching is the agony and the joy of later years, although one can avoid both of these rich experiences too. Old age, as such, is almost a<strong> complete changing of gears and engines from the first half of our lives, and does not happen without many slow realizations, inner calmings, lots of inner resistance and denials, and eventual surrenders.&nbsp;<\/strong><em>All of them&nbsp;<\/em>by God\u2019s grace work with our ever-deepening sense of what we really desire and who we really are. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>===============<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Spirituality of Ripening&nbsp;<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Monday, November 2, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>All Soul&#8217;s Day<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard describes how a spirituality of ripening allows us to<strong> hold greater paradox through an increasing awareness of our union with God: &nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reality, fate, destiny, providence, and tragedy are slow but insistent teachers. The horizon of old age seems to be a plan that God has prepared as inevitable and part of the necessary school of life. What is gratuitously given is also gratuitously taken away, just as Job slowly came to accept. And sometimes we remember that his eventual pained response was \u201cBlessed be the name of the Lord!\u201d (Job 1:21). <strong>We all live in the same cycle of unrequested birth and unrequested death. <\/strong>Someone else is clearly in control, yet most of our lives are spent<strong> accepting and surrendering to this truth, and in trusting that this \u201csomeone\u201d is good and trustworthy besides<\/strong>. It is the very shape of faith and the entire journey of faith. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we are to speak of a&nbsp;<em>spirituality&nbsp;<\/em>of ripening, we need to recognize that it is always (and I do mean&nbsp;<em>always<\/em>) characterized by an<strong> increasing tolerance for ambiguity, a growing sense of subtlety, an ever-larger ability to include and allow, and a capacity to live with contradictions and even to love them! <\/strong>I cannot imagine any other way of coming to those broad horizons except <strong>through many trials, unsolvable paradoxes, and errors in trying to resolve them. &nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without such a gradually renewed mind and heart, we almost certainly will end with a whimper\u2014not just our own, but also that of the disappointed souls gathered around our sick bed or gravestone. Too many lives have indeed been lives of \u201cquiet desperation\u201d and God must surely rush to console and comfort all humans before, during, and after their passing. Many put off enlightenment as long as they can.\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ripening of mind and heart is most basically a <strong>capacity for nondual consciousness and contemplation. Many might just call it a growth in compassion, but surely no growth in compassion is likely unless one learns how to forgive as a very way of life, and to let go of almost everything as we first imagined it had to b<\/strong>e. This is possible as our understanding of faith deepens, requiring a careful pairing of not-knowing (the apophatic way) with knowing (the kataphatic way). The Jewish and Christian traditions <strong>balanced our so-called knowing with&nbsp;<em>trust<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>patience<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>allowing<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>waiting<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>humility<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>love<\/em>, and&nbsp;<em>forgiveness<\/em>,<\/strong> which is very nearly the entire message, and surely the core message, necessary for the possibility of ripening. Otherwise, we all close down, and history freezes up with all of its hurts, memories, and resentments intact. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So my guidance after over eighty years of life is a simple reminder to recall what we will be forced to learn by necessity and under pressure anyway\u2014the\u202fopen-ended way of allowing<em>&nbsp;<\/em>and the\u202fdeep meaning&nbsp;that some call faith. To live in trustful faith is to ripen; it is almost that simple.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>============<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Individual Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What would your hope look like if it had no goal attached?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Group Discussion \u2014 choose one<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol>\n<li>Where do others see an over-defended self in you that you\u2019re only beginning to notice?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Which contradiction in your life have you stopped trying to resolve, and could you ever come to love it?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Does \u201caimless hope\u201d feel like freedom to you, or like giving up?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday, November 1, 2026 All Saint&#8217;s Day Father Richard Rohr uses the language of \u201cripening\u201d to describe the process of aging with wisdom and grace:&nbsp; The word \u201cripening\u201d helps us move beyond any exclusive concern with physical aging, because our concerns are much more than that. We want to talk about notions of maturity, eldership, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27832"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27838,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27832\/revisions\/27838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}