Christianity in the Desert
Wednesday, September 5, 2018

For too long, little or no honor has been paid to those who have laid the foundations in Africa for the preservation of Christianity throughout the world. . . . [T]he roots and headwaters for this monastic flourishing had their source in African soil. Unfortunately, black saints have been depicted as white and African bishops have been portrayed as Europeans. The remembrance and acknowledgment of our historic spiritual foundations is long overdue. —Paisius Altschul [1]

Today Barbara Holmes continues exploring the forgotten gifts of early Christianity, particularly from its African legacies.

African participants in the early church remained in the shadows of the main theological discourse despite the scholarship of Tertullian [c. 155-c. 240], Augustine [354-430], Cyprian [c. 200-258], and others of African descent who were instrumental in the expansion and theological grounding of the early church. Although initially the spread of Islam limited the expansion of North African Christian practices to sub-Saharan Africa, the trajectories of today’s Christian contemplative practices can be traced to early Christian communities in the Middle East and Africa.

Some of these communities were led by women. . . . After Christianity became a state religion, the freedom that women found in Spirit-led Christian sects was foreclosed by an increasingly hierarchical religious structure. In response, many retreated to remote desert areas to continue their spiritual quests.

The desert may initially seem barren, dull, and colorless, but eventually our perceptions start to change. . . . Here we empty ourselves of our own obstacles to God. In the space of this emptiness, we encounter the enormity of God’s presence. . . . The aromas teach us that the desert becomes the place of a mature repentance and conversion toward transformation into true radical freedom. [2]

If the desert is a place of renewal, transformation, and freedom, and if the heat and isolation served as a nurturing incubator for nascent monastic movements, one wonders if a desert experience is necessary to reclaim this legacy.

One need not wonder long when there are so many deserts within reach. Today’s wilderness can be found in bustling suburban and urban centers, on death row, in homeless shelters in the middle of the night, in the eyes of a hospice patient, and in the desperation of AIDS orphans in Africa and around the world. Perhaps these are the postmodern desert mothers and fathers. Perhaps contemplative spaces can be found wherever people skirt the margins of inclusion. Perhaps those whom we value least have the most to teach.

We are in need of those values central to African monasticism and early Christian hospitality; they include communal relationships, humility, and compassion. Laura Swan sums up these virtues in the word apatheia, defined as “a mature mindfulness, a grounded sensitivity, and a keen attention to one’s inner world as well as to the world in which one has journeyed.” [3] Inevitably, the journey takes each of us in different directions; however, by virtue of circumstances or choice, each of us will at some point in our lives find ourselves on the outskirts of society listening to the silence coming from within. During these times, we realize that contemplation is a destination as well as a practice. The monastics knew this and valued both.

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September 5 MORNING I AM YOUR BEST FRIEND, as well as your King. Walk hand in hand with Me through your life. Together we will face whatever each day brings: pleasures, hardships, adventures, disappointments. Nothing is wasted when it is shared with Me. I can bring beauty out of the ashes of lost dreams. I can glean Joy out of sorrow, Peace out of adversity. Only a Friend who is also the King of kings could accomplish this divine alchemy. There is no other like Me!
The friendship I offer you is practical and down-to-earth, yet it is saturated with heavenly Glory. Living in My Presence means living in two realms simultaneously: the visible world and unseen, eternal reality. I have equipped you to stay conscious of Me while walking along dusty, earthbound paths. JOHN 15: 13– 15; ISAIAH 61: 3; 2 CORINTHIANS 6: 10

Richard Rohr

Early Christianity
A Rhythm of Retreat and Return
Tuesday, September 4, 2018

As Christianity rose to a position of power, rational thinking and individuals’ needs took priority over embodied, nondual consciousness and relationships. One of our CONSPIRE 2018 teachers, Barbara Holmes, recalls the early church’s commitment to contemplation and community and how, even when mainstream Christianity lost these threads, groups in Africa and the Middle East continued to cultivate them.
From the beginning, Jesus’s ministry modeled the interplay between prophetic utterance, public theology, and intense spiritual renewal. He launches his three-year ministry from the desert wilderness, a place that will be the home of latter-day desert mothers and fathers. After an intense time of fasting, testing, and submission to the leading of the Holy Spirit, Jesus returns ready to fulfill his calling. These rhythms of activism and contemplation, engagement and withdrawal resonate throughout his life.
As for the early church, its origins are steeped in the intimacy of close communal groups in house churches and catacombs. During the first century, Paul refers to the knowledge of God as an understanding that exceeds rational and objective thought. This knowledge can be experienced as presence. The prophets and wisdom literature celebrate the accessibility of this presence and extol the mysteries of the human/divine relationship. Theological contemplation usually assumes the tangible reality of God’s love, our shortcomings, and the inexplicable possibility of reunion. Accordingly, relationship is a primary goal of Christian life.
This willingness to engage God through a devout community of committed individuals is a theme repeated in many religious communities. However, the specific Christian mandate to “be in but not of the world” seems to be the necessary orientation that fosters and encourages connections to the multiple realities of faith. Persecution only strengthened the tendency toward a life that emphasized interiority as well as liberation. The first era of persecution, during the formative years of the Christian church, also spurred the development of contemplative practices.
We are familiar with the story of persecution and martyrdom in early Christianity. However, we are not as familiar with the history of persecution and martyrdom . . . in the African Christian church at the hands of Emperor Diocletian [244-311]. Those who went silently to their deaths include Saint Sophia, Saint Catherine (martyred by Maximus), and Saint Damiana, who was killed with the other devotees in the monastery that she founded [in Egypt]. As most historians note, the end of public persecution marked the shift in Christian status from a beleaguered sect to the state religion of Rome.
When Christianity began, it was small and intense, communal and set apart, until it found favor with the state. Those adherents who witnessed Rome’s public affirmation of Christianity in the fourth century realized that the contemplative aspects of the faith could not be nurtured under the largesse of the state. And so, in the fifth century, monasticism flourished in the [African and Middle Eastern] desert as Christian converts retreated for respite and spiritual clarity. Although the desert mothers and fathers sought harsh and isolated sites, they soon found that they were not alone. The decision to retreat drew others to them. Communities formed as city dwellers came out to seek advice and solace. The historical model of contemplation offers the rhythm of retreat and return. It was in the wilderness that African contemplatives carved out unique spiritual boundaries.

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

September 4, 2018

IN CLOSENESS TO ME, you are safe. In the intimacy of My Presence, you are energized. No matter where you are in the world, you know you belong when you sense My nearness. Ever since the Fall, man has experienced a gaping emptiness that only My Presence can fill. I designed you for close communication with your Creator. How I enjoyed walking in the garden with Adam and Eve before the evil one deceived them!

When you commune with Me in the garden of your heart, both you and I are blessed. This is My way of living in the world— through you! Together we will push back the darkness, for I am the Light of the world.

PSALM 32: 7; You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

ROMANS 1: 6; And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

GENESIS 3: 8– 9; Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God.

JOHN 8: 12; Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness.

The Beginnings of the Way
Sunday, September 2, 2018

If we look closely at the evolution of religion over time, we see that there has been gradual growth toward the goal of union with God. Religions continue to change, “transcending and including,” as Ken Wilber says, learning from old ways and opening to new. Christianity is no different from other religions in this regard. Over the next few weeks I will focus on people and communities within Christianity who were somehow transformed and “got it” at a mature level for their time in history.

Christianity first emerged not as a new religion, but as a reform and sect of Judaism within Judea and the Mediterranean. Wherever Paul, Peter, and other early missionaries traveled, they formed small communities of believers in “The Way,” a movement that emphasized Jesus’ teachings, death, and resurrection as the path to transformation. Gradually the movement grew and took on a life of its own, welcoming non-Jews as well as Jews, becoming more inclusive and grace-oriented, until it eventually called itself “catholic” or universal. By 80 CE, there were Christians as far away as India and France.

The “Early Church” period (the five hundred or so years following Jesus’ resurrection) was a time of dramatic change in culture, politics, and economy. All these changes affected the development of the fledgling religion, shaping liturgy, rituals, and theology. Historian Diana Butler Bass writes, “for all the complexity of primitive Christianity, a startling idea runs through early records of faith: Christianity seems to have succeeded because it transformed the lives of people in a chaotic world.” [1] During this time, Christianity was not so much about doctrines or eternal salvation, but about how to live a better life here and now, within the “Reign of God.”

From the perspective of occupying Roman powers, the Christian sect was radical because it encouraged alternative behaviors that were both attractive to those at the bottom and threatening to the worldview of empire. Rather than acquiring wealth, this new sect shared possessions equally. Followers of The Way lived together with people of different ethnicities and social classes rather than following classist and cultural norms.

Early Christianity is largely unknown and of little interest to most Western Christians. The very things the early Christians emphasized—such as the prayer of quiet, the Trinity, divinization, universal restoration, and the importance of practice—have been neglected, to our own detriment. With the schism between what are now the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches in 1054 CE, Christians, in effect, excommunicated one another. Every time the church divided, it also divided up Christ, and both sides of the divide were weaker as a result.

Through these meditations, I will try to reclaim some of the forgotten pieces of the Christian tradition for our wholeness and blessing, hopefully bringing us closer to what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God. Not knowing this early heritage will allow us to cling to superficial Christian distinctions that emerged much later, and largely as historical accidents.

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Early Christianity

A Changing Religion
Monday, September 3, 2018

Much of what Jesus taught seems to have been followed closely during the first several hundred years after his death and resurrection. As long as Jesus’ followers were on the bottom and the edge of empire, as long as they shared the rejected and betrayed status of Jesus, they could grasp his teaching more readily. Values like nonparticipation in war, simple living, inclusivity, and love of enemies could be more easily understood when Christians were gathering secretly in the catacombs, when their faith was untouched by empire, rationalization, and compromise.

Several writings illustrate this early commitment to Jesus’ teachings on simplicity and generosity. For example, the Didache, compiled around 90 CE, says: “Share all things with your brother, and do not say that they are your own. For if you are sharers in what is imperishable, how much more in things which perish!” [1]

The last great formal persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ended in 311 CE. In 313, Constantine (c. 272-337) legalized Christianity. It became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. After this structural change, Christianity increasingly accepted, and even defended, the dominant social order, especially concerning money and war. Morality became individualized and largely focused on sexuality. The church slowly lost its free and alternative vantage point. Texts written in the hundred years preceding 313 show it was unthinkable that a Christian would fight in the army, as the army was killing Christians. By the year 400, the entire army had become Christian, and they were now killing the “pagans.”

Before 313, the church was on the bottom of society, which is the privileged vantage point for understanding the liberating power of Gospel for both the individual and for society. Within the space of a few decades, the church moved from the bottom to the top, literally from the catacombs to the basilicas. The Roman basilicas were large buildings for court and other public assembly, and they became Christian worship spaces.

When the Christian church became the established religion of the empire, it started reading the Gospel from the position of maintaining power and social order instead of experiencing the profound power of powerlessness that Jesus revealed. In a sense, Christianity almost became a different religion!

The failing Roman Empire needed an emperor, and Jesus was used to fill the power gap. In effect, we Christians took Jesus out of the Trinity and made him into God on a throne. An imperial system needs law and order and clear belonging systems more than it wants mercy, meekness, or transformation. Much of Jesus’ teaching about simple living, nonviolence, inclusivity, and love of enemies became incomprehensible. Relationship—the shape of God as Trinity—was no longer as important. Christianity’s view of God changed: the Father became angry and distant, Jesus was reduced to an organizing principle, and for all practical and dynamic purposes, the Holy Spirit was forgotten.

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Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

September 3, 2018

LET THE DEW OF MY PRESENCE refresh your mind and heart. So many, many things vie for your attention in this complex world of instant communication. The world has changed enormously since I first gave the command to be still, and know that I am God. However, this timeless truth is essential for the well-being of your soul. As dew refreshes grass and flowers during the stillness of the night, so My Presence revitalizes you as you sit quietly with Me.

A refreshed, revitalized mind is able to sort out what is important and what is not. In its natural condition, your mind easily gets stuck on trivial matters. Like the spinning wheels of a car trapped in mud, the cogs of your brain spin impotently when you focus on a trivial thing. As soon as you start communicating with Me about the matter, your thoughts gain traction, and you can move on to more important things. Communicate with Me continually, and I will put My thoughts into your mind.

PSALM 46: 10; He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

LUKE 10: 39– 42; She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be.

1 CORINTHIANS 14: 33 NKJV; For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

Richard Rohr

Hinduism
Action and Contemplation
Friday, August 17, 2018

There are three major texts in Hinduism and Indian philosophy:
The Vedas are the most ancient Sanskrit writings (as much as three to four thousand years old) containing hymns, philosophy, guidance, and rituals.
The Upanishads—which means “what is learned sitting at the feet of”—are later (800-200 BCE), even more mystical texts which elaborate on many of the ancient themes. There are probably thirteen major and many minor Upanishads.
The Bhagavad Gita emerged in various translations from four centuries before Christ to four centuries afterward. It is an extended dialogue between Prince Arjuna, who is a passenger in a chariot, and Lord Krishna, who is teaching him how to drive the chariot. The 700 classic verses amount to an extended commentary on “action and contemplation.”
The Bhagavad Gita describes Lord Krishna, one of Hinduism’s central gods, as both this and that, totally immanent and yet fully transcendent, physical and yet formless, the deepest inner self and yet the Godself (Bhagavad Gita 10). Krishna has even been called “The Unknown Christ of Hinduism”—the same mystery of spirit and matter that we Western Christians, with our dualistic minds, struggled to put together in Jesus.
Krishna, like Jesus, also shows the integration of action and contemplation. The Gita does not counsel that we all become monks or solitaries. Rather, Lord Krishna tells Prince Arjuna that the true synthesis is found in a life-long purification of motive, intention, and focus in our world of action. The Gita calls the active person to a life of interiority and soul discovery. How can we do “pure action”? Only by gradually detaching from all the fruits of action and doing everything purely for the love of God, Lord Krishna teaches.
Jesus says the same thing in several places (Mark 12:30, for example): “You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Jesus even counsels the same love toward the neighbor (Matthew 22:39). The only way to integrate action and contemplation is to go ahead and do your action, but every day to ask yourself why you’re doing it. Is it to make money? Is it to have a good reputation? Is it to keep busy? Or is it for the love of God? Then you will discover the true Doer!
Reflect on these passages from the Bhagavad Gita (4:18, 23-24):
The wise see that there is action in the midst of inaction,
and inaction in the midst of action.
Their consciousness is unified,
and every act is done with complete awareness.
When a man has let go of attachments,
when his mind is rooted in wisdom,
everything he does is worship,
and his actions all melt away.
God is the offering. God
is the offered, poured out by God;
God is attained by all those
who see God in every action.
In the Gita, Prince Arjuna is the noble individual soul (“Atman”), and Lord Krishna is the personification of the Divine (“Brahman”). Already in the ancient Vedas, Atman and Brahman were discovered to be one, at least in a foundational sense. This is exactly as Jesus proclaimed when he said, “I and the Father are One” (John 10:30). Teresa of Ávila begins her journey through The Interior Castle by proclaiming God’s castle and chosen dwelling is precisely “the beauty and amplitude of the human soul.” [1] This is without doubt the true Perennial Wisdom Tradition.

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Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning

August 17, 2018

FIND ME in the midst of the maelstrom. Sometimes events whirl around you so quickly that they become a blur. Whisper My Name in recognition that I am still with you. Without skipping a beat in the activities that occupy you, you find strength and Peace through praying My Name. Later, when the happenings have run their course, you can talk with Me more fully. Accept each day just as it comes to you. Do not waste your time and energy wishing for a different set of circumstances. Instead, trust Me enough to yield to My design and purposes. Remember that nothing can separate you from My loving Presence; you are Mine.

PHILIPPIANS 2: 9– 11; Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, …

PSALM 29: 11; The LORD gives strength to his people; the LORD blesses his people with peace.

ISAIAH 43: 1; But now, this is what the LORD says– he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; …

Richard Rohr

Hinduism
Parts of a Whole
Thursday, August 16, 2018

Inspiration for this week’s banner image: The Bhagavad Gita does not counsel that we all become monks or solitaries. Rather, the true synthesis is found in a life-long purification of motive, intention, and focus in our world of action. The Gita calls the active person to a life of interiority and soul discovery. How can we do “pure action”? Only by gradually detaching from all the fruits of action and doing everything purely for the love of God. —Richard Rohr

Several central ideas affirmed by Jesus were already formed in the ancient Hindu Vedas, then unfolded by the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Three of these ideas are advaita, karma, and maya.
The word advaita is loosely translated as “having no duality,” implying that the proper or spiritual way of understanding things is outside the realm of comparison or judgment. The contemplative mind sees things in their unity and connection before it separates them as not completely one, but not two either. If you first emphasize dissimilarity and distinction, it is almost impossible to ever get back to unitive consciousness or similarity, from which most compassion, or at least tolerance, proceeds. If you start with advaita, you can still go back to making needed and helpful distinctions, but now love and union is prior to knowledge and information.
That is the unique and brilliant starting place of so many Eastern religions, as I believe it was for Jesus! Read Jesus’ words: “My Father’s sun shines on the good and the bad; his rain falls on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45); “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40). With a dualistic mind, such statements are just idealistic poetry, which is largely how many Christians have read them.
For the Hindu, karma is the nature of the universe and moves us toward purification of motive and honesty about why we are doing what we are doing. Karma is an absolute law of cause and effect. What goes around comes around—eventually! We are responsible for our own thoughts and motives—which create the Real—and we cannot avoid the consequences. Negative thoughts will destroy us. We are punished by our sins more than for our sins. Goodness is its own reward now; we do not need to wait for heaven later.
I am convinced that Jesus taught the karmic world view, but many Christians understood him inside a reward and punishment framework. Here are just a couple illustrations: “If you show mercy, mercy will be shown to you” (Matthew 5:7, Luke 6:37); “The standard you use will be used for you” (Mark 4:24).
The third supreme idea of Hinduism is maya. This is often translated as “illusion,” but a better translation might be “tricky.” When Hinduism (or Buddhism, which is a child of Hinduism) states that all the world of forms is maya (or emptiness), it is trying to help you look deeper and broader so as not to be tricked by the short term pay-offs of the ego.
The Upanishads illustrate maya as “tricky” using the familiar experience of finding a rope on a path. We jump back, thinking it’s a snake, but it isn’t. Mirabai Starr says, “Wisdom comes with being able to engage in inquiry with curiosity (with childlike wonderment as Jesus calls it) [in order] to see what really is, and to discover it’s not something we have to defend ourselves against.” [1] Reality is hard, maya says, but also benevolent.
All phenomena pass themselves off as total and final in their independent and free existence. But just wait a while, look deeper, and you will see that all things are parts of much larger ecosystems of connection and life. In their separateness, they will pass. Everything is qualified and provisional and contingent on something else. The illusion of our separateness makes it hard for us to see and seek the common good or to rest in Divine Union.

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Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning

MEET ME in early morning splendor. I eagerly await you here. In the stillness of this holy time with Me, I renew your strength and saturate you with Peace. While others turn over for extra sleep or anxiously tune in to the latest news, you commune with the Creator of the universe. I have awakened in your heart strong desire to know Me. This longing originated in Me, though it now burns brightly in you.

When you seek My Face in response to My Love-call, both of us are blessed. This is a deep mystery, designed more for your enjoyment than for your understanding. I am not a dour God who discourages pleasure. I delight in your enjoyment of everything that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable. Think on these things, and My Light in you will shine brighter day by day.

ISAIAH 40: 31;But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they.

PSALM 27: 4; One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the.Lord

PHILIPPIANS 4: 8; Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there.

Stages of Life
Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Beginning with Jesus’ four kinds of soil and receptivity (Matthew 13:4-9), to John of the Cross’ “dark nights” and Teresa of Ávila’s “interior mansions,” through the modern schemas of Jean Piaget, James Fowler, Lawrence Kohlberg, Eric Erikson, Abraham Maslow, Carol Gilligan, and others, each clarify that there is a clear direction and staging to maturity and therefore to human life.

Unless we can somehow chart this trajectory, we have no way to discern growth and 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. When pluralism itself becomes the goal, a postmodern dilemma is created. There must be a direction to ripening, but we must also recognize that any steps toward maturity are by necessity immature. An understanding of ripening teaches us the wisdom of timing, love, and patience, and allows us to be wise instead of judgmental.

Hinduism teaches that there are four major stages of life: (1) the student, (2) the householder, (3) the forest dweller or hermit (the “retiree” from business as usual), and (4) the beggar or wanderer (the wise or fully enlightened person who is not overly attached to anything and is detached from everything and thus ready for death). I once saw these four stages represented in four stained glass windows in a Catholic church in Bangalore, showing how central this cultural paradigm is to the wider Indian culture, not just practicing Hindus.

Western cultures tend to recognize and honor only the first two stages at best. We are an adolescent culture. Seeing these missing pieces in our societies, I helped develop men’s initiation rites and have explored later stages of life. [1] My experience tells me that when we do not intentionally cultivate the third and fourth stages, we lose their skills and fail to create the elders needed to understand the first and second stages and guide us through and beyond them.

This is foundational to the spiritual problems we are experiencing in Western religion and culture today, and probably why we now seem to have an epidemic of mental and emotional illness. It seems so many people are angry and afraid, especially at religion itself. I hope they do not waste too many years there because reactivism is an early-stage response. They are angry because we do not honor variety, staging, interiority, or depth in most of organized Christianity; but their attachment to that very anger becomes a hindrance.

Becoming a “forest dweller” and “beggar” is a slow, patient learning and letting go. This ripening is a seeming emptying out to create readiness for a new kind of fullness, about which we are never sure. If we do not allow our own ripening, resistance and denial set in. Yet when we surrender to our own natural journey, we find authentic hope, hope that is not identified with outcomes or goals.

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August 15 MORNING
I AM THE GOD OF ALL TIME and all that is. Seek Me not only in morning quietness but consistently throughout the day. Do not let unexpected problems distract you from My Presence. Instead, talk with Me about everything, and watch confidently to see what I will do. Adversity need not interrupt your communion with Me. When things go “wrong,” you tend to react as if you’re being punished. Instead of this negative response, try to view difficulties as blessings in disguise. Make Me your Refuge by pouring out your heart to Me, trusting in Me at all times.

Psalm 105:3-5
3 Glory in His holy name;
Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord!
4 Seek the Lord and His strength;
Seek His face evermore!
5 Remember His marvelous works which He has done,
His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth,

Psalm 55:17
17 Evening, morning and noon
I cry out in distress,
and he hears my voice.

Psalm 32:6
6 Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
while you may be found;
surely the rising of the mighty waters
will not reach them.

Psalm 62:8
8 Trust in him at all times, you people;
pour out your hearts to him,
for God is our refuge.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (Kindle Locations 5668-5670). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Richard Rohr

Hinduism
Ways of Praying and Knowing
Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Hinduism emphasizes concrete practices (yogas) which allow practitioners to know things for themselves. I often wonder if conservative Christians are afraid of the word yoga because they are in fact afraid of concrete orthopraxy! They prefer to strongly believe things but have very few daily practices or yogas that would allow them to know things in an experiential or “real” way.
The summary belief in Hinduism is that there are four disciplines, yogas, toward which different temperaments tend to gravitate. The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit for the yoke which unites the seeker with the Sought. Hindus believe that all four yogas can lead one to enlightenment; in other words, there are at least four foundationally different ways of praying and living in this world.
The four basic Hindu disciplines are:
Bhakti yoga—the way of feeling, love, and the heart, preferred by Christianity and most mystics
Jnana yoga—the way of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, or head-based enlightenment, preferred by some forms of Buddhism and intellectual Christians.
Karma yoga—the way of action, engagement, and work, which can be done in either a knowledge way or a service/heart way, preferred by both Judaism and Islam
Raja yoga—this roughly corresponds to experimentation or trial and error with mind and body through practices and empirical honesty about the inner life and the world, preferred by Hinduism itself (We see this clearly in Gandhi and his “experiments with truth” and frankly in Mother Teresa who was formed by India more than most Catholics probably care to admit.)
Each of these paths can and will lead each of us to union with Supreme Reality, if we are fully faithful to them over time. For example, Raja yoga focuses on the mind’s ability to discover the spiritual world through eight sequential steps, ending in enlightenment:
Yamas—five moral “thou shalt nots,” calling for non-violence, truthfulness, moderation in all things, no stealing, and not being covetous
Niyamas—five “thou shalts,” requiring purity, contentment, austerity, study of the sacred texts, and constant awareness of and surrender to divine presence
Asanas—physical postures (Westerners typically use the word yoga to simply mean asanas.)
Pranayama—breathing exercises
Pratyahara—withdrawal of the senses
Dharana—concentration of the mind
Dhyana—meditation
Samadhi—enlightenment, union with the Divine

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Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling

August 14,2018

I AM YOURS FOR ALL ETERNITY. I am the Alpha and the Omega: the One who is and was and is to come. The world you inhabit is a place of constant changes— more than your mind can absorb without going into shock. Even the body you inhabit is changing relentlessly in spite of modern science’s attempts to prolong youth and life indefinitely. I, however, am the same yesterday and today and forever.
Because I never change, your relationship with Me provides a rock-solid foundation for your life. I will never leave your side. When you move on from this life to the next, My Presence beside you will shine brighter with each step. You have nothing to fear because I am with you for all time and throughout eternity.

REVELATION 1: 8; I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

HEBREWS 13: 8; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

PSALM 102: 25– 27; Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all …

PSALM 48: 14; For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.

Widening Circles
Sunday, August 12, 2018

What is required is a meeting of the different religious traditions at the deepest level of their experience of God. Hinduism is based on a deep, mystical experience, and everywhere seeks not simply to know “about” God but to “know God,” that is, to experience the reality of God in the depths of the soul. —Dom Bede Griffiths [1]

Like so many Westerners, I grew up knowing almost nothing about Hinduism, even though it is by far the oldest of the “Great Religions.” Because Hindu dress, various gods, and temples seemed so foreign to our faith practices, we did not take Hinduism seriously. That’s what happens when everything is seen in relation to one’s self—whenever one’s nationality, era, and religion are the only reference points.

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church issued its historic conclusions that still stand as inspired and authoritative. In the Council’s document Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), it specifically addressed other world religions, naming what was good and eternal in each of them. Followers of Hinduism are recognized as they “contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry.” [2]

I was only slowly introduced to Hinduism’s profound mystical depths through two very special authors. I admit that I first trusted them because they were both Catholic priests, scholars, and even mystics themselves. One was Dom Bede Griffiths (1906-1993), an English Benedictine, who in the pivotal year of 1968 was asked to take charge of an ashram in India to combine Western and Eastern spirituality. Griffith’s writings are still monumental and important. From the time of his arrival in India in 1955, Dom Bede built a huge and holy bridge, which many have now walked over with great effect.

The other author who led me deeper in Hinduism was a son of a Spanish mother and a Hindu father, Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010). Panikkar’s intellect and spirit astounded all who heard him or read his words. Somehow Panikkar’s ancient roots, stellar mind, and his Christian love all came through. He saw the Christ as the fully adequate Christian symbol for the whole of Reality. I never felt Panikkar compromised his Christian belief even though he was quite able and willing to use metaphors for the same experience from Hinduism and Buddhism. In fact, it was his Hinduism that often led Panikkar to the depths and the full believability of his Christian experience. I would say the same for Bede Griffiths.

The great mystics tend to recognize that Whoever God Is, he or she does not need our protection or perfect understanding. All our words, dogmas, and rituals are like children playing in a sandbox before Infinite Mystery and Wonderment. If anything is true, then it has always been true; and people who sincerely search will touch upon the same truth in every age and culture, while using different language, symbols, and rituals to point us in the same direction. The direction is always toward more love and union—in ever widening circles.

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Infinite Forms
Monday, August 13, 2018

If you have ever traveled to India, you realize that Hinduism is less a religion and more a 5,000-year-old culture, formed by such ancient sources as the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita, and communicated in thousands of other ways. Hinduism is the product of millennia of deep self-observation, human history, a confluence of cultures, and innumerable people seeking the Divine and seeking themselves.

Hinduism has been described as the most tolerant of the world religions. Hinduism is much more comfortable with mystery and multiplicity than are the three Abrahamic religions. This is symbolized by thousands of gods and dozens of primary deities in Hindu literature and tradition.

Inter-spiritual teacher Mirabai Starr says that “Hinduism is actually quite monotheistic or better said monistic. The Upanishads assert that there is only one supreme, divine reality.” [1] The ancient, diverse tradition led to the overwhelming consensus and conclusion that the Atman (True Self/Individual Consciousness) is the same as Brahman (God). This is summarized in the well-known Sanskrit phrase Tat Tvam Asi, loosely translated as “Thou art That.” This is the final extent and triumph of nondual thinking (advaita): God and the soul are united as one.

Reflect on how the Perennial Tradition’s emphasis on the oneness of God with everything is presented in these sacred texts from both Hinduism and Christianity:

My true being is unborn and changeless. I am the Lord who dwells in every creature. Through the power of my own appearance, I manifest myself in finite forms. —Bhagavad Gita 4:5-6

In the beginning was only Being; One without a second. Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos and entered into everything in it. There is nothing that does not come from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self. —Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 6, 2:2-3

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through him all things came to be, and not one thing had its being but through him. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwells among us. —John 1:1, 3, 14

From his tradition of Judaism, rabbi Rami Shapiro offers this rather simple explanation of these profound texts: “Just as the same lump of clay can take on infinite form and remain itself unchanged, so God takes on infinite form while never being other than God.” [2]

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling,

August 13, 2018

LEARN TO ENJOY LIFE MORE. Relax, remembering that I am God with you. I crafted you with enormous capacity to know Me and enjoy My Presence. When My people wear sour faces and walk through their lives with resigned rigidity, I am displeased. When you walk through a day with childlike delight, savoring every blessing, you proclaim your trust in Me, your ever-present Shepherd. The more you focus on My Presence with you, the more fully you can enjoy life.

Glorify Me through your pleasure in Me. Thus you proclaim My Presence to the watching world.

Matthew 1:23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). Read verse in New International …

John 10:10–11 New King James Version (NKJV). ¹⁰ The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and …

Jude 1:24–25 Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To God our …

Richard Rohr

Primal and Indigenous Spirituality
Walk in Beauty
Friday, August 10, 2018

 

In 1969 when I was a young deacon in Acoma Pueblo, one of my jobs was to take the census. Because it was summer and hot, I would start early in the morning, driving my little orange truck to each residence. Invariably at sunrise, I would see a mother outside the door of her home, with her children standing beside her. She and the children would be reaching out with both hands uplifted to “scoop” up the new day and then “pour” it over their heads and bodies as if in blessing. I would sit in my truck until they were finished, thinking how silly it was of us Franciscans to think we brought religion to New Mexico 400 years ago!
The Navajo or Diné—the people—see the world through the lens of hozho: all the goodness to be found through harmony, balance, beauty, and blessing. Read this well-known Navajo prayer aloud:
In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
Looking for beauty all around us is a contemplative practice, an exercise in opening our hearts, minds, and bodies to the divine image. In indigenous traditions, such opening practices often take the form of dance, drumming, song, and trance, embodied forms that Western, and particularly Euro-centric, Christianity has neglected.
I invite you to return to this Navajo prayer when you have the space and time to literally move or walk with it. If you’re able to walk, you might take off your shoes and walk barefoot. Move slowly, noticing the sensations in your body—discomfort, surprise, challenge, pleasure, ease. Take in your surroundings with a soft, receptive gaze. What do you see? Listen to whatever there is to hear—your own breathing, birds, traffic. You may choose to pay attention to one sense at a time or try to hold two simultaneously. Be present to what is. Walk or move in this way for several minutes or even half an hour. When you have ended, bow in gratitude for your body, for the beauty surrounding you, and for the beauty that will continue to follow you everywhere you go.

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Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning Devotional

August 10, 2018

RELAX IN MY HEALING, holy Presence. Allow Me to transform you through this time alone with Me. As your thoughts center more and more on Me, trust displaces fear and worry. Your mind is somewhat like a seesaw. As your trust in Me goes up, fear and worry automatically go down. Time spent with Me not only increases your trust; it also helps you discern what is important and what is not. Energy and time are precious, limited entities. Therefore, you need to use them wisely, focusing on what is truly important. As you walk close to Me, saturating your mind with Scripture, I will show you how to spend your time and energy. My Word is a lamp to your feet; My Presence is a Light for your path.

ROMANS 12:2 NKJV; And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable 

PSALM 52:8; But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.

EPHESIANS 5:15–16 NKJV; Walk in Wisdom – See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

PSALM 119:105; Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.

Richard Rohr

Primal and Indigenous Spirituality
At Home in the World
Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Much of indigenous spirituality exists on the edges of society without validation or integration from the government and popular culture (though it is often appropriated for commercial or selfish purposes). Native lands were largely invaded by Christian colonizers. Native peoples were forced to leave their homes. Their children were taken to schools where their culture was often stripped away.
From this marginalized position, Native peoples have a unique “bias from the bottom” that we would do well to pay attention to. We could learn from them, among other things, that land cannot be owned and Spirit cannot be divided. The Earth and all its inhabitants belong to the Creator who made them. We are called to live in harmony with each other and all created things. Creating harmony is a central idea in most indigenous religions.
Similarly, Huston Smith described “primal peoples” as:
. . . oriented to a single cosmos, which sustains them like a living womb. Because they assume that it exists to nurture them, they have no disposition to challenge it, defy it, refashion it, or escape from it. It is not a place of exile or pilgrimage, though pilgrimages take place within it. Its space is not homogenous; the home has a number of rooms, we might say, some of which are normally invisible. But together they constitute a single domicile. Primal peoples are concerned with the maintenance of personal, social, and cosmic harmony. But the overriding goal of salvation that dominates the historical religions is virtually absent from them. [1]
Primal and indigenous spiritualities are not primarily concerned with salvation as a way to escape from a sinful world and go to heaven or the next world. Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon write, “They make it clear that we humans are not here simply as transients waiting for a ticket to somewhere else. The Earth itself is Christos, is Buddha, is Allah, is Gaia.” [2] As Jesus taught, heaven is here and now, within us (Luke 17:21).
When Pope John Paul II met with Native Americans in Phoenix, Arizona, he told them that they knew something that is taking most Catholics a long time to learn: that the Creator has always been giving and is encountered in the natural world, just as it is written in our own Scriptures (Romans 1:20). From his address:
[Your ancestors’] ways were marked by great respect for the natural resources of land and rivers, of forest and plain and desert. . . . Here they worshipped the Creator and thanked him for his gifts. In contact with the forces of nature they learned the value of prayer, of silence and fasting, of patience and courage in the face of pain and disappointment. [3]
Unfortunately, many Christians moved the knowing of God largely into the realm of argumentative words, which narrowed the field of truly knowing and actually experiencing.

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Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

August 8, 2018

I SPEAK TO YOU from deepest heaven. You hear Me in the depths of your being. Deep calls unto deep. You are blessed to hear Me so directly. Never take this privilege for granted. The best response is a heart overflowing with gratitude. I am training you to cultivate a thankful mind-set. This is like building your house on a firm rock, where life’s storms cannot shake you. As you learn these lessons, you are to teach them to others. I will open up the way before you, one step at a time.

PSALM 42:7–8 NKJV; He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

PSALM 95:1–2; Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock … 2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.

MATTHEW 7:24–25; Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on a firm foundation.