The Gospel of the Poor

Jesus says he has come to preach the Gospel to the poor since, in fact, they’re the only ones who can hear it! They don’t have to prove or protect anything.

We always have to ask: In what sense are we ourselves rich? What do we have to defend? What principles do we have to prove? What keeps us from being open and poor?

The issue isn’t primarily material goods, but our spiritual and intellectual goods….my ego, my reputation, my self-image, my need to be right, my need to be successful, my need to have everything under my control, my need to be loved….

The words of the Gospel never let us live in self-satisfaction.  Rather they always make us empty. They always make us repeat the truth of Mary’s “Let it be done unto me according to your word.”  They allow us to keep our wounds open so we can receive Christ in us. 

It seems we are quite incapable of welcoming Christ, because we are so stuffed full of ourselves.  The real thing we have to let go of is our self.

Fr. Richard Rohr “Simplicity: The Art of Living”

Republicans and Democrats Lend Me Your Ears

Many people are naturally accepting of the reality of what is, but by nature are not comfortable with the unknown. So rules and the status quo are their comfort zone. They are the keepers of tradition. They tend to live in the present moment.   They are practical, often talented in working on things in the immediate physical world. In relationships they are like my husband, who said, “I don’t understand her, but I accept her as she is.” A neighbor or fellow worker, even one who is foreign or different from them, can gradually become understood and trusted enough to become a friend that they will help even at a cost to themselves. But that trust doesn’t necessarily extend to others of that differing group.

Other people come into the world naturally idealistic and open to those differing, but with ideas about how everything and everyone can be improved.  Change is the favored tool in their box. They work on self-improvement, but also tend to do as I did, encouraging (dragging) their spouses to explore means of self-improvement.  They tend to see the big picture, but sometimes are oblivious to what is right in front of them.  These people often focus on the future, anticipating problems and wanting to head them off. They tend to be interested in and care about the concerns of people who are different from themselves, those of other nationalities, races, genders, and people with disabilities  

We are only beginning to become familiar with the inborn differences that are strengths with up sides and a down sides. People naturally focus on different aspects of the world and life. 

For a democracy to survive and flourish we need both. The challenge is that at any given time, we may need to emphasize different needs.  And that takes cooperation and compromise and recognizing the need for the differing gifts of all.

When we see each other as the enemy rather than our partner, violence and fear become a daily part of all of our lives.

My Short Version of Christianity. What’s Yours?

Christianity is about experiencing the unconditional Love of God fleshed out in Jesus with both our heart and our mind.

Christianity is about forgiveness.

Christianity is about passing on that Love.

Christianity is about loving people more than loving being right.

Christianity is about the awesome God of the universe being within each of us.

Christianity is about accepting that we are all “earthen vessels,” which means we are all probably at least slightly “cracked.” So, though we are Spirit filled, we leak!

Christianity is about recognizing that Jesus is a well where we can go to refill.

Christianity is about realizing that the Spirit of God works differently in diverse people, maybe like a geyser, or a brook, or even an underground river.

Christianity is about valuing the fruit of the Spirit: peace, love, joy in whatever wrapping or label it wears.

Christianity is about Jesus showing us that this life is not all there is.

Need vs Love

Need is the opposite of Love. 

We use others to meet our needs.

Sweet little babies are born totally needy.

Two-year-olds, left to their natural instincts, are barbarians.

Consequences teach us to reluctantly accept the rights of others.

Need for emotional support and understanding draws us into relationships.

Need for pleasure and intimacy draws us into the vulnerability of physical relationships.

Marriage is the lifelong school for learning to love another flawed human being more than our self.

Being born again is about recognizing our flawed humanity and experiencing the grace of unconditional love.

Salvation is being freed to love as Jesus did by recognizing our shared vulnerability and flawed humanity even in our enemies.

A Holy Balancing Act

The Daily Meditations this week focus on the first of Richard Rohr’s “Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy”:

Scripture as validated by experience, and experience as validated by Tradition, are good scales for one’s spiritual worldview.

We use the metaphor of a tricycle to illustrate this dynamic relationship. The front wheel is experience and the two back wheels are Scripture and Tradition. Richard explains:

People have every right to ask preachers and teachers, “By what authority do you say what you say?” That’s why I want to declare our methodology right at the beginning and say that it’s three-wheeled, which allows us to move forward. The front wheel, experience, may seem surprising, because neither Orthodox Christians, Catholics, nor Protestants were taught a lot about it. We make experience the front wheel because we all filter Scripture and Tradition through our own experience anyway! We cannot not do that. It’s common sense. It’s obvious.

But we didn’t have the courage or maybe the awareness to state what we now realize is obvious. Catholics thought that all our teaching was based on Tradition with a big “T”: the Tradition of the first 1,500 years at least. Well, maybe, but it was more Italian tradition, French tradition, German tradition, and that’s tradition with a little “t.”

So, we make it our work to get back to the big “T,” the perennial Tradition. What keeps recurring? What keeps coming back, century after century, in mystics, saints, and councils of the church? What do wise people keep saying? The Catholic intellectual St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) held that if it’s true, it’s from the Holy Spirit. [1] And if it’s from the Holy Spirit, it’s going to keep being discovered again and again.

Scripture is validated as well by two other wheels on our tricycle. If it’s true—and this is an act of faith—we would say that it somehow has to be found in Scripture. It can’t be directly contradicted by Scripture. We Catholics weren’t too good at that. We put all our eggs in the Tradition basket. So, let’s look for validation in both worlds—in verses from Scripture, and in writings of mystics, saints, prophets, church Fathers and Mothers, and Councils of the Church. [

Since the Reformation in the sixteenth century, much Christian infighting and misunderstanding has occurred over the Catholic and Orthodox emphasis on Tradition versus the Protestant emphasis on Scripture. Tradition usually got confused with small cultural traditions, and the Protestant cry of “Scripture alone!” gradually devolved into each group choosing among the Scriptures it would emphasize or ignore. Both currents have now shown their weaknesses and biases. They lacked the dynamic third principle of God experience: personal experience that is processed and held accountable by both Scripture and Tradition, as well as by solid spiritual direction and counseling. This is our trilateral principle at the Living School for Action and Contemplation.

Hope or Delusion

No person, no group, religious or otherwise, knows All the truth,

Only the truth, even with the help of God.

That would make us equal to God.

It would also lock us into outdated ways of understanding

both the world and God.

Humanity is a work in progress.

Sometimes when I’m wondering about humanity and

whether we could actually be evolving, I get hopeful that maybe

in a few millenniums, we may evolve enough to love as well as dogs do.