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Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations

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Francis of Assisi knew that if you can accept that the finite manifests the infinite, and that the physical is the doorway to the spiritual (which is the foundational principle we call “incarnation”), then all you need is right here and right now—in this world. This is the way to that! Heaven includes earth. Time opens you up to the timeless, space opens you up to spacelessness, if you only recognize them as the clear doorways that they are.

There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments—and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it.

The Christ Mystery refuses to be vague or abstract, and it is always concrete and specific. When we stay with these daily apparitions, we see that everything is a revelation of the divine—from rocks to rocket ships. Our only blindness is our own lack of fascination, humility, curiosity, awe. The only thing needed is a willingness to surrender to the naked now which God always inhabits, where the incarnation is always taking place and always mysterious, where God in every moment is perfectly hidden and at the same time perfectly revealed. Hold that paradox together. Those who have eyes to see can allow both to be true.

Adapted from Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi,
pp. 5-6;

and How Do We Get Everything to Belong?, disc 3
(CD, MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence:
The kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 3:2).

If God is always mystery…

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If God is always mystery, then God is always on some level the unfamiliar, beyond what we’re used to, beyond our comfort zone, beyond what we can explain or understand. In the fourth century, St. Augustine said, “If you comprehend it, it’s not God.” Would you respect a God you could comprehend? And yet very often that’s what we want—a God who reflects our culture, our biases, our economic, political, and military systems.

 

Read the full blog post on Richard Rohr’s Daily Reflections

I am what I am,…

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I am what I am, good and bad put together into one self; and God’s mercy is so great and God’s love is so total that God uses even my sin in my favor! God is using all of me to bring me to God. That is the Good News! – Fr. Richard Rohr

Wild Geese

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Image
 
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting  
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.
 
from Dream Work by Mary Oliver 
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver

Salvation from …

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Salvation from the False Self – Fr. Richard Rohr

“The saint is precisely one who has no “I” to protect or project. His or her “I” is in conscious union with the “I AM” of God, and that is more than enough. Divine union overrides any need for self-hatred or self-promotion. Such people do not need to be perfectly right, and they know they cannot be anyway, so they just try to be in right relationship. In other words, they try above all else to be loving.

Love holds you tightly and safely and always. It gives you the freedom to meet the enemy and know the major enemy is “me,” as the old comic character Pogo said. But you do not hate “me” either; you just see through and beyond “me.” Shadow work literally saves you from yourself (your False Self, that is), which is the foundational meaning of salvation. For then “You too (your True Self) will be revealed in all your glory with him” (Colossians 3:3-4).”

Read the full blog entry posted today by Father Richard

Welcome to Tradition – great works from Rob Bell

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The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent_Monastery_of_St_Catherine_Sinai_12th_century

God belongs to all free beings. He is the life of all, the salvation of all —faithful and unfaithful, just and unjust, pious and impious, passionate and dispassionate, monks and laymen, wise and simple, healthy and sick, young and old —just as the effusion of light, the sight of the sun, and the changes of the seasons are for all alike; ‘for there is no respect of persons with God.’
from The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 1, Passage by St. John Climacus

From a Rob Bell Tumblr blog post – read more here.

What is the Bible? Part 54: Predestination, Election, and that Burning Feeling in the Pit of Your Soul

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Rob-Bell

A favorite excerpt from Rob Bell’s Tumblr blog series entitled – What is the Bible?  Spoiler alert the passage below is at the end of his post – so if you would like to start first at the top click here.

Always ask yourself when you come across something that religious people have been debating and discussing for years what would happen if you actually had concrete answers to the questions. 

When I have been asked whether some are chosen or not, I always ask How would you ever know such a thing? and more importantly How would that ever make your life better? 

Some things that religious people make a big deal of are rather pointless. Avoid the insanity.

How often do you ask What would it feel like to swallow a hair dryer while it was turned on? 

No, you don’t, because it’s not interesting. And if you could answer the question, what would you have gained?

Here then is my word to you: Don’t participate in discussions that are pointless. You can say yes to God’s love and grace today, you can be grateful for each and every breath, you can trust that there is meaningful work for you to do today in the world. You can heal, you can be free, you can become more and more courageous and full of joy. All of this can be more and more the dominant reality of your life as you become more and more the person Jesus insists you can be. Why would you spend time on topics and discussions that have nothing to do with the very real invitation every single one of us have right now to live life to the fullest?

Agape by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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MLK Choose Love

 

“The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape. … agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him.” ―Martin Luther King Jr.