Age and forgiveness
The older I get, the more it feels like I must forgive almost everything for not being perfect, or as I first wanted or needed it to be.
—Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things
The older I get, the more it feels like I must forgive almost everything for not being perfect, or as I first wanted or needed it to be.
—Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things
Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and spiritual teacher, offers a fascinating take on Jesus’s casting out of demons in the first century. While the language may feel outdated to modern ears, the essence behind it remains deeply relevant today:
When a person has a constantly changing reference point, they have a very insecure life. They will take on any persona, negative or positive, and become incapable of much personal integrity. This is the celebrity-obsessed world in which we are living today. The biblical tradition uses the language of “having a demon” to describe such negative identity. We post-enlightenment, educated people don’t like this language very much, but one way to think of “being possessed” is when there is an unhealthy other (or others!) who is defining us—and usually rather poorly.
Rohr’s reflection challenges us to rethink the idea of “possession.” What happens when external forces, such as societal expectations, social media, or the opinions of others, begin to define us? In many ways, the “demons” of today are the unhealthy voices and influences that lead us away from our true selves.
How might we cast out these forces in our own lives? Rohr’s insights invite us to reflect deeply on where we find our sense of identity and security.
You can explore the full article at cac.org.
“The soul needs living models to grow.” Love this from Richard Rohr:
The soul needs living models to grow, exemplars with the expansive energies of love. People who are eager to love change us at the deeper levels. They alone seem able to open the field of both mind and heart at the same time. When we’re in this different state—and that is what it is—we find ourselves open to directions or possibilities we would never allow or imagine before.
When fundamentalism rules the day, new information becomes a threat.
This quote is from back in 2012, but it feels more apt than ever.
Thanks to Grant Sowter for pointing me towards this.
Reinhold Niebuhr on why we need faith, hope, love, and forgiveness.
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
—Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
[cac.org]
The Economist reviews ‘The Invention of Good and Evil’ by Hanno Sauer, concluding:
…despite the fury of the culture wars, Mr Sauer sees “an enormous… unrealised potential for reconciliation”. After hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, people share more moral values than they think, and this could help them cast off the identity politics that tells them they are enemies. “Between the extremes of ‘being on time is white supremacy’ and ‘we must revitalise Western Christianity’s cultural hegemony,’ there is a silent majority of reasonable people,” he concludes. He is surely right.
Number of non-believers is surging in Britain.
Britain is entering its “first atheist age” as parents increasingly fail to pass on religious beliefs to their children, according to the largest study of its kind…
…It has long been known that children raised by non-religious parents are more likely to grow up as “non-theists” themselves, but academics have found the same is true for children whose parents believe firmly in God but do not actively participate in religious rituals or devote much “time or money” to their faith.
Of course, this is all blurry. People may not believe in ‘God’ as prescribed by a particular religion or denomination, but that doesn’t mean they don’t embrace the idea of a ‘higher being’ and actively practice spirituality.
Bishop Steven Charleston, quoted by Brian McLaren in Life After Doom:
…Sometimes, in this troubled world of ours, we forget that love is all around us. We imagine the worst of other people and withdraw into our own shells. But try this simple test: Stand still in any crowded place and watch the people around you. Within a very short time, you will begin to see love, and you will see it over and over and over. A young mother talking to her child, a couple laughing together as they walk by, an older man holding the door for a stranger - small signs of love are everywhere. The more you look, the more you will see. Love is literally everywhere. We are surrounded by love.
Quotation from ‘Life After Doom’ by Brian McLaren:
No amount of fiddling with capitalism to regulate and humanize it can for long disguise its failure to conserve the wealth and health of nature: eroded, wasted, or degraded soils; damaged or destroyed ecosystems; extinction of biodiversity, species; whole landscapes defaced, gouged, flooded, or blown up; thoughtless squandering of fossil fuels and fossil waters, of mineable minerals and ores; natural health and beauty replaced by a heartless and sickening ugliness. Perhaps its greatest success is an astounding increase in the destructiveness and therefore the profitability of war.
“Sometimes heaven is just a new pair of glasses.”
Mirabai Starr, the American author and speaker:
Living as a mystic means orienting the whole of yourself toward the sacred. It’s a matter of purposely looking through the lens of love. Contemporary wise woman Anne Lamott says (quoting Father Ed, the priest who helped Bill Wilson start up Alcoholics Anonymous) that “sometimes Heaven is just a new pair of glasses.” You know what it looks like when you wipe a lens clean of smears and dust. And you also know how it feels to bump into the furniture when your vision is fuzzy. When you say yes to cultivating a mystical gaze, the ordinary world becomes more luminous, imbued with flashes of beauty and moments of meaning. The universe responds to your willingness to behold the holy by revealing almost everything as holy. A plate of rice and beans, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, your new baby, the latest political scoundrel, the scary diagnosis, the restless nights.
[cac.org]
Author and activist Brian McClaren in his book ‘Life After Doom’:
I recall the wisdom of Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper in his beautiful book Happiness and Contemplation.
Having counts for little or nothing, he explained. The rich man can own ten fast new cars, but appreciate none of them the way a poor child appreciates her one hand-me-down bicycle. It is not having that brings deep joy, but appreciating.
I know I am not alone in needing to be reminded of this.
“The nonviolence of courageous action”.
Jean Zaru, a Palestinian Quaker, reflects upon her lifelong commitment to peacemaking:
As Palestinian women, we have a special burden and service. We are constantly being told to be peaceful. But the inner peace of which I speak is not simply being nice, or being passive, or permitting oneself to be trampled upon without protest. It is not passive nonviolence, but the nonviolence of courageous action…
What is that inner force that drives us, that provides regeneration and perseverance to speak the truth that desperately needs to be spoken in this moment of history?… If I deserve credit for courage, it is not for anything I do here, but for continuing in my daily struggle under occupation on so many fronts, for remaining samideh (steadfast) and, all the while, remaining open to love, to the beauty of the earth, and contributing to its healing when it is violated.
[cac.org]
Buddhist author and activist Joanna Macy:
Until the late twentieth century, every generation throughout history lived with the tacit certainty that there would be generations to follow. Each assumed, without questioning, that its children and children’s children would walk the same Earth, under the same sky … That certainty is now lost to us, whatever our politics. That loss, unmeasured and immeasurable, is the pivotal psychological reality of our time.
Doesn’t make for comforting reading, but the truth of this resonates.
“People can be better than the worst thing they’ve done”.
Author and activist, Shane Claiborne:
…grace offers us another version of justice. Grace makes room … for justice that is restorative, and dedicated to healing the wounds of injustice. But the grace thing is hard work. It takes faith—because it dares us to believe that not only can victims be healed, but so can the victimizers. It is not always easy to believe that love is more powerful than hatred, life more powerful than death, and that people can be better than the worst thing they’ve done.
[cac.org]
Religion should be grounded in nature.
Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher, Father Richard Rohr:
I am beginning to think that much of institutional religion is rather useless if it is not grounded in natural seeing and nature religion…
…When we are at peace, when we are not fighting it, when we are not fixing and controlling this world, when we are not filled with anger, all we can do is start loving and forgiving. Nothing else makes sense when we are alone with God. All we can do is let go. There’s nothing worth holding on to, because there is nothing else we need. It’s in that free space, I think, that realignment happens.
Perhaps there’s an argument to be made that the more disconnected institutional religion is from nature, the more disconnected it is from reality. And usefulness.
[cac.org]
The Democrats scrap plans to abolish the death penalty
Shane Claiborne, the activist and author, has drawn attention to a quiet move by the Democratic Party in the United States to remove abolishing the death penalty from the party platform:
Unfortunately, on at least one issue, the Democrats have gone backward rather than forward, in a move that caught many of us by surprise. As the festivities finished up in Chicago last week, the Democrats quietly removed abolishing the death penalty from the party platform, a move that certainly will not help them distinguish themselves from Trump and win this election.
Living in a country where the death penalty has not been enacted since 1964 (although it was only officially removed in 1998), it’s hard to comprehend that it still exists in America, and that the Democrats are abandoning their plans to abolish it.
Claiborne adds:
It is disappointing that this key commitment, and a signal difference with the Trump agenda, has been removed from the DNC platform. President Biden and Vice President Harris need to do more than pause executions for the remainder of their administration; we need them to stop executions for good.
I don’t listen to every episode of the podcast Smartless, but I do dip in every now and then. And I’m glad I listened to the recent episode with Rashida Jones. In particular, it was fascinating to hear the discussion about questions of life and purpose and ego as they transition to the second half of their lives.
Here’s what Rashida had to say:
Most people I talk to who are 50, just turned 50, have this thing where they’re like, who am I? There’s like this full rebirth. Who do I want to be for the next 50 years if we’re lucky? What does my back half look like? What’s actually fulfilling? What does my ego want? Do I need to fulfill my ego? Do I need to fulfill a deeper soul purpose? Like so much is coming up.
The conversation then continued with Will Arnett adding:
I think at this stage of your life, you’ve done stuff like you’ve had like this huge first couple chapters of your life and you have the work stuff and you have the adolescence and then the work stuff and then the kid stuff and then the work with kids stuff and blah, blah, blah. And you get to this point, you’re like, okay, now what?
To which Rashida responded:
Right. And also that’s all that stuff that you thought for your entire life was going to fill the gap. You’re like, wait, it doesn’t quite fill that gap. There’s still a little piece missing. And what is that piece like? And we’re privileged enough to have succeeded in a way. But I think for everybody, they’re like, wait a second, it’s just going to be this forever? Like all the firsts are gone.
It’s easy to look at celebrities and famous people and think they have it all. But, truth told, we’re all grappling with the same questions and issues.
In Fr. Richard Robr’s daily meditations this week he is reflecting on the life and teachings of Julian of Norwich. This recent post on God as ‘mother’ is brilliant.
Julian helps me finally understand one major aspect of my own Catholic culture: why in heaven’s name, for centuries, did both the Eastern and Western Churches attribute so many beautiful and beloved places, shrines, hills, cathedrals, and works of religious art in the Middle East and Europe, not usually to Jesus, or even to God, but to some iteration of Mother Mary? I’ve always thought it was scripturally weak but psychologically brilliant. Many people in Julian’s time didn’t have access to scripture—in fact, most couldn’t read at all. They interpreted at the level of archetype and symbol. The “word” or logos was quite good, but a feminine image for God was even better.
…the Christian iconography that has been exploited by the far right is an offence to our faith, and all that Jesus was and is. Let me say clearly now to Christians that they should not be associated with any far-right group – because those groups are unchristian. Let me say clearly now to other faiths, especially Muslims, that we denounce people misusing such imagery as fundamentally antichristian.