What does it take for someone to CONVERT to GOD? ----RICHARD ROHR

hello everybody isn't this nice huh to come to my home state and with ordinary people and good people and i presume this is an ecumenical group from many denominations which is the real church you know there's people in every group who get it and there's people in every group who oppose it saint augustine said that already in the fourth century he says god has many the church does not have and the church has many that god does not have so so we've always got to look at the broader picture of where is life really flowing and i use that as an introduction to uh i mean i am very impressed that you'd come to listen to someone talk about a subject that most people think is entirely irrelevant abstruse conceptual abstract and distant and meaningless even i hate to say it but carl rauner the german jesuit he said we could drop the doctrine of the trinity tomorrow and 98 of christian practice and prayer would remain untouched and unchanged now just saying that tells you my god does that for me it explains why christianity is having so many problems worldwide and so many people are leaving because the basis uh was not made clear and by the basis i mean what is the shape of god i'm just told what is the shape of god let's be honest and admit we hear it on tv all the time they even refer to god as the man upstairs how often haven't you heard that right the man up what does that mean it means almost nothing that is meaningful or helpful or real or true it's in fact heresy but we tend to think of god as a being that we can relate to like any other being which means therefore we relate to god as an object that we either like or dislike or agree with or don't agree with or believe in or don't believe in which just gets you off to a terrible start because god cannot as saint john of the cross and so many of our mystics said god cannot be related to like any other anything because god is not a being god is being itself now if you think i'm a heretic go to acts 17 god is the one in whom we live and move and have our very being now what i'm going to do and i hesitate to do this the book called the divine dance will not come out till october but that's why i suggested this as a title because i've been writing this off and on for the last year and so i'm sort of filled with it i hope i can not run all over the place but i'm going to read to you at least in part from my preface to the book so we can just dive right into the subject because if you get this i don't know that i got it yet you never get it it's just layer upon layer upon layer of realization your christian life well your life can never be the same again and if you're not prepared for that kind of conversion change if you want to walk out that door in an hour thinking just like you think now then don't stay because i'm wasting my time and you're wasting yours and i don't want to do that so in his book if you're a scientist you might have read this book it's a sort of classic in the world of the philosophy of science thomas kuhn he wrote a book called the structure of scientific revolutions and he said the he's the one who coined the term paradigm shift you might be familiar with that you know he made clear that even in the scientific world a paradigm shift is tantamount to what religion calls major conversion and it is equally rare in both camps both science and religion he says any genuine transformation of world view that i looked at life this way and now it's like my head was turned around and i look at life in a completely different way it's demands such a major switch from the track that we're on unfamiliar with that often those who hold the old paradigm and he's talking about this as a scientist they actually have to die before the new generation because most people will not let go of their way of thinking that's the universal addiction which i talk about in the book breathing underwater the universal addiction true of me and every one of us in this room is we like to think the way we like to think and and to actually have that changed is called conversion or in science a paradigm shift but we don't want you all to have to die before we can believe the trinity because that's what i'm talking about the trinity is such a momentous shift in the nature and the shape of god that after 2000 years we haven't begun really i think we will still be called early christianity i believe that the first two thousand years are still early christianity because the implications of the incarnation and the trinitarian shape of god have not begun to dawn on most christian people they still think of god as a being instead of being itself and relate to god as well let's make it even worse but more truthful an old man with a white beard usually white skin unfortunately who's who's sitting on a white throne i suppose you know it's all white which should reveal a little bias at work already but uh do you even i'm running away from my text already but do you know the latin i had six years of latin forced on me the latin word for god is deus d-e-u-s does that sound anything like zeus z-e-u-s you got it basically most christians still operate i'm going to use the word not that pagans are bad people but it's a pagan notion of god we didn't get the paradigm shift that the christianity was supposed to offer the world it was just too much and so an old white man with a white beard sitting on a throne throwing down thunderbolts like zeus basically in the western world a uh a glorified santa claus and that is no exaggeration making a list checking it twice gonna find out who's naughty or nice if i were your spiritual director i would be able to figure out usually in the first half hour that's still the god image this person operates with you know glorified santa claus who gives coal to bad boys and gives little gifts to good boys it sort of works if you're a kid but once you start praying and that's what this is all dependent on without an inner life which we would call a prayer life you don't easily move away from the old white man sitting on a throne so even more shocking is kuhn's conclusion that a paradigm shift has little to do with logic or evidence and everything to do with a cataclysmic insight a cataclysmic breakthrough what meister eckhart the german mystic called boiling you have to go through a boiling experience where the old doesn't work anymore it doesn't make sense in fact i'm going to make a statement that i make i think more strongly in the book i think the reason western christianity has produced so many atheists and so many agnostics is because the image of god we handed them was literally unbelievable once you got educated and and it just didn't work they weren't i bet you all know some really nice atheists don't you and sometimes they're much nicer than we are to be perfectly honest sometimes much more loving than people go to church every sunday and we'll see why that sometimes is true so history is so long operated with a static static and imperial notion of god basically as a supreme monarch now since pastor jeff was kind enough to put the rube left icon in three places in the back too i let me dive right into that for many of us this is it's certainly my favorite icon i have it hanging in my office and in my little hermitage uh was part painted in the 14th century by a russian mystic andre rublev and uh you know i that doesn't show the correct color on the well it shows a little bit the father is the one there on the left he's usually pictured pretty golden his hands are joined to symbolize this completeness the sun who is the color of the sea in the sky blue and yet red symbolizing his willingness to suffer for it the blood color is looking and gazingly lovingly at the father there are all three eating from the same communion bowl if you will or bowl of communion the son is holding his two fingers to say i'm too you know now i'm going to shock some of you but i can promise you this is not heresy what i'm about to say and i know most of us christians say it you probably say it glibly off your tongue jesus is god that's actually not good theology that's what happens when you pull jesus out of the trinity and try to make jesus god apart from what's happening between the father and the holy spirit almost all of us have done that doesn't matter what denomination you are the orthodox are a little better than the rest of us but most of them would probably easily say jesus is god no this is god right and when you take one third of god out and push jesus back upon the throne as you see in much art in east and west jesus is now sitting on the throne we didn't like the father that much because we didn't know him and he seemed to demand blood of jesus and if you had a bad father you were just programmed not to like the father and of course we called him father which made us think he was masculine so he just had all kind of strikes against him do you understand and so he became pretty much lost to christian history and as many of our traditions admit the holy spirit has always been the lost person of the blessed trinity uh only if you're pentecostal or assembly of god or charismatic do you emphasize the holy spirit but the holy spirit is in beautiful life giving green and he's gesturing down toward a fourth place can you see that little rectangle in the front of the table they have now done studies this original icon still hangs in moscow and recently i think in the last 25 years they allowed scientists to examine it closer and where that little rectangle is they found out there was glue and this is what they are assuming get ready there was a mirror glued there which has no precedent in any classic iconography you you get what's happening that the observer observing this mystery of outpouring love between three perfect self-emptying perfect receiving god is 100 outpoured god is 100 vulnerable and yet we only really understood one half of that i would say half of the catholic prayers the official prayers of the liturgy and maybe you can see if this applies to your church they begin with the phrase almighty god do you know unless you balance almighty with all vulnerable you don't have the true shape of god that's why we've created so many atheists because we proclaim god to be almighty even though right later at the eucharist we call him lamb of god cordero de dios uh we really didn't get it we like a lion much better than a lamb but if god is perfect self-emptying eternal infinite outpouring and perfect receiving well let's just start with this i've already left my preface haven't i god is much more a verb than a noun let's just start with that now this is not heresy i couldn't be talking to you much more orthodox this is orthodox theology roman catholic theology and protestant theology we all agree upon this you know but no one unpackaged the implications of it and i the only reason i could no one was bad willed but i think consciousness was just not ready for it to understand now here's what's helping our ex our consciousness to expand why i can talk this way and why william paul young can write books like the shack that have now sold 40 million copies he's going to join me in albuquerque in april we're going to fill the convention center talking about the trinity no one can believe it all the churches in town they're filling the convention center talking about the trinity of course he'll talk about it much more exciting than i will if you read the shack which i hope you did it's sort of a page turner and who would have thought who would have thought that anybody could make the trinity into a page-turning novel you know but it's because consciousness is ready to understand god as an event of communion in the beginning [Music] is the relationship hold on to that just hold on to that in the beginning is the relationship now if you think i'm a heretic let's go back to the first chapter of genesis maybe the irony of this struck you it certainly has been problematic for our jewish brothers and sisters if you go back home and read genesis 1 26-27 it will say let us create in our image plural pronouns and the great monotheistic judaism didn't know what to do with this but they couldn't doubt that this was the meaning of the genesis text in the oldest manuscripts let us create in our image now let me make an immediate connection to science you've all seen pictures of the atom the basic building block of the entire physical universe what does the picture usually show you an electron a proton and a neutron cycling around one another and now as you look at the entire universe from atoms to galaxies you see everything is indeed created in the divine image and you are too now we'll get to that if we get enough time it's just this stuff is too good to be true it's like and you know no bishop can question me on it because i'm more orthodox than most bishops are you know which is hard to say today in the catholic world anyway but it's not their fault no one ever told them this you understand they pulled jesus out of the trinity too and made him the savior and you know all this worship of jesus this is an eternal infinite act of worship in itself and everything you've ever seen with your eyes since the moment you're created is a product of this eternal self emptying the gesture of the spirit pointing down unto creation and to the fourth place there at the table is us now again this is not heresy you go back to the early eastern fathers they were the eastern church got this much better than the western church did we had a much more contemplative spirituality a much more dynamic notion of god than we did ours was pretty static we liked kings and emperors and we just pushed god into that role even though god had nothing to do with our model of of a king or an emperor in fact quite the opposite quite the opposite but that's what we were programmed for preconditioned for so just hold on to this now so you don't feel like you're really slow or behind or stupid or something it took the church itself three centuries to dare to verbalize this they went to john's gospel which you've all heard thousands of times i hope and we hear jesus talking of himself as the same as the father and yet i and the father are one and different he talks about giving himself and this self he describes as spirit so you just line up all the texts particularly in john's gospel but in the three synoptics and if you approach it with your logical mind it sounds like gobbledygook father son spirit who's who here you know and most of us if we come with a dualistic mind i'm glad you mentioned that lori uh the trinity was made to order to undo dualistic thinking you cannot possibly understand the trinity with an either or mind mine you can't you have to move from the law of two to the law of two whenever you understand anything does this need much proof now with republican democrat you know as soon as you have two you have oppositional thinking you've always got to choose sides which is pretty stupid thinking when you think of it don't think of it so and then then it'll begin to make sense male female catholic protestant just go anywhere though the binary system of the mind prefers to divide everything up into twos and the trinity to move you to the mystical mind has to totally undercut that and say i'm not understanding an oppositional thinking two is always oppositional three is dynamic okay once you get inside of three you have to keep flowing you have to keep letting the one handing it on to the other and your very notion of god and grace and prayer and communion and relationship becomes becomes the very flow of life itself so back to the three centuries there were some wonderful mystical fathers of the church in eastern turkey the area we call cappadocia one of our teachers at our living school cynthia bourgeois tells me i've got to get to eastern turkey she says there's still mystics there and they had the the ability to try to verbalize what seemed unverbalizable and they took words believe it or not from greek theater and drama you're just gonna love this at least i hope you'll love it i find it very interesting so i entitled the book that's coming out in october the divine dance now if you didn't know what i'm about to tell you you'd think well isn't that a little new agey you know what's happening to richard he's certainly gone over the edge now he must be living in san francisco or something to to dare to call god the divine dance well that's just about as orthodox as you can get because the word they chose from greek theater was here's the greek parry around choresis dance choreography god is a dancing around oh my god that's the official that's accepted by all of our churches in our most traditional theology of the trinity god is a circle dance hold on to it huh god is perichoresis god is a flowing not a a noun but a verb can you move from noun to verb can you get away from an old man on a throne to a flow of communion a flow of perfect givenness and perfect vulnerability and receiving once you have god as vulnerable let me just offer this right now in fact total vulnerability then the whole mystery of suffering on this earth becomes much more comprehensible if you have god as merely almighty you get damn angry at what's happening in syria why doesn't god do something why doesn't god come down and stop it that's why i say we've produced atheism but when you say god is perfect and total receptivity that god is not watching the suffering god is involved in the suffering god is transforming the suffering in fact the mystics would say there's only one suffering there's only one suffering and it's the suffering of god every bit of suffering you've ever had in your whole life is a participation in the eternal self emptying of god for the life of the world you see human beings can live with suffering as long as they know it has some cosmic meaning but for the last 300 years the west hasn't had that you wonder why we have so many mentally ill people in america you wonder why we have so emotionally upset people in our country in western europe because they have no sacred universe to live inside of they're not a part of the divine dance they're not looking at the mirror and seeing themselves sitting at the table as the fourth participant in the eternal banquet of god this sacralizes everything you understand if god is relationship itself stay with me then everything inside of relationship is in god the only real sin is to absent yourself from relationship from the contemplative gaze toward really you know saint teresa of avila says i say this toward the end of the book says when you get it even a sardine can convert you you don't need a fancy church this is sure a beautiful one i wish we built them this nice very spacious and inviting and opening but when you really get it you don't need beautiful buildings even even a sardine can convert you when you look upon anything with love and communion it opens the heart space the whole key is to stand in communion and relationship with things that's called contemplation a long loving look at things to see them until they open your heart space to see them until they reveal god to you and everything can now do that now what do the scientists tell us that as they continue to try to unpackage the atom this tremendous energy that is released when we deconstruct the atom which we call the atom bomb is not something that this is so much the nature of things that when you try to undo it you destroy life boy a philosopher would have a heyday with that but here it gets even better that apparently and i'm not a scientist i was educated in philosophy and theology and psychology but not science unfortunately but i know this much that the energy in the atom is surprise of surprises not contained in the three particles but in the space between them in the energy the relationship between them and we can't picture that space we can't capture that space we can't control that space does that sound like the holy spirit that blows where it will no one's going to control it you know cynthia and she can get away with saying this because she's a woman she says it says we've wasted 30 years now arguing about the the male names of the trinity she says i don't care make them all male make them all female just don't just make the holy spirit female because then we lose it's two to one you know father father son he says don't go there he says i don't care what name you use use whatever names will open your heart space to the divine outpouring because the important thing is not the name of the three persons now we're going to come back to that but the space between them hold on to it it's all about relationship it's all about relationship the quality of your relationship to the moment to the person sitting across from you to the lizard that we have in new mexico to the beautiful sky that you have here in kansas it's all about the quality of your presence and when you learn how to be present you will know what you need to know i'm going to make that as an absolute statement when you know how to be present to things you will know what you need to know now let's return to the second word those dang greek fathers took to apply to the word of the uh or the nature of god the word person and this is going to really blow your mind because the way the word person was used by them to describe the three persons of the trinity was again taken from greek theater and it described exactly the opposite of the way you use the word person today 180 degrees opposite so let's go back to the traditional meaning see i'm much more traditional than these people who think they're traditional who usually aren't traditional at all the word persona was the word for the stage mask that the theater actors used if you've been to asia minor or greece you've seen the beautiful amphitheaters dug into hillsides they didn't have microphones like i'm enjoying now they had to produce and create megaphones and they used these stage masks i remember being in a play in college where i had to wear one and the mouth actually operated as a megaphone so they would speak and they could be heard in the amphitheater and the word for that was prosopon our persona greek and latin and the greek father said we're gonna up take these words and apply them to the three particles inside the atom now let's listen to the the core etymology pair means through in latin sonare you figure that out means sound so each of them like the stage mask was a sounding through got it pear sona perisonare so a person was precisely not an isolated individual which is the way you use the term now you know you're a person you're a person you're a person the way we originally coined the term was to mean the opposite the father was not just the father he was the sounding through stay with me don't get sleepy now this is heavy stuff but it'll change your life all right the father was not an independent uh being but in fact was the sounding through of the spirit and the son and this now saint bonaventure our franciscan mystic he said he thought the best metaphor because it's all metaphors we're just grabbing at metaphors to understand the nature of god he said was a fountain that never stopped flowing like a water wheel and the three buckets of the water wheel just keep emptying into the other the other totally receives what is given total givenness total receptivity without ceasing and that's they said so let's call these three persons and that was then became a philosophical term so it's not that we name the three persons of the trinity after human persons it's exactly the opposite you in the english language and most western languages were called persons and you got it because you were created in the image of this you are not an isolated individual you are a sounding through of your mother and your father you are created in the image of god you're a sounding through of god you are not your own your entirely relationship so this myth of the the isolated western individualist i'll do it my way frank sinatra told us well frank sorry you missed the point it's not about doing it your way there is no your way it's all knowing by participation everything is in communion everything now we have a word for it we call it ecology don't we so again science is helping us to understand this now let me go back to my text finally after that terrible distraction i believe we're at precisely such a moment when it comes to our image of god instead of trinity being an abstruse conundrum mathematical problem i was taught in topeka by the good sisters of charity of leavenworth and i remember sister ephron coming in the third grade a good nun from ireland and and she said you know taught us the trinity taught us the sign of the cross which by the way is a flowing body prayer gets it it really does get it uh but she says you can't understand the children and of course like a good irish woman she held up a shamrock she said it's like a shamrock and she says don't think about it just believe it so that's what we did we all agreed not to think about it just believe it and it became a mathematical conundrum but let's try if if this doesn't from the bottom up rebuild christianity into something that's so beautiful and so everywhere and so constant there's nothing to fight there's nothing there's no group to disbelieve in it's not a participatory i mean it's not a competitive religion anymore huh we don't need to fight judaism or hinduism or islam we just need to be in relationship even with jews and muslims and all those people we're taught to hate it's all about relationship it's so simple that i think it's hard to teach so i'm going to try let me try to describe the two paradigms in stark contrast instead of an omnipotent monarch let's try what god as trinity demonstrates as the actual and wondrous shape of god and therefore of everything created in the image of god which is indeed everything everything god replicates the god self in us and in all of creation in fact genesis 1 says all the array of creation it's a beautiful phrase and we as franciscans who always loved the animals and loved brother son sister moon this just fit us so easily we did have i have to say inside my franciscan community a much more uh trinitarian spirituality but you only get that if you were trained by mystics and we had a lot of franciscan mystics or if you were raised in the orthodox eastern church but the western church let's be honest was not very mystical it wasn't it was programmatic you know nothing wrong with programmatic but it doesn't teach you relationship it teaches you how to push your program forward whatever your program for salvation is and when your program is all about winning instead of being in relationship can you see how that gets you off to a bad start [Music] when you divide reality into winners and losers we've wasted 500 years i'm not blaming the protestant reformation but we we framed it in terms of either or thinking and we pretty much lost the mystical mind we preferred to we didn't know how to live inside of three so instead of god watching life happen from afar a distant observer a critical spectator let's be honest i want you to think right now of your operative image of god the god you really do fear because all you can do is fear this kind of god he's a critical spectator be honest a critical spectator [Music] can you feel how untrue that is to what i just said about the life of the trinity instead of god watching life happen from afar and judging it how about god being inherent in life itself and that's why springtime can't stop happening just keeps happening how about god being the life force of everything i mean don't fight me on that what else could god be just be logical be common sense what else could god be but the life force of everything and but it's just that you've never heard it oh you mean it's really that wonderful see there's nothing to fight now there's nothing to hate there's no group to join our group to to reject it's not about belonging to the right group anymore and i can't help but think that's why we clergy didn't lead you there because we want you to belong to our group it's all about called the creating of codependency if you're in a 12-step program you know and organized christianity has been masterful at creating codependency on one little salvation theory or one little explanation instead of god being an object like any other object how about god being the life energy between each and every object does that sound like consciousness does that sound like love of course it does it's flowing everywhere all the time when you move from seeing to recognizing you know a few weeks ago we we read the the easter gospel of mary magdalene who i here has just been elevated by pope francis god bless him and that wonderful story of mary magdalene coming early easter morning and she sees a man who looks like the gardener and she thinks he is the gardener all i can assume is he didn't look like jesus he must have looked like the gardener whatever gardeners look like and only when he pronounces her name does she move from seeing to recognizing and he just says her name mary he establishes the relationship and she says my teacher the relationship is established now here's what i think that gospel text is meant to teach us it is the gardener but see jesus died and christ arose my next book is going to be on between jesus and christ jesus died and the body of christ arose but we keep picturing jesus as an isolated little risen body moving around the world and some people are lucky enough to see him or get him and most of us don't which leads us in a very empty universe but if jesus died and the body of christ arose you are the second coming of christ paul is filled with this paul's supreme idea is that the new temple is the human person the new temple is the human person and because we didn't get that we just kept building temples at least we catholics did we love pretty temples and that's nice but but instead of really honoring the living temple and that's the meaning of pentecost you know when they dedicated the first temple the fire descended from heaven to fill the temple the building it never descended on the second temple and that's the meaning of pentecost the descent of fire is not any more on buildings it's on people you are the living temple of the holy spirit you are the body of christ when we start taking the incarnation seriously in all its implications even to the end implication of bread and wine the elements of the universe are all the body of christ and catholics were good on that since i've been critical of the catholics as the orthodox were too as dorothy day said if the bread and wine is just a symbol forgive her rudeness but she said to hell with it it's just a symbol to hell with it either we believe that god has taken on the physical universe as his beloved in all of its forms and faces or we're not at home in the universe do you see this is such good news you just think everybody would be beating a track to the door to get it you know so in this allows god to be much larger you know at this time where the hubble telescope just keeps going out and you now know there's at least 60 galaxies uh not stars there's at least 60 galaxies for every person on the planet right now when i was in school here in kansas as a boy we thought there were maybe a star for every person but now there's 60 galaxies and the cameras are still moving out if we don't have a god that is at least as big as the universe we're if they discover life on another planet tomorrow do you know what i'm going to say don't you our jesus story is over either we have a cosmic christ either we have a cosmic notion of salvation of what god is loving what god is creating what god is in relationship with are we're very soon going to be in major trouble because we have a world that's bigger than god because the god that most of us were offered was very tribal i guess i have to make this confession in a methodist church where i grew up in topeka we had a pretty little methodist church right across the street loman hill was not loman hill methodist is it still there i wonder still there well the good nuns and they were good nuns but this was 1952 you know and we hadn't had our vatican reforms yet or anything and the good nun said now don't go in any protestant church i don't know if we thought zeus was going to get us or what but and i found out you were told not to come in our churches that's called tribal thinking it has nothing to do with the gospel in fact it's contrary to the gospel that that small doctrine will never save the world never it's too tiny it's meant for people who live at the tribal level but i can tell on sunday mornings we'd hear those pretty methodist hymns they'd open their windows for the hot summer days but i'd think oh those are pagans in there methodists pagans i mean you can't get nicer people than methodists you really they're the least argumentative of most protestants you know and yet i was trained even to fear you what a waste of time do you understand the time we lost instead of loving god in all things seeing god in all things recognizing god in all things we always kept putting up boundaries god's here but not there here but not there every group does it and judaism did it too they became a tribal religion and that's why jesus although he loved his jewish religion wanted to lead it beyond that he said i'm not talking about the kingdom of judah i'm talking about the kingdom of god that includes everybody and everything and here we came followers of jesus talking about the kingdom of god but we talked about the catholic kingdom or the pentecostal kingdom or the methodist kingdom so instead of the small god we seem struck stuck with how about the god who is inherent in life itself always involved and here's god's job description god and this is an exact quote from romans god is the one who creates life out of death he takes the suffering of the second person the groaning of creation the the constant transforming of forms and through this price of self-emptying which is what god is doing god always produces a new form of life brothers and sisters the resurrection of jesus is not a one-time anomaly it's the nature of things it's the nature of the universe jesus is a map of consciousness of where it's all heading we franciscans still had that clear in the 13th century and then we got into these food fights of heaven hell and purgatory trying to place everybody in one or the other and we lost the cosmic revolution the cosmic good news where the final chapter of history was clear it was resurrection in our funeral liturgy in the catholic liturgy if you've been to one what do we say in the preface of the mass life is not ended it is merely changed right any good scientists will tell you that life is not ended it is merely changed and in fact they say that the amount of atoms at the big bang 14.6 billion years ago are still the same amount of atoms on the earth right now they just keep changing shape they just keep this isn't heresy this is the shape of things because everything is created in the shape of god and god's job description is to make life out of death got it that's what god does give me your death i will make it into life whatever you hand over to god trustfully is transformed into life so let me just so this gets physical and real for you and not just abstract every vital impulse every force toward the future every creative momentum every loving surge every dash toward beauty every running toward truth every ecstasy before goodness every leap of elon vital as the french would say every bit of ambition for humanity and earth for wholeness and holiness is the eternally flowing life of the trinity got it i don't care what shingle it has hanging on the front whether it says christian or methodist i have met research scientists in the last 10 years of my life who've given 20 years of their life day after day searching for a cure for malaria and i know catholics who go to mass every sunday who don't even know the name of their neighbor who lives on each side of them do you understand and that's pretty common and i'm supposed to say these catholics are going to heaven and this research scientist he's already in heaven do you understand the flow is flowing through him it doesn't take you long to recognize people who are in heaven and people who are in hell you can spot it in the first 10 minutes really as catherine of siena said it's heaven all the way to heaven and it's hell all the way to hell i love signing those books like i got to do because all of you just sat down and gave me this sweet smile and told me your name and you know there's a lot of heavenly people even in wichita kansas can you believe that in the chirp of every excited bird about a new morning we were watching the birds this morning at laurie's house in the hard beauty of every sandstone cliff like we have in new mexico in the clerks gratuitous smile to the department store customer in the deep satisfaction you feel when you've done a job well for love and caring in the passion of sex in the passivity of the hospital bed now to quote paul from first corinthians the world life or death present or future all belong to you and you belong to christ and christ belongs to god it is one trinitarian flow since the beginning and all you have to do to know and love god is to stay inside the flow got it now that might say oh he sounds like some new ager that's not as easy as it sounds right because the natural instinct and i quoted this the wedding homily yesterday apparently i didn't say it correctly i get so excited about my own ideas sometimes i stumble over words uh we have a school we in fact have a few students here from our living school and when i taught the january class this therapist from chicago came up to say richard you don't know how true you're saying or speaking of contemplation he says i'm a therapist and i'm a neuroscientist and he said do you know that the mind is inclined toward negative fearful hateful resentful thoughts this will help you understand the election really yeah really sadly i'm sad without contemplation the mind naturally grabs around fear and negativity and anger it does and he said it's like velcro you just grab on to negativity and if you don't have a spiritual practice that teaches you how to let go of your negativity and your fear you just stay more velcro more velcro more velcro and he said but the problem is even worse positive grateful happy joyous moments if you don't savor them and he says i can prove this to you as a neuroscientist we can put electrodes on your brain and prove it a positive happy joyous thought if you're a seven on the anagram you love this of course you have to consciously deliberately enjoy something for a minimum of 15 seconds if you don't enjoy something consciously deliberately we would say in christian language give god praise and glory for that beautiful bluebird we were looking at this morning huh say isn't that beautiful thank you god why did you create that bird you know not a jayhawk a that's what it takes you got to praise god for things and when you do that it imprints that's called contemplation that's contemplation it's that simple to learn how to enjoy things how to love things in themself for themselves by themselves as themself in themself it is good that you exist that's what it means for me to be a christian but that takes work because the the he said if the negative thoughts are like velcro the positive thoughts are like teflon they just roll off and you know that's true how many times haven't you been excited and 10 minutes later you're grumpy again you've got to choose you've got to deliberately consciously intentionally imprint on your brain i am happy and i mean this explains it does i'm not trying to make a huge a logical leap this explains our politics you would think this entire country of america who have more than any human beings ever had on this planet i mean let's be honest the most spoiled people in the world don't have enough and they're angry and they're hateful it's just you just want to cry every day you just can't watch the news anymore it's so so sad but this is what happens and let me end on this point this is what happens when religion isn't doing its job got it and i don't think religion's been doing its job it's just all inviting us into small little tribes not the trinitarian flow whereby we can see god in all things and that was the franciscan motto deus meios my god at omnia and everything else my god and everything else and let me deliberately end on this whenever you use the word god just know that god is just another word for everything and when you fall in love with god i forewarn you you're eventually going to fall in love with everything now i think a lot of people don't want to go there they just want to fall in love with white methodists from wichita you know i mean white methodists from wichita are our hosts today we're very grateful but that's too small a tribe do you understand and that's why we have the political economic social problems we have and up to this point let's be honest our christian denominations have not been the answer but in great part we've been part of the problem we've actually solidified the separateness instead of exalting in the communion of all things so let me stop we still have half an hour for any questions you'd like to ask i think jeff's going to come with his oh there we go and you can ask whatever you want preferably on this subject don't ask me if there are souls in purgatory or something like that i don't really have a question uh well no i just want to say i know your name because i was uh interested in matthew fox and some of those people in the 80s and i go richard rohr i know him so i came to hear what you had to say what i wanted to add was that my catechism that i remember in the eighth grade said on the front page that god is everywhere and everything and it was question 16 actually but go ahead yeah i mean and and and i have gone back to that in my own thinking yeah if god is everywhere in everything and i should love him with all of my heart all of my soul you know all of my being yeah we had it where can i turn right isn't question 16 said where is god and we as good catholic children would spout back to the nuns god is everywhere and then the rest of the baltimore catechism in effect said we really don't mean that well god is not everywhere god is only in the catholic church i did check a much later current uh catechism for uh catholic orientation that statement's not in the front anymore well and i think that's very sad hmm personally it is very sad you know if it is it may be someplace else i would hope but in my catechism what's on the front page okay thank you anyone else i'm just wondering how you've been feeling oh aren't you thoughtful no i'm feeling fine i had the prostate surgery in the fall it's returning a little bit but it doesn't seem to be i'm not going to worry about it it's i'm okay thank you my health is fine it's very caring of you good afternoon good afternoon my name is andy martin and i bring you greetings from topeka kansas topeka um my question is i love the image that you give us isn't that great and the flow but i'm going to go to the best christian bookstore in all of america it's in wichita kansas 8th day books and amina i've been all over the world and the best christian bookstores in wichita kansas so if you don't know this you haven't discovered a gem of a church but he will happily sell you a good rendition of that i'm sorry okay go ahead no um what a great endorsement there wow warren um i as a human i struggle to be in the flow and i guess it is a struggle it's not as easy as it sounds and i get you know i i i get stuck in the shadows yeah and we all know that we talk about this jesus and the suffering and i'm i love the way you image staying in the flow how do we keep from getting stuck and stay into the flow and i'm curious you've spent more time with the image than we have but i i can't help but the pointing downward and is there something in the box that's where the mirror was uh but but the mirror was glued onto that spot we think we can't prove it go ahead but i just i can't help but see an image of my my inner shadow oh well in the box yeah you know we again don't know if the original artist intended you not even to see that that it was supposed to be a mirror we just don't know but you're still making a very good point and this is why i know most of us are tired probably overreacting to the word sin because it was used so much and sometimes to manipulate and control people but you still don't want to be naive and i think you have not been naive to say there seems to be huge obstacles to staying in the flow and that's why i gave you the velcro and teflon images contemplation is one of those and there's many forms of contemplative practice which help you recognize when you're grabbing on to fear anger hatred and negativity and to learn how to hand that over if you don't have some spiritual practice in fact there are people saying that the next century if christianity is to be reformed in all of our denominations it has to first of all move back to the trinity which i obviously totally agree with secondly we have to stop teaching people things to believe and giving them practices to practice whereby they can know something for themselves there's nothing to believe or disbelieve just do it and come back and tell me what happens inside when you do that now i think that's what things like the rosary were meant to be for catholics chanting and many other walking meditation we have all these practices but protestantism is most bereft i'm just being honest of practices you you based everything on believing things and believing things has the great temptation of solidifying the ego making you opinionated instead of making you in the flow things like walking meditation moving from seeing to recognizing practices those teach you how to stay in the flow so i'm trying to bring back and say the notion of sin is real if you're naive about the power of evil to blind you to block you we're attracted to resistance we're attracted to negativity every one of you in this room and if you don't see that in yourself which is what you see in early stage contemplation you'll undoubtedly if you don't see it you'll be trapped by it almost certainly thank you good question my name's kim vines thank you very much for being here and giving us your time and your energy you said that when you know how to be present to something that you will know what you know what you need to i have a several what you need to know i have a several part question the first is do you reach that point in this life next part have you be how oh wow yes of course probably the single biggest thing we did after defining the individual different than the divine persons to anesthetize the transformative power of the gospel was the putting off of salvation till after death jesus jesus i mean just follow the god he's not talking about going to heaven get over it just read the gospels he's healing people suffering right now he cares about this woman's pain today and that we moved it all into a reward punishment system for after we died was a massive destructive misplacement of attention and it made us afraid of god instead of transformed by the love of god right now it's just this is why so many people have left the church they basically say it doesn't work because no one can be this perfect person who's going to go to heaven yet where are they and i've given bishops retreats and priest retreats all over the world and nuns retreats and even a few cardinals retreats you know they're just as bad as all the rest of us you know because they're human beings and if they weren't taught contemplation they get taught caught in this same negativity ambition gluttony greed fear and all the other things we get caught in so i hope i've tasted it uh that's the only reason i can talk the way i talk with i hope excitement and conviction because i know it's now i i don't wait for it i'm not worried about what happens after death if god loves me so generously and so mercifully with an infinite mercy as pope francis keeps saying why would god change his mind if i wrecked driving back to new mexico tomorrow you know god loves me before and he says i'm the god of the living jesus says not the god of the dead what else did you ask me now uh did i answer how oh how you reached that point in contemplation which you know most of my books in effect are about contemplation everything belongs the naked now silent compassion but the other ones they're all weaved in between because for me the contemplative mind is the change that changes everything and the easiest way to say it is it's a movement away from dualistic thinking where you stop dividing the field of the moment in what you agree with and what you don't agree with and you just let it be what it is can you do that no without practice you can't you can't you can't you divide everything up to what you like and what you don't like watch that's the way the ego works well i like her because she's white i don't like her because she's black i like him because he's heterosexual i don't like him because he's gay that's a huge waste of time i hope you know that because you're keeping all of the control inside yourself for what you agree with and what you disagree with it's not all about you so pope francis says it keeps telling the catholic clergy to stop being so self-referential he keeps telling us you know it's not all about you and but as long as we keep the judging self being center stage i can promise you you will not experience presence and that was your first you will not you cannot be present to things when you are judging them you can't your mind has taken control and you are accepting that which you already agree with and understand and flatters your ego usually and that part which is outside of your experience uh you're threatened by and so you stupidly call it wrong it isn't wrong you're just not used to it do you see how self-referential that is but the the non-contemplative can't see that and and so when jesus says says you have to lose yourself to find yourself there has to be this radical de-centering of the person so the richard self is not the center of the world and my preferences and what i'm used to i have to have made enough mistakes by my age now to see that it doesn't mean very much it just doesn't mean very much what richard likes and what richard doesn't like do you see now when you're young you think it matters i guess you know and you base your life on that that's why i wrote the book falling upward that's first half of life morality is all about obeying tiny rules and then when you see that the rules really don't help you be loving most of the time they just help you be judgmental you it takes you a long time to see that though it really does and really i can't teach i can't prove that to you the spirit has to prove that to you and then you'll be convicted by a voice much deeper than mine so presence and i'll make this quick is when your mind space is open your heart space is open and your body is present and accounted for when all three body heart and mind are present and accounted for not negative not oppositional not victimized not playing the victim or creating victims just i am what i am what i am naked underneath my clothes that's present so presence isn't easily come by we catholics taught catholics to believe in the real presence in jesus in the bread and the wine but you know what we didn't teach catholics how to be present to the presence and presence is a relationship term and unless you teach people how to be present to the real presence they will not experience presence got it yeah it's sort of simple once you hear it but it's harder to learn it anybody else jeff tell me who yes yes uh in seeking to be inclusive of all faiths and different world religions i was wondering what you would have to say to christians who might say that jesus is the only way to god and just how to address that because it seems like something that divides christians john 14 all right i am the way of the truth and life no one comes to the father except through me i spent whole retreats just on that quote understanding it at the different nine levels of consciousness how you'll understand it at a tribal level how you'll understand it at a mystical level it's not the words and that was the achilles heel of protestantism you thought as long as you had the right word you have the truth it's the level at which you understand the word and the mystical mind understands things very differently than the tribal mind which is sort of level three in a nine level system so let me just try a few things that will help you i actually could say now i'm going to show my orthodox conservative credentials jesus is the way the truth no the christ is the way the truth and the life and believe that with full sincerity now john's gospel we don't have jesus walking around talking john's gospel is written around 90 to 100 we have the christ the risen christ the eternal christ proclaiming eternal mysteries that's why john's gospel is like a whole different level than matthew mark and luke and i'm sure you've discovered that you have to say who is this talking you know it's a different person than than the person talking in matthew mark and luke and this christ who is the perfect union of human and divine see his two fingers there that's christ that's not jesus jesus is the historical person who walked in time christ and if you think i'm a heretic read the prologue to john's gospel read the first chapter of ephesians read the ch first chapter of colossians they all say the christ existed from all eternity all right so the christ is that part of god which shows itself in physical form whenever god the formless one whom we call the father takes form takes visibility physicality so you and i can see it or participate in it in some sense that's the christ mystery now knowing that i can say without any hesitation and if i'd have time to explain it i'd have a mystical hindu or mystical jew or mystical buddhist totally agree with me this coherence of matter and spirit is the way the truth and the life well that's what we're all trying to do is put together the visible world with the invisible world god that's what the christ does but most of you were not taught about the christ you were told to fall in love with jesus but you weren't told to fall in love with the eternal christ and that's why things like racism sexism classism homophobia have persisted till our time a lot of people love jesus but you and i know some of the most racist people in america say they love jesus i'm not impressed because basically their jesus is way too small they love jesus without loving christ can you follow me what i'm saying the small mystery without the big mystery christ is not jesus last name maybe that's the easiest way to say it all right the christ is an eternal title of the anointed one who names the mystery of reality all reality it's not a competitive religion it's the shape of things and if god grants me years that'll be my next book to help people understand that christ is not jesus last name but but christ is what's always been true the map of everything go ahead jeff thank you uh i'm bob martin i'm from here in wichita and i want to thank you because it's like we're on a backpack trip or a journey and reading your books just pulls me into a sense of of presence and contemplation with thank you and i realize how life is so much not about beliefs but about realizations and belief is a good way to start so i don't i don't want anybody leave here thinking i'm against belief but it's just a starter kit that's all it is to get you situated in the right field right it's training wheels it seems and then the the last thought i had was when i thought of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the original sin is me being able to think i can be the decider of what is good and what is evil and to remove myself from that position is really quite a relaxing thing to do to suspend judgment and let god be god you're much happier as a contemplative much happier exactly thank you and that's why if you go back to genesis i use that as a frontal piece of the book the naked now uh if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you'll most surely die does that make a bit of sense unless you understand what i think i'm trying to say hmm good and evil is dualistic thinking right that i know who's going to heaven and i know who isn't no you don't you don't have a clue it was trying to give religion humility at the beginning and because we ate voraciously of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we've had the troubles we've had we're still in early christianity yes thank you for being here you're welcome love you so much i have heard in one of your tapes i'm going to sit down i feel uncomfortable that's right um i heard on one of your tapes you mentioned briefly that contemplation can be taught to children yes and i didn't i really wanted you to expand on it and i teach eighth grade at a catholic school and i know we have adoration which is wonderful it's a starter good starter right and we do have adoration from early on kindergarten at least but um do you think that it will be more prevalent like are we really can we really start this movement it's bothersome to me and also i want to teach them that but i also want to teach them to have respect for the rules that can guide them and form their container as you say [Music] but i just want to know your thoughts on that you know in october i'm going to drive up to snowmass and meet with father keating who's 94 and still has energy for meetings i hope i have that kind of energy 20 years from now and he's inviting just four of us tilden edwards the founder of shalem institute in washington lawrence freeman who's the head of the world community for christian meditation and we're going to meet about how can we get seminaries to first of all teach the clergy contemplation because most clergy don't know anything about it so they don't know how to support it how to get it uh so it doesn't look like something foreign or something different there's only one diocese catholic diocese i know of in the world that has made its pastoral program the teaching of contemplation from the bishop to the priest to the religious to the laity and in every catholic school and i visited there about eight years ago the diocese of townsville australia you probably never heard of it beautiful area and this holy bishop he uh he made he said this is my spiritual practice and for the next five years i want it to be the primary pastoral program of every parish in the diocese and i went there to watch the school kids and they took me to the kindergarten class to the third grade class to the eighth grade class to the high school and they start in the fifth grade and with the five-year-olds not fifth grade and they train them in what to do with their little minds for five quiet minutes and i observed them with my own eyes so i know this is not made up these little five-year-olds just sitting there the teachers told me in every classroom there's no fighting of this it's almost a freedom to not have to be clever and say something cute or be the best basketball player just to be in the sixth sixth year you you are quiet for six minutes when you're seven years old you can be quiet for seven minutes and it went in the high school you know where there they were for 15 to 18 minutes it was just wonderful sitting in silence i've also been in folsom and san quentin prisons on death row where the wardens admitted to us it's the most successful prison ministry they've ever had because there's nothing to argue about you understand whereas most prison ministry is the methodist versus the lutherans or whatever it might be which is such a waste of time you know it's just can we learn how to be quiet before god and let god's very nature pervade our being so i mentioned the world community for christian meditation because if you have a computer wccm go home wccm.com and they have several links in which their literature on how to teach it to kindergarteners how to teach it to sixth graders it's beautifully done for every age group and i would love i probably won't go back but i'd love someone to do a study five years from now to see the long-term effect of having an entire diocese being contemplative together and he even encouraged the priests instead of this preoccupation with liturgical formulas and perfect words read from a book let's make the liturgy less verbal more quiet time more contemplative most of our church services forgive me are far too verbal and here i say this after talking to you for an hour and a half uh it's just words can't get you there you gotta go beyond words one more do we have time for okay there we go uh hi i'm pretty new to you but uh i was just wondering what your beliefs are on the idea that people choose to go to hell well that was certainly said by many of the early fathers of the church and mystics throughout the ages that no one is in hell unless they want to be there that they have to choose a life of autonomy and separation and chosen hatred i want to be hateful and but god god condemns no one to hell the the soul can only choose it but let me tell you why philosophers and theologians insisted and even buddhism has the notion of hell hinduism does too you have to maintain it as a logical possibility our human beings are not free got it you have to maintain it now trez of lisu the wonderful catholic saint who died just a little over 100 years ago she writes in one of her letters that says jesus told me there's no one there that that no one can resist once you see infinite love no one can resist infinite love in this finite world we cannot imagine anything infinite but once we experience infinite love now even there though to be logical and consistent we have to uh maintain the possibility that one could be free to choose to live separately hateful for all eternity now one final thing and you can check me out on the orthodoxy of this for the good catholics pope john paul ii who was certainly no raging liberal on the night of june 28 1999 in his general audience you can get it he says when will catholics recognize that heaven and hell are not geographic places they are states of consciousness pope john paul ii all right they're not geographic places they're states of consciousness and they're states of consciousness which you choose right now right now right in this room i would presume if you've endured me for an hour and a half you're all in heaven already really this wouldn't make a bit of sense to you otherwise but uh really yeah well we are a good way to father richard you're all in heaven now before you take the mic off we promised we're going to have father richard be escorted out by lori and kevin in advance of you and i so that then we don't get him in a position where he doesn't get on the road so but before you take off the mic father richard when you were at the basilica of the national shrine in washington dc yeah what did i say what did i say my words are always held against me i've got to fight no psalm 46 10 right oh let's do that that's a good one all right so uh we often use this to lead people in to silence or in this case to lead them out into a world of silence just repeat after me and we'll be silent together for a minute be still and know that i am god and now that i am god be still and know that i am be still and know that i am be still and know be still and know be still be still be b

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Keywords: Richard Rohr Converting To God, Richard Rohr Hell, Richard Rohr Enneagram, Richard Rohr Eccumenical Church, Richard Rohr Perennial Tradition, Richard Rohr Universal Christ, Richard Rohr Breathing Underwater, Richard Rohr Falling Upward, Richard Rohr Heresy, Richard Rohr Oprah, Richard Rohr Heretic, Richard Rohr Podcast, Richard Rohr Christian Teacher, Richard Rohr Mysticism, Richard Rohr who will go to hell, Richard Rohr Atonement Theory

Id: Prrl0wYEA8w

Length: 86min 10sec (5170 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021