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| "Dayenu! |
A Prayer to Avoid Entitlement
by Richard Rohr
The Jewish people have a beautiful prayer form, a kind of litany to which the response is always "Dayenu!" (It would have been enough!).
They list, one by one, the mirabilia Dei, the wonderful works of God for their people and themselves, and after each one, shout out DAYENU! As if to say, "How much is it going to take for us to know that God is with us?!" It builds satisfaction instead of feeding dissatisfaction.
If we begin our day with any notion of scarcity, not-enoughness, victimhood, or "I deserve," I promise you the day will not be good--for you or for those around you. Nor will God be glorified.
Maybe we all should begin our days with a litany of satisfaction, abundance, and enoughness. God, you have given me another day of totally gratuitous life: my health, my eyes, my ears, my mind, my taste, my family, my freedom, my education, clean water, more than enough food, a roof over my head, a warm bed and blanket, friends, sunshine, a beating heart, and your eternal love and guidance.
To any one of these we must say, "And this is more than enough!"
(Adapted from a post to Fr. Richard's blog, Unpacking Paradoxes, on January 30, 2012)
* * *
In his annual Lenten letter, Fr. Richard shares some of the blessings he celebrates this season, including the tremendous support of CAC donors. Thank you for sharing your gifts of God's abundance with CAC, allowing us to share Fr. Richard's teachings.
Read Fr. Richard's Lenten letter and participate in alms-giving out of joyous "enoughness"!
cac.org/lent-2013
"There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it's enough." — Richard Rohr
During this time, I listened to a lot of Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, on CD. I'd go into these sacred spaces, broom and bucket in hand, and -- (if it wasn't a Bob Marley kind of morning, or Neil Diamond flashback afternoon that I was having) -- I'd pop in a recording of the Franciscan priest from New Mexico. Viola! I was on retreat while at work. Every action of soap and sponge and elbow-pushing-arm, became a contemplative, active prayer of sorts. I was, in the words of Fr. Rohr's, putting to use the most operative word in his organization's title, being a person of contemplation AND action. What I encountered in my heart and mind whilst listening to "Jesus and Buddha: Paths to Awakening" or "The Great Chain of Being: Simplifying our Lives" conference or "True Self/False Self" made its way literally through my interior life and into exterior action.
During this year of prayer and manual physical labor, I made significant changes in my life. I worked to simplify or downsize in all respects of property and ego; I let go of everything I thought I knew for certain; I felt freer and more happy than I had ever been - as I cleaned and contemplated and wrote blogs as prayerful prose for the public. It was a revolutionary year of my life.
I've recently become re-acquainted with Fr. Rohr, as a friend hooked me up with his daily meditations sent via email from the Center for Action and Contemplation. It's exhilarating to re-discover this spiritual teacher/wise counselor and touchstone. As a prolific writer and speaker, Fr. Rohr has many books and CD's published to inspire our lives; he's not unlike the Visitation's co-founder, St. Francis de Sales, or the many holy people who inspire our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies.
In the days, weeks, months to come, I will be re-posting some of Fr. Richard Rohr's words as they so move me; I will be working to apply them, through a Salesian lens, to my own life. I invite you to join me!
Peace to all this day.
Editor’s note: In the July issue of Sojourners magazine, we asked social activists to share how they stay refreshed while working for social justice. From John Perkins to Bishop Vashti McKenzie, the responses flooded in with deep insight into the spiritual disciplines of those who work to bring justice and peace to others. To read all of the responses, see the July feature article, “What Sustains Me.” Below is the response from Father Richard Rohr.
As the name of our center probably makes clear (The Center for Action and Contemplation), my daily and primary practice is contemplation. I try in every way, and every day, to see the events, people, and issues in my world through a much wider lens that I hope is “Christ Consciousness.” I have to practice letting go of my own agenda, my own anger, fear, and judgments in very concrete ways and through daily practice. In that empty space, it seems God is able to speak and sometimes I am able to hear. In that space, I find joy.
I have worked for most of my life and with the help of my Franciscan tradition and other spiritual teachers to spend a good chunk of every day in silence, solitude, and surrender to what God and the moment are offering. I fail at it far more than I succeed, but grace grants me just enough “wide-lens experience” to know that it is my home base, my deepest seeing, and by far the best gift I can also offer to the world.
Without a daily contemplative stance, I would have given up on the church, America, many people, and surely myself a long time ago. Without a daily contemplative practice, I would likely be a cynical and even negative person by now, but by Somebody’s Kindness, I am not. With contemplative eyes, I can live with a certain non-dual consciousness that often allows me to be merciful to the moment, patient with human failure, and generous toward the maddening issues of our time. For me, it is the very shape of Christian salvation or any salvation. My sadness is that so few have been taught this older and wiser tradition, although many still come to it by great love and great suffering.
Father Richard Rohr is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province. Click here to read more about the spiritual disciplines of social activists.
I love this reflection from Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr. It's a bit on reflection, contemplation, living in the present moment, moving beyond duality and toward wisdom....I think President Barack Obama knows about this "Third Way" that Rohr refers to here....
The contemplative mind is willing to hear from a beginner's mind, yet also learn from the Tradition. It has the humility to receive both/and thinking and not all or nothing thinking. Now we call this non-dual thinking. It leads to what we call the Third Way, neither fight nor flight, but standing in between where I can hold what I do know together with what I don't know. And let that wonderful mix lead me to wisdom instead of this quick knowledge which largely just creates opinionated people and not wise people.
"If your prayer is not enticing you outside your comfort zones, if your Christ is not an occasional 'threat,' you probably need to do some growing up and learning to love. You have to develop an ego before you can let go of it." -Fr. Richard Rohr in "Everything Belongs"
These words caught my attention this afternoon during our time together on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday. With this passage next to Fr. Henri Nouwen's meditation for the day,* copied below, I have this inclination to type and sing boldly:Love! Dancing! Space! Growing up in Love! Freedom! Yes! Woohoo!
Creating Space to Dance Together
When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, "Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me." But soon we discover that the person we expect to take our loneliness away cannot give us what we ask for. Often that person feels oppressed by our demands and runs away, leaving us in despair. As long as we approach another person from our loneliness, no mature human relationship can develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible we need the courage to create space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together. - Fr. Henri Nouwen
Friends, Family,I found this timely to receive. My friend Daniel Kerkoff sent the following words in an email this morning. I'm not sure if Daniel placed them together, or if he heard them in succession as he was listening to some contemplative prayer CD's by Fr. Rohr.
Regardless, there's much to reflect on here in the questions of the Franciscan and the poetry of the Muslim mystic.
Amen!
***
From Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer
by Fr. Richard Rohr, OSF.
Inherent Unmarketability
How do you make attractive that which is not?
How do you sell emptiness, vulnerability, and nonsuccess?
How do you talk descent when everything is about ascent?
How can you possibly market letting-go in a capitalist culture?
How do you present Jesus to a Promethean mind?
How do you talk about dying to a church trying to appear perfect?
This is not going to work
(admitting this might be my first step).
--Richard Rohr
***
Pulling out the chair
Beneath your mind
And watching you fall upon God--
There is nothing else for Hafiz to do
That is any fun in this world!
--Shams-ud-din Mohammed Hafiz,
Muslim mystic (1320-1388)
I need to re-read Dante's Divine Comedy. It's about a dude who, in his mid-life, is dragging, wants out, and descends into the pits of hell, right? He's accompanied by a poet. He goes down, in order to go up. Journey takes place over Good Friday to Easter Sunday. It all seems really appropriate right now. What are my options? What are any of our options in facing disappointments? In receiving news that so radically departs from our present hopes and dreams?
After sort of stepping over the miserable perceptions of failure I have of myself, I ask for new eyes. Well, honestly, I ask to lay down and be in the sorrow for a while. I ask to be okay in the sorrow, really. Because if there is anything I'm learning, it's that climbing into the pain, heading deep into it, is the most courageous way I know to transform it! Heading down into the suffering, the struggle, I am softened by it; I experience the most potent form of grace and reconciliation. I learn about true compassion for myself, and for all other suffering humanity; I learn about the capacity of my own heart to love.
Parker Palmer and Pema Chodron and Thich Naht Hahn and Sr. Rafael and James Finley and Richard Rohr and Candlin Dobbs and Eckhardt Tolle are teaching me this. And their teachers are Buddha and Jesus and Thomas Merton. So I feel pretty good about getting these lessons.
But back to the comedy. The stepping into and through the depressing information and awaiting the grace that is the other side; that is the present moment. Yes. That is joy. That is now; not avoiding or invading it: just being in it. (Parker Palmer talks about this a lot.) Embracing the "it" in its fullness. That's where I'm at this week. Especially as I'm encountering my fellow-journeyers in their own challenging times....But what's a person to do? Scream? Kick? Curse out the ignorance and unfairness of circumstances? Wallow and steep in rage? And what's that going to do? Whew. Perpetuate the woe? Please. Why be part of perpetuating the woe?
How to be in the emotion, and then step into the grace of transforming the circumstances......
And while I've not earned a lot of money, I have something much more precious than anyone could really put a dollar amount on: my health, my happiness, my life!I have the knowledge, too, that I can travel through some rocky emotional terrain and be just fine. I say, "Thank you."
"Prayer Is a Place" Prayer is a psychological place, a spiritual place, a place where we go to get out of ourselves, a place created and inhabited by God. Whatever disciplines can help us to get to where reality can get at us (the Real in its ultimate sense being God) I would call prayer. That opens up many possibilities and styles. Prayer is whatever calls us to detach from our own self, from our own compulsions and addictions, from our own ego, from our own "place." We are all too trapped in our own places by virtue of the egocentricity of the human person. In prayer the Spirit entices us outside of our narrow comfort zone. No wonder we avoid prayer: We have to change place.
from Catholic Agitator, "Finding a Place for Prayer"
"The Gift of Life"
On this earth nothing lives unless something else dies. It's true in the animal world, it's true in the chemistry world, it's true in the whole physical world. Jesus comes into this world and says, I, your God in your midst, will die so that you can live. Our vocation is to be like him, to die and be bread that is broken to feed the hungry world so that the world can live. When we can acknowledge that no one owes us anything, that all of life is a gift, we move toward freedom. And in that freedom, the amazing thing is, we're able to enjoy our life, because we don't have to grasp it anymore. We don't have to prove or assert it anymore. We're finally allowed to sit back and to enjoy God's presence, and to enjoy our own, too. Now we can enjoy other people because we don't need them to meet our so-called needs. We are called to live in the beautiful place of dying and living. It's the mystery of faith that we shout at the center of the Eucharist Prayer. As I give him my dying, as I say, "Welcome, sister death," as I hand myself over, God gives back life in new form. Now I've lived long enough to see the pattern played out for myself. To me the pattern is evident. I can believe the dying and the rising of Jesus is the pattern that connects all things. I believe that it is the mystery of this world, in all of the cosmos, in all of the stars, in all of nature, in water, in plants, in animals and in my human flesh. Christ is dying, Christ is risen, this Christ will show himself in all ages and all things.
-Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM in The Price of Peoplehood
Here's my meditation on Fr. Rohr's words, with a healthy dose of doubt and questions! Ha! Love!
What is Fr. Rohr challenging me to do today?
I have to die?
How am I bread broken for the hungry? PLEASE!
What's up with this "no one owing me anything" business? What if I've worked my booty off for a long time, am I not supposed to get some kind of sweet compensation?!
What do I "grasp"? What do I "assert"?
Where is my ego, anyway?
Can someone point to it?
What happens if I let go of control and desire and my will?
Isn't that sort of like surrender?
Does God like a wimp? Would I like myself in such circumstances?
What patterns have I established in my life?
What pattern is this guy speaking about?
How can a pattern connect all things?
What does that look like?
Can I ignore this message?
Plants, animals, science: these are not my subject materials!
And Jesus? Dying? Rising? Please! What if I'm a Buddhist or Hindu?! This simply doesn't apply!
Right?
"The Prodigal Son's Father" The Father who Jesus knew looks amazingly like what most cultures would call mother. In Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son, Jesus makes his most complete presentation of the character of this Father, whom he called God. The father is in every way the total opposite of the male patriarch and even rejects his older son's appeal to a world of worthiness and merit. He not only allows the younger son to make choices against him, but even empowers him to do so by giving him money! After the son's bad mistakes, the father still refuses his own right to restore order or impose a penance, even though the prodigal son offers to serve as a hired servant. Both his leaving and his returning are treated as necessary but painful acts of adult freedom. In every way he can, the father makes mutuality and vulnerability possible.
from Radical Grace, "Is This 'Women-Stuff' Important?" by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
"Wisdom From St. Bonaventure"
Self-conscious prayer is not necessarily the best or the only form of prayer. To be praying, you don't need to know you are praying! How else could the Apostle Paul tell us to pray without ceasing? Paul was not naive or unaware of practical demands. He was, quite simply, mature in his spirituality. He was a "contemplative charismatic": Life and religion were synthesized; he had the vision of the whole. St. Bonaventure, building on the Franciscan
experience of the Incarnation, saw the "traces" or "footprints" of God everywhere. The "journey of the mind to God" was to learn how to see the unity of all being, how to listen to the hidden God and how to read the footprints that were everywhere evident. The result was a life of gratitude and reverence and simple joy - a Franciscan spirituality. Thus Bonaventure, like most great saints, combined a highly contemplative personality with very active and effective ministry in secular and practical affairs.
Fr. Richard Rohr in Catholic Charismatic, "To Be and to Let Be: The Life of Reverence"
These words of Fr. Rohr's take me to Archbishop Tutu. I'm fully fascinated and drawn by the juxtaposition of all these men: St. Bonaventure, St. Francis, Desmond Tutu, Richard Rohr.
How does Love hold it all?
What is conveyed in the contemplation of all four?
What joy exists in each of them? In us?
How do our interior lives manifest in exterior ways?
What expression shows our gratitude?
What do our actions convey?
How does my prayerful life manifest in practical and secular affairs?
Peace, Happy Contemplating!
Melissa
March 28, 2008. Anniversary day for me. I celebrate with these words from Franciscan Richard Rohr. They correspond beautifully with yesterday's blog entry, Delaney Melissa's birthday, my friend Greg's death, and all upcoming "First Communion" celebrations.Jesus promised that when we celebrate the Eucharist, he will be present to us. That has been the unwavering faith of the catholic Church since the New Testament. The Eucharist has been at the center of our Church from the beginning, and rightly so. It has given us the power of community, the power to understand ourselves as one universal people, beyond nations and races. It's given us the power of healing and reconciliation. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, the Church is redefined as people, as a big family, around our family table, the altar. Jesus gives us himself at Eucharist to remind us: We are becoming what we eat. We are his body, we are his flesh for the life of the world. When we eat this meal we are united to Christians all over the world, who this very hour are celebrating this same Eucharist in many different languages and countries. Someone said, If we really understood Eucharist, how could there ever be war? How could we go out in that world and kill people who have eaten this same bread and have drank from this same cup? The Eucharist defines humanity as one flesh, one people, and if you hate this flesh, you hate the flesh of Christ himself. Eucharist is the gift that makes us a sacred and universal people.
Fr. Richard Rohr in The Symbolism and Meaning of Mass,
It's Lent. There's time in the desert. There's temptation. There's deep rumination. It's a grand season to take us all through to a sweet party of miracles. (I don't really care if you are Catholic or believe in God and a Resurrection or NOT.) Love is good and here and coming through in this guy's words.When Moses prays to God, "Yahweh, feed these people," Yahweh replies, "I will feed them. I will let manna drop from heaven but they are to pick up only enough to feed themselves for one day" (Exodus 16:4). The whole message of the desert is a message of continual dependence on God, minute-by-minute learning to trust in Providence. Some of them want to store up the manna in order to have some for tomorrow. They want to plan for the future, and allay their fears. Moses says, "No! Only enough for today. Yahweh will give you your daily bread. But some kept an excess for the following day, and it bred maggots and smelt foul" (Exodus 16:20). Instead we say, "Give us this day our daily bread." How strange these words sound to a people with savings accounts, insurance policies and three-year warranties, even on their toasters!
from The Great Themes of Scripture
-Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
Friends,
The following speaks directly to my heart. Fr. Rohr echoes and underscores what I was trying to articulate in my reflection from February 9th, ("After November 2, 2004") reflecting on our last election. His words also illuminate - in greater depth and clarity for me - an aspect of what Sun Tzu was conveying in "The Art of War" - with the cautionary words "Choose your enemy wisely, for you eventually become him.""What is unforgiven in my own spirit? In my own life? In my own body? What do I go to war with everyday? What lies within? What enrages me out there?"
Fear is the major barrier to the emergence of great faith and great-souled people. To enter into the mystery of forgiveness, we must first recognize our fears. Most of what we hold in unforgiveness we fear. I was given the impression, when I grew up in the Church, that the problem was doubt. And so all our teaching was head education. Teach people up here how to get the right answers about God and then they will have great faith. Show me where head information alone has created great-souled people, prophets of great desire, freedom and courage for the Church! God speaks to us, heals us and frees us at another level, at the level of our fears. Until you allow God to address your fears, you'll never recognize them yourself and you'll undoubtedly be trapped in them. As we grow in faith, we move beyond the need to exclude (he, she, they are the enemy). We gradually move into that place where we can risk letting the would-be enemy in. And then begins the way of wisdom. We find ourselves capable, at last, of obeying what is the greatest of Jesus' commandments, the most radical of all of his teaching: Love your enemies. How many of us love other people who kick us around, who make it hard for us? We haven't internalized the commandments of Jesus. Scriptural language, though, is both introverted and extroverted. If we haven't been able to love our enemies out there, if we still think the Russians or Iraqis are the problem, it's probably because we haven't first loved the enemy within. And if we haven't forgiven the enemy within, we will never know how to love and forgive the "enemies" without.
from The Passion of God and the Passion Within - By Richard Rohr
