This is the last entry in a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

The contemplative stance is the Third Way. We stand in the middle, neither taking the world on from the power position nor denying for fear of the pain it will bring. … Once we can stand in that third spacious way, neither fighting nor fleeing, we are in the place of grace out of which newness comes. Creativity comes from here, and we can finally do a new thing for the world. When our ego stops getting hooked, when it’s not our agenda, then we can hope ours is the agenda of God. We can stop building our kingdom and become usable in the kingdom of God.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

When we have the gift of seeing, of standing in the big picture and resting in God’s providence, we will know how to create church in a healthy way. We’ll know we need the mystery of community, of shared life, and of common social action and concern. We’ve tried to create church with individualists. It doesn’t work. Think of your own church. It’s largely individualists coming to get their own spiritual fix, and then leave.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

When the church is no longer teaching the people how to pray, we could almost say it will have lost its reason for existence. … The clergy often create a situation in which people need them so much, they can’t live without them. I’m afraid some clergy–Catholic and Protestant–have done this to the people. For example, attendance at the service where the clergy happen to be in charge is considered all-important. This overemphasis on social prayer has left many of our people passive, without personal prayer life and comfortable with “handed-down religion” instead of first-hand experience. We don’t do God any favors by keeping people passive and unaware.

The flip side of this is that there are plenty of people out there who are willing to just let the clergy do it all for them. “Please pray for me.” “You make the Bible come alive for me.” Both clergy and parishioner find themselves being guided toward the easier route that he describes above, but it is the least beneficial for everyone.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

What must be sacrificed, and it will feel like a sacrifice, is the attachment and the strange satisfaction that problem-solving gives us. Don’t you feel good when you’ve solved problems at the end of the day? We say to ourselves, “I’m an effective, productive, efficient human being. I’ve earned my right to existence today because I’ve solved ten problems.” I do want us to solve problems; certainly there are plenty out there to solve. But not too quickly. We mustn’t lead with our judgments and fears. We shouldn’t lead with our need to fix and solve problems. This is the agenda-filled calculating mind that cannot see things through God’s eyes. We must not get rid of the anxiety until we have learned what it wants to teach us.

I’m so much of a problem solver/troubleshooter that I’m not sure I can justly comprehend what he is saying here.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

Therefore, we are led to the conclusion that growth in the spiritual life (and this is surprising to capitalists) takes place not by acquisition of something new. It isn’t like the acquisition of new information, which some call “spiritual capitalism.” In reality our growth is hidden. It is accomplished by the release of our current defense postures, by the letting go of fear and our attachment to self-image. Thus, we grow by subtraction much more than by addition. It’s not a matter of more and better information. The wisdom traditions say that information itself is not the key.

What a challenge for me. I feel like my primary spiritual gift is teaching, and yet that usually takes the shape of providing information for others to acquire. What does it look like to teach others by subtraction, rather than addition?

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

The belief that God is “out there,” is the basic dualism that is tearing us all apart. That’s why we have raped the earth, why we have such poor understanding of our bodies, our economy, and our health. That’s why we live such distraught and divided lives. What is worse is that Jesus came precisely to put it all together. He said, “This, the human, is good. The material, the physical can be trusted. This world is the hiding place of God and the revelation of God.”

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

If we’re not willing to be led through our fears and anxieties, we will never see or grow. We must always move from one level to a level we don’t completely understand yet. Every step up the ladder of moral development is taken in semi-darkness, by the light of faith. The greatest barrier to the next level of conscience or consciousness is our comfort and control at the one we are at now.

A year and a half ago, the thought of moving to a new place to gather together a group of people to form a new church seemed horrifying, and yet now we are in the midst of it. The easy thing to do would be to feel that we have taken some grand step of faith, but ideally, we must continue to see how we are becoming comfortable lest we stop growing.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

Even though the admonition not to fear is the most common one-liner in the Bible, our system never called fear a sin. We rewarded it, as all organizational systems will. When religion becomes an organizational system, it will reward fear because it offers control to those in management.

Some will want to respond to this by saying that all organized forms of religion are therefore worthless. I just can’t go there, but those leading them always have to be aware of the nature to point that way. In the contexts I lead, when I find something not going as I want it to, I find myself continually wondering if my motives to correct it are due to my own controlling nature, or because they are what is best for the individuals involved.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

What is my agenda? What is my predisposition? What are my prejudices? What are my angers? I meet people in high levels of church and society who don’t appear to have asked these questions or undertaken this discipline. This discernment process is often called the third eye or the third ear. It refers to the ability to stand away from ourselves and listen and look with some kind of calm, not judgmental, objectivity.

Understanding ourselves should be at least half of any training for those in ministry. Not just at the level of preparation (seminary, etc.) but even ongoing. The understanding of our inner souls and the motivations that come out of them are pathetically overlooked by those of us in ministry as we are always trying to tune up our exterior skill sets.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

Group-think is a substitute for God-think. We believe that God is found only by our group. We then claim that identification with our group is the only way to serve God. When “the way” becomes an end in itself, it becomes idolatry.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

Simone Weil, the brilliant French resistor, said that “the tragedy of Christianity is that it came to see itself as replacing other religions instead of adding something to all of them.” … We’ve usually presented Christianity as an ideology competing with communism, materialism, or some other “ism.” I can see why our perception of it slides in that direction, but corporate religion gets all tied up with totems and symbols and arguments about who’s right and wrong, instead of holding the tension of life and death — and paying the price within ourselves for that reconciliation.
Every major religion has done the same. This preoccupation with religion as an ideology leads to over-identification with the group, its language and symbols. Group loyalty becomes the test rather than loyalty to God or truth. Many of the hate letters I get indulge in guilt by association.

In other words, religion often becomes the point of the religion…which is pretty pointless! As a follower of Jesus, I don’t want to be defined by what I’m not, or by what I don’t do, but by what I am becoming.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

But when we have too much “I,” with too much “I have a right to,” then we necessarily move to a life of hatred, because all our rights cannot be maintained, as Americans think. When there’s too much “I need,” we are necessarily led to greed. We become a consumer culture.

This pretty much nails me. My most selfish moments are born out of a frustration that somehow I am not going to get what I think I deserve or have coming to me. Doesn’t this define pretty much the root of all rage we see around us in traffic, people thinking they aren’t treated properly by a waiter, etc.?

It’s kind of hard to see, but that’s a Nooma on my iPod. I’ve been converting all of my Nooma DVD’s for use on the ipod video. If this isn’t the perfect use of an ipod video, I don’t know what is.

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

The private self is clearly an illusion largely created by thinking. My life is not about me. I am about life! That’s why the Bible is a social history. We’re part of a much larger mystery. Don’t take this private thing so seriously. The primary philosophical and spiritual problem in the West is the life of individualism. Individualism makes church almost impossible. It makes community almost impossible. We’ve overdone this notion of the private self; it has become the only game in town when it’s not the game at all. I need to recognize that I’m in a river that is bigger than I am. The foundation and the flow of that river is love. Life is not about me; it is about God, and God is about love. When we don’t love, when we don’t experience love, when we experience only the insecurity and fragility of the small self, we become restless.

Not sure I can add any of my own reflections to this one. Of course, just the fact that I feel a need to do that kind of proves his point…

This entry is part of a series of significant thoughts from Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr. See the entry entitled Everything Belongs Reflections for more info.

To discover the answer, we have to wait and observe. That’s what happens in the early stages of contemplation. We wait in silence. In silence all our usual patterns assault us. Our patterns of control, addiction, negativity, tension, anger, and fear assert themselves. That’s why most people give up rather quickly.

Isn’t this true with all disciplines, whether they be either physical or mental in nature? The most difficult times often come early on, and I find it easy to give up before I get past them.