Episode 96 - Richard Rohr and The Universal Christ (Part 2)

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you're listening to part two of our conversation with Richard Rohr about his book the universal Christ if you haven't heard part one yet just go back in your podcast feed it's sitting there waiting for you now but for now go ahead and listen to this piece by our friend Pete Holmes about his life experience with Richard Rohr hi ledger just this is Pete Holmes answering the question how has Richard Rohr revealed the universal Christ to you obviously Richard is a piece of the universal Christ just like me and just like his dog Venus by the way in his book the only dedication to a book that made me cry when he talks about his dog who passed being the Christ to him as well that is a good book if already on page one your heart is opening and being revealed new ideas and a more open more open place space you know what I'm saying but the first place that I found Richard talking about it was on a youtube video called the Catholic Corner it only has about a hundred and seventy thousand views I think I'm seventy thousand of them because I watched this video once a month at least over and over I reference it constantly on you made it weird because this is where Richard first introduced me plainly to the idea that Jesus his last name was not Christ that Jesus became the Christ and that the Big Bang was the birth of the Christ I have said that dozens and dozens and dozens of times on my own podcast because it was an idea that I felt and certainly couldn't do it but Richard gave that as he always does that difficult and kind of big idea he gave it plain language and that is something I'm so grateful to him for and then the universal Christ the video came out in 2011 all these years later is the book version of that idea of light being the universal constant and and just so many things that have changed my life the universal Christ is far and away my favorite Richard war book I'm tearing through it and that is saying a lot seeing as his books have radically changed my life for the better so I highly recommend that it's incredible so I found it first in a YouTube video and then again through his other writings and now I read the universal Christ to my five month old baby every morning because it doesn't matter what you read to a baby she just licks the back of the book and she thinks it's delicious and so do I where does that leave hell oh boy okay we do have a CD on this auspiciously called held our listeners a compact disc media that contain audio I'm gonna give you the summary though you don't need to buy it at all there's not a religion in the world that doesn't have some notion of non-cooperation resistance and do you see let's connect this with what we said before about freedom you have to you have to say and preserve the possibility of saying no to this gracious Universal invitation if you don't preserve that possibility then you and I are robots so even Buddhism in facts in some ways more than us talks about Hell the only trouble is we took the metaphors especially used by Matthew they are in other places I'm not denying that but Matthew always say he had punitive upbringing because he loves to end with a threat you'll say Matthew 25 I'm reading it dramatically at the altar and all the people are you know loved the least of the brothers and sisters and then I read the last line you know and they're just all struck with PTSD you know those of you who don't do this will burn in the everlasting fire oh it just undoes the whole message it really does but it's an effective way up to now that teachers have talked you have to present the alternative in language that is both urgent and ultimate urgent and ultimate and so became the language the iconography the symbolism that God would respect that no as long as you persist in it that gave it a notion of eternal hell yeah and even I'm sorry to say eternal torture and when that's planted in the lower brainstem like it was in me especially those you who were raised Christian you first heard those stories as a little whatever yeah that's why I think when I see the irrationality that people hold on to their notion of Hell and they're fighting words especially evangelicals yeah don't take away from me my hell why are you so try oh they say I believe in Hell and I say yeah try to say it kindly do you realize what you just said you believe in hell is it perhaps you're taking delight why are you so attracted to this well with the normal dualistic mind you know how I get everything back to dualism and non-dualism maybe too much we like the win-lose frame it appeals to the dualistic mind good guys bad luck guys win-win doesn't appear just as long as you're still involved in the dualistic mind yeah up to now we framed almost the entire gospel even though Jesus lays no ground for this in retributive notion of justice the fact that the word restorative justice didn't even appear till thirty years ago something like that yeah shows we didn't have a mind for it not in Western culture in Western yeah yeah very well said yeah I checked this out with Walter Brueggemann who's my favorite Old Testament scripture teacher and I said is it fair to say that all the prophets in the Bible eventually get to restorative justice he said almost every single one Wow but here's here's the rub before you get there they've wasted 30 chapters on retributive justice and that lodges in your brainstem you Yahweh is gonna threaten do this to you Yahweh it's all punishment and RAF and so I can't blame the evangelicals purple but I swear they have the word wrath in every good song why are they so attractive that word wrath well if you just read the prophets in a cursory sense it is their the example it's easy to use is Habakkuk you know three chapters of tirades and accusations and God but wait the last three verses of Habakkuk read at some time you probably have Brueggemann calls it the great nevertheless the great nevertheless he gets to the last three verses nevertheless I will raise you up with a Hinds feet on high places and it's politically and beautifully put but you have to struggle through all the rest the where place where it's most directly taught is chapter I'm sure you're more familiar with Ezekiel 16 where the dry bones and then the final paragraph at least in my Bibles he uses the word I will restore you I will restore you I will restore you six or eight times you know after a series of threats so it's almost a parable about how the human mind works I think the human mind does begin with dualistic quid pro quo good guys bad guys look at young boys attraction to sports history and and to business those are the explainers of meaning left in Western society yep business and sports because they clearly operate on the win-lose yeah paradigm you see which created capitalism people can't even a men you know when I write my daily meditations I get more pushback if I criticize capitalism yep even then white privilege and nationalism oh my god the hate letters come in and I said how can you have read me this long and still be so hateful toward our so protective of of capitalism as if this fell from heaven and a glad bag is god fly side Jesus you know let me tell you a personal story Bono told me when he visited the Pope last time they met in a side room he wasn't even on the official list of visitors to Pope Francis because they wanted to talk just honestly and he told me this he said Richard you know I criticize capitalism but he said I found myself defending it from Pope Francis he said he's farther left than I can't say most these things it would divide the church you know but he said he's seen what capitalism is done to the poor but just year by year makes the rich richer now I'm not saying don't hear me dualistic aliy that capitalism has not done some good things let's all agree to that yeah it really has done so so don't think I'm thrown out the baby with the bathwater but maybe it I'd be better to speak of rigid capitalism now why am I talking about this now because that's the frame in which we understood the gospel when Liu's reward punishment and as long as you stay there you need big threat of eternal punishment but the the major bad effect of that is God the Father as we historically call the creator became for many people and I mean this sincerely a very unlikable figure he if he would demand blood from Jesus before he could love his own creation forgive the masculine pronouns but that's how it was conceived at that time and of course from my men's work I'm aware of how many people had abusive fathers alcoholic father's father's killed in war emotionally unavailable fathers so once that word father got polluted we just filled it with yes and I think I hope this doesn't offend you I suspect that's why we overplayed allow me to say it the Jesus card because we didn't have Trinitarian theology anymore that the relationship between the father and the son in classic language was not love wasn't love so you've destroyed the Trinity at that point and that's why I say in my previous book that most Christianity is non Trinitarian which means it's its fault lies at the very foundation it's foundational worldview is not relational it's monarchic oh yeah it's an its mailman article which we call patriarchy of course so this whole capitalist world and this male power world just worked together pretty well so that's an attempt and I know it's only an attempt to respond to your good question about how hell emerged but as John Sweeney says in his marvelous book on the subject certainly we see after Dante's or Divine Comedy and da Vinci and Michelangelo zart we see that it was that notion of hell as a place of eternal punishment once you get into punishment you're in trouble because once God is punitive and let me give us our exit clause from that is the Ministry of Jesus it's why the concrete is so important the reason in my opinion that we have so many healing stories healing stories healing stories healing is the opposite of punishing healing is the opposite of excluding see evil was normally excluded like the man tied up in the cemetery you know evil was normally punished we see no Jesus punishes no one so it's the best argument for restorative justice we have really simply the healing ministry of Jesus and yet and here I would congratulate the Pentecostals you know it was really the Pentecostals who brought back to Christianity the notion of healing the very notion of it praying over people touching people and and I saw it happen that there's there's love energy in the body you can't control it you can't predict where it flows but it does flow and it flows outside of our control we'd see you know bad people be healed instantly and sweet little holy people just sit there with their eternal arthritis or whatever it was you know the dialog can become too theoretical I believe in hell I don't believe in hell but just point out the Ministry of Jesus he didn't teach be a threat now he did describe consequences if you do this you're killing yourself you heard me say in the book we are punished more by our sins than for our sins and that Jesus describes you do that and you're gonna suffer it's close to that what the Eastern is called karma very close to it really your comment makes me think about one of my favorite quotes about healing which is say that healing is to touch with love that which was touched by fear oh that's nice that's beautiful you know I learned that my years in the jail these people I didn't even want to go ahead and meet because I read about him in the Albuquerque Journal with the evil things they did and when I'd go to the private cell and spend time with them there I can't think of a single individual that I couldn't recognize had been touched by fear abuse rejection and your heart what space would just open this isn't someone to hate this is someone took pity and I mean that in a positive way not a patronizing way you know if they vote your heart the pity of your heart you're so trapped how can we get you out of that trap and what you just said is the way they need to be touched by an unconditional love so all this conversation about mind makes me want to address something that you wrote in the book I'm a I'm a scholar academic some of my training has been to use my minds actually to help other people their minds good and to hear my own mind Jesus did say love the Lord your God with your mind yeah go ahead I want to talk about mind as distinct from some other thing that you're referencing although I recognize the paradox of that that that kind of acknowledges some sort of dualistic notion of being but I found it interesting in the beginning of your book that you prefaced it by cautioning the reader that insights to quote you will remain partially mysterious at least for a while and quote and quote I know this can be dissatisfying and unsettling to our you go and mind end quote but then you try to integrate science and psychology Joseph is like we I kind of believe the sense making of this with it or the perhaps the need to figure it out later but then I'm gonna I'm gonna bring in mind to try and maybe support my arguments or convince you and and so I'm wondering about what role intellect or thinking has in the work of Christian mysticism or in your work as well as there room for the mind and and how do we engage the mind in a way that doesn't allow that you go to take over take over my what a good good question then whatever I say won't be adequate it is the Achilles heel of a lot of Protestant denominations and Catholics too for that matter we tried to integrate the mind but we did it in such a rational way that it brought about its own pushback let me begin with this I don't know if it's the best place to begin I believe the biblical concept of faith and the very word is still held on this meaning is the bouncing of knowing with unknowing to such a degree that you can live peacefully and happily without full knowing but what you're saying rightly is we still need some partial knowing some partial evidence I don't think it's a blind leap of faith and that's where science philosophy comes in to be helpful now a lot of people don't need that but more and more people in the modern world do do need that ability to know I'm sure you're familiar with st. Anselm's definition of theology faith seeking an understanding of itself that's theology faith is to give them the leap into trusting that God is good and this is all going somewhere good and I'm good those are the three theological virtues but then knowing that I can't fully prove that I don't every day fully experience that but I have enough light to absorb the darkness that's the walk of faith just that there's a lot enough light so I think that should be ideally the meaning of morning prayer I said people asked me how long should I pray and I say pray as long as it takes you to get to an a yes a yes of some kind this is good that tree is beautiful that sky is blue the Sun is lovely today there's something felicitous at work there's something benevolent that I'm a part of if you begin with know again it's that beginning with the problem so pray till you can get to yes then you will have the capacity the largeness of soul the humility of mind and that's what it amounts to in the mind humility to not insist on total knowing all knowledge is imperfect as Paul says in Corinthians I think it's academics and and all of us were educated we need you melody I think maybe other people need courage more are the ability to let go or to trust so you know the big words for this for a spirituality that was based on words and knowledge and concrete experience was called the katha fatik tradition that which was based on silence and symbol and darkness and that's much much much much weaker in the Protestant tradition why because by the 16th century we were all fighting for knowledge to prove ourselves against the Enlightenment universities of Europe and America and so after the 16th century you pretty much have the death of the apathetic tradition now the two great symbols of that I'm sure you've heard the names of the pseudo-dionysius who isn't pseudo at all but Thomas Aquinas the great rational Catholic teacher you know the person he quoted more than anybody else pseudo-dionysius because he still respected the apathetic tradition and the other one that you might be more familiar with 14th century England is the Cloud of Unknowing and that's a little more readable so uh that's in great part what evangelical Christianity is trying to regain and without it this lust for certitude this insistence on lights and total light is actually the sin of Adam and Eve you know picking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we know who's gone to heaven and we're absolutely certain we're certain gays are gone to hell well isn't that wonderful you have the mind of God well it's so arrogant and in our little denominations we've we never really condemned you Protestants to hell but we did feel sorry for you as we knew we were the one Holy Catholic true church and you were all heretics who had left us and you know everybody looks out from their vantage point and their reference point which is called group egotism isn't it and it's more dangerous than individual egotism I am convinced and of course it's been happening for 80 years now that science is emerging as one of our very best partners for giving us metaphors and frames inside of which we can even better understand the work of God you know things like quarks and black holes what 95% of the universe's is darkness and his black holes or invisibility or space it isn't particles it's the space between the particles and it's that pull between those that where the energy comes from it sounds very Trinitarian to me but I know I I'm reading everything theologically so for those who've learned fonts physics molecular biology really understand the almost impossible mystery of the human body how it continues to work day after day they aren't our enemies [Music] [Music] you speak of the soul sometimes I'm curious about what the soul is well again here's where science really gives us a quite wonderful metaphor DNA the inner holding together of the essence of the thing and that everything comes out from that essence and is replicated in different forms in the larger body we call them seeds in some of history by so every science is gonna have a different metaphor that things tend to have an inherent beginning point or meaning pointer and we call it in the human psyche ah our human spirituality I guess the true self the core the foundation the untouchable the discovery of that and the honouring of that the soul of everything might be even called the heart of spirituality when you can honor the soul of the thing oh the way I usually say it is when you meet things subject to subject not as Martin Buber would put a subject to object you know one of the great things about this me to movement has brought forth is this recognizing by women and I hope by some men that men have been allowed for centuries to objectify the body of a woman and the women are coming to that sense of their inherent dignity no you may not do that I will not allow you to do that god that's a sign of an evolution of consciousness it seems to me but we we've done that with everything you know so once you accept the meaning of life is subject-object what we found as it moves to everything not just animals not just trees you know when I joined the Franciscans in 1961 we were reading all of our expectations requirements and rules as a Franciscan and the one that shocked all of us was you may not cut down a tree without the permission of your major superior majors is not the house superior not the local superior but the head of the whole province now that might sound legalistic to you but do you see what they were doing giving tremendous you don't cut down a tree lightly you don't just cut down the tree cause you feel like it you have to write a letter to your provincial how brilliant Frances held on for eight centuries but in that beautiful if that I vow relationship we tried to maintain it by Idol symbols in a way but uh Western capitalism has almost completely lost it the profit motive justifies everything which is the objectifying of everything so subject to subject knowing is granting its soul and allowing my soul to honor that soul we both win do you understand I have to respect my own dignity to see the dignity of that it's only your soul that can operate soul to soul intercept your mind won't your mind we'll see is there money in it is she good-looking or whatever it'll always be self referential it's a difference between lust and love does that help souls the essence of the thing they have and to preserve an honor the essence of the thing is to be soulful so in your work I've heard you reference growing up a white Catholic boy from Kansas mmm and later in your spiritual development you reference liberation theology and how impactful that's living to your understanding of theology and it all impacted how you see the other what have you learned the most from traditionally marginalized communities particularly ones that you've personally as a Reasonable of deserved let me start with it won't sound like it's responding to your good question but since you were smart enough to use the very phrase liberation theology I would like to say that I believe the whole Bible is liberation theology and I don't like when we try to make a little side course that might be interesting or something like that if you don't get the liberationist message starting with the liberation of the slaves in Egypt I don't think get the Bible I really that you get to maintain the status quo to enslave people in the laws of conformity and rituals of conformity you don't liberate very much at all so after saying that what did I learn I think I made my first international trip to preach in 1977 what had happened was in 73 they put a mic in front of me and I made 12 sets of cassettes which you've never even seen okay and six on the Old Testament six on the New Testament and those went international especially to english-speaking missionaries who couldn't afford to fly in a retreat master in the Catholic world you have to make a retreat a longer period least once a year so because you put together the English the Irish the New Zealanders the Australians the Americans in any country the biggest group of missionaries are english-speaking at least at that time so I got invited all over the world to give these wonderful retreats not wonderful because of what I was saying but what they were teaching me and I usually come a few days early to visit the jungles or the missions or the safari outposts whatever they were what an education that was and here's of course it's gonna sound touche but I just met so many people who were both humble and loving and even though they operated in a world of scarcity they didn't operate with the worldview of scarcity I remember in Guatemala one time where we walked for hours through the jungle to this beautiful little encampment and they tell me I'm the Padre so of course they're very impressed that padre has come to town but within a few moment and I hope it wasn't just because I was a priest but because I was a visitor I heard the squawking of a chicken and I saw the mother notion to her teenage boy he's killing a chicken in the backyard and you know so I know I'm gonna be talking now for at least two hours as they cook they feather that chicken and as I went on with the talk I recognized there were no more chickens and I found out from the winner no they kill their last chicken for you so here they have every right to operate with scarcity and they don't you and I have live in this world view of abundance that there's more than enough there's always more than enough it's coming to an end rather quickly right now but we operate even though with abundance with the world you have scarcity that we've got to save we've got a hoard we've got to have savings accounts I mean the ads for insurance on the news I don't know if I watched the wrong channels but we're just medicines and insurance is about all we advertise in America it's all about preserving the self and I'm not saying insurance is wrong I'm not saying medicine I'm taking nine pills a day right now because of the several health issues I am so I Who am I to complain it's keeping me alive but um what I learned from them was people who had so little but didn't operate out of scarcity the way we do I mean they're still trying to make a buck of course they are because they got to pay their bills but are just equipped to operate with so much less and then the big to still be happy I remember when Marcus in the Philippines had leveled an entire field of the beautiful little huts that the Filipinos build you know and we heard we mostly work with the poor in the Philippines and we heard early in the morning that he had done this so we went out in our brown robes to try to help the people but we expected to meet wringing of hair and hands and cursing of Marcos and it was they were making jokes and and little groups even singing while the others rebuilt the houses you know this is a different psyche I come back to America and all it is is blame and an accusation and trying to exonerate the self from any responsibility and no taking of responsibility just that it's not my fault it's your fault and so you should take responsibility oh we just don't have the large mindedness are the big heartedness to deal with suffering to deal with even inconvenience and I'm used to comfort just like you are but I I hate to see it in myself how much I don't like discomfort you understand I gotta turn the air conditioner on right away don't wanna sweat for a minute that's good are the heater whatever it might be we've just been so damn spoiled by our ability to adjust the environment that we don't know how to live without and still be happy and that's what I learned from the developing countries people who had so much less and we call that the the the advantage of the marginalized those at the edge of any system which that I threw out quickly earlier he is the inclusive savior we are the included let's just start with that now that's a difference not just in quantity but in quality I'm not the include er now I do it on my little scale when I learned to love enemies and people of other races and religions I learned a little bit of inclusion but he who reconciles all things in heaven and on earth as Colossians said that's how he saves us by including us the early fathers st. Irenaeus and st. Athanasius said that which is not included is not redeemed that was which is not in fleshed is not redeemed so and everything isn't fleshed and everything is included so it's all redeemed so jesus now you probably heard me say in the book I do believe it's not smart to say glibly as most of us Christians do Jesus is God literally theologically technically that's not true the Trinity is God you know when you take one-third of the wheel out and try to make it stand on its own and isn't it interesting that even in art we put Jesus on a throne he became the father he became the source we overplayed and you know I love Jesus art he's still the icon of everything but we overplayed the Jesus card because we weren't Trinitarian so that's all we could do anymore and then we had to make him into God and as I think I say toward the beginning if we would have spent more time on saying God can be found in all things instead of proving which we can't do that Jesus is God we would have had much greater success in our evangelization of the world much greater our God is the true God he just made us competitive you know Jesus did not walk around claiming it himself you know that in fact the term he uses his human one the human one every man he emphasizes his likeness to us and for some reason we emphasize his unlike nough stew us so with our dualistic mind we may Jesus for all practical purposes only divine and we made you and me for all practical purposes only human missing the major point the major point is to put those two together so Jesus is the third something not human not divine but no your logical mind is gonna fall apart now fully human and fully divine at the same time that's what the early councils insist on and I I think they're right I realized at one point what I had done in my mind was half human half divine and I could fit that together they understand but fully human is Richard Roehm are fully human and fully divine no he's still growing in his humanity and he's included in the divinity of the whole now Jesus is the personalization of the divinity of the whole Christ is the naming of the divinity of the whole but it's only the whole that is fully divine I'm not fully divine thank God I don't have to live up to that as they say because I'm clearly not but come back around I'd like you to ask in different ways for most people it's crucial but I remember the shock when my professor told me in the late sixties building our our Franciscan Christology one of us asked in the class well when did Jesus know he was the son of God and he said I can't prove this but my assumption would be that was the full grace of the resurrection but in his 33 years he lived with a limited mind that was objectively the Son of God but didn't fully know it he had to trust or otherwise he was not like us in every way as Hebrews says and now you don't have to believe that but it I find it very helpful to believe that Jesus full humanity somehow limited his full divinity which is what Philippians 2 is seems to be saying so you and I are both human and divine but we're not fully human and fully divine does that help we don't encapsulate the fullness of any to go back to those earlier words we are the included we are not the great include err that's the Christ the Christ includes all things in heaven and earth in himself although the Christ is beyond gender so we shouldn't say himself it's starting to get doctrinal but those of us who are teachers probably have to get that somewhat correct our the corollaries aren't so good and the corollaries were not so good as I said Jesus became God and you became only human not divine hmm so what about with the other faiths like Buddha and Krishna and other avatars of different traditions and religions do you how do you see that in comparison to Jesus and when I'm liberated by the Second Vatican Council that marvelous Council of the church was just higher than the papacy for us right an ecumenical council although we didn't invite too many Protestants but we at least invited the North another I mean the Protestants were just observers because you were considered heretics at the beginning of the council not at the end of the council that was so we are mandated by our official Catholic teaching to recognize that all who and the other churches are baptized and call themselves Christians are just as much a part of the body of Christ as we are that's monumental and that freed us in a lot of ways more than a lot of Protestant denominations because it came from on high you know then it went a step further in the document or non-christian religions and it put it this way you can see how they were voting I'm sure to please the Conservatives and the Liberals we still would believe that Jesus is the word of God but that doesn't mean Buddhism and Hinduism and Judaism are not words of God they are all words of God so it comes back to the language I like Jesus is very inclusive in his authentic teaching but what I hope I say fairly in the book is let's be honest and admit that many Hindus and many Buddhists and many Jews honor the de facto Christ much better than many Christians in loving their neighbor and loving the earth and loving and loving anything any loving energy is the energy Christ I don't care where it comes from I don't care the label that the person carries did you get to the end of the book where I give that marvelous quote from a Jew C Mon vay what oh yeah yeah you've heard of her before let me just read it in this context I said set it apart as an epilogue you can take my word for it that Greece Egypt ancient India ancient China the beauty of the world the pure and authentic reflections of this beauty in art and science what I have seen of the inner recesses of the human heart where religious belief is unknown unbelievers atheists all these things have done as much as the visibly Christian ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as his captive oh my god and you know she never accepted baptism she was attracted to the Catholic Church as a Jew but she deliberately said no father I do not want to be baptized because I want my life to build a bridge between Judaism and Christianity and then she was probably killed at Auschwitz or one of the death camps talk about a saint talk about a Christian I used as you know some of my major examples are Jewish and Frank Eddie Hill ISM there are non-christians who got the Christian message starting with Jacob you were here all the time and I never knew it when he anoints the rock or any of you coming to the conference in a few weeks by any chance no yeah and I'm sure it'd be too expensive to fly out here but the liturgies we've created are just so powerful and they start the first night Thursday night there's going to be a porous rock in the middle of the table and we're gonna anoint it with blessed oil so the rock permeate I mean the oil permeates the rock and let that sit there the whole weekend as the Christ symbol because you take the symbol of rock it just goes all the way through and of course geologists love that but it's the most rudimentary form of materiality most of us have ever seen and it does start with the Jakob story where he anoints the rock and says this is Beth l the house of God now by normal Jewish standards that's paganism yeah yeah that's paganism and yet it's it and and we're on that very rock he sees the latter of the angels going up and down the transmission place between the eternal and the human that is a marvelous story so we're gonna read dramatically the first night and then they're all going to have a little smaller rock on their circular tables and they'll are anointed and of course you know the word Christ is the Greek word for Messiah which is massage which means The Anointed One the United one so all what we're saying in this book is all reality has been anointed since the beginning it is a Christ soaked world and therefore it would be more correct to say though that when the Cardinal called me the other day he affirmed this Jesus I know all of our Christmas songs say Jesus came into the world but he said you said it correctly Jesus comes out of the Christ soaked world that's why the imagery of the animals the stable the manger the earthiness of the whole birth story it's God coming out of the earth not descending from the heavens can you almost rearrange your mind to try to think that way it works at least it works for me I love the passageway you wrote I doubt if you can see the image of God and your fellow humans if you cannot first see it and the rudimentary form in stones and plants and flowers and strange little animals and bread and wine and most especially cannot honor the subjective divine image in yourself but that was a powerful pets are the message yeah and I loved how you kind of talked about seeing it in the rudimentary yes the simple forms as the easiest and primary way of seeing God and almost as like a training wheels situation that helps eventually helps you love God your very self and I think you know so many of us have us have it backwards we try too low we did the words abstractions and creations and human culture like religion and philosophy as God but those things are more complex more difficult to find God within than a rock we need to go to kindergarten before we go to first grade beautiful and for many of us we might need to get out of church buildings on Sundays and find God in the trees and sunlight before we are able to find him even in bread and wine but then for others of us maybe the challenge and invitation might be finding him beyond nature and even within religion very fair and earning the vaporous lots of you guys I loved how you put thanks thank you see now there will be those who heard what you just liked and read they're gonna call it pantheism they're gonna call it New Age some are gonna call it paganism it's incarnation Allah Christianity that's all taken to its logical conclusion and most of us weren't trained an incarnation 'el Christianity we were trained in spiritual Christianity what Ken Wilber calls the spirituality of a cent not decent ours is a spirituality of descent which doesn't appeal to the ego of course which is why we turned it around and all this language of perfection and climbing and achieving salvation as but you wouldn't you know an idea this big a truth this big would probably take several thousand years to begin to sink in to the human psyche I think it was just too much and that doesn't mean those people weren't saved they just didn't enjoy it as early really as you can enjoy it now you can enjoy it right now and you don't have to wait til you die that's the heart of the matter I always say salvation isn't a question of if it's a question of whim when are you gonna wake up have you used that I keep getting back to Ken this four part cleaning up growing up waking up and showing up of groups find that so helpful but in terms of what we're saying here my experience is most religions have been at the cleaning up stage till the middle of the 20th century we'll buy the gifts of psychology and science we began to understand growing up yeah yeah I do think there were always people who woke up in the earlier periods always but it was harder for them to do and what we see a lot of our Catholic saints is they did have this unitive sense of their radical union with God but like we find in some of the medieval Saints there's still be hints of anti-semitism so they awakened in one level but they hadn't grown up they hadn't had good teaching and speaking in the charismatic movement you know that's what killed it in my experience I believe there is such a thing as the baptism in the spirit which is a many Pentecost a true in breaking end of the psyche but because most of Pentecostalism did not have good theology good teaching it it started to devolve about three years after your baptism experience Oh in all denominations now some groups hold on let's hype up the group on Friday night and replicate the whole feeling back get the feeling back but it doesn't work it just doesn't work and that's course I argue for good theology because without it you invariably have bad Theology really it I just think it's interesting that your your theological progression coming out of Catholicism litter but not coming out you're still in it but being rooted in that into having a charismatic experience and then an experience of the universality of all things which to me feels like that's the progression as it should be shall be yeah I hope but it's all gift and I was just lucky to be able to have be handed the gift in portions so I could handle that a bit because you know any God experience is hot and it inflates the ego because you think you're so like it did Judaism were the only chosen people no you're just chosen enough to tell other people that they're chosen too yeah and most in any group don't get that so we were the one wholly true Catholic Church even after we rejected half of ourselves after 1054 we just deny the obvious to maintain our specialness and in all fairness the Orthodox did the same thing I've had orthodox walk out when they found out I was a Catholic priest they couldn't be in the same room the hatred is so deep isn't that sad [Music] Richard lures had a profound impact on my life I think one of the only reasons I still have a sense of spirituality is because of discovering him and and his perspective on life and spirituality it was only somewhere in the middle of my marriage to my wife with two kids that I was able to really come to terms with the fact that I was gay and so many times I felt like I had to choose between the binaries of my spirituality of sexuality but Richard I came across you and your work right in the middle of coming to terms with all of that and I feel like you gave me a safe space to know that I loved and accepted just as I am and that this world is so much more beautiful in graceful and hopeful than I ever thought it would be I didn't feel like I had to give up any parts of myself I feel like I was able to become whole and really find all of who I was in the midst of all of that [Music] what do you know for sure it's gonna sound too simply said but I had to fight to believe this for sure and now I think I do that all is Grace that all the gaps that our mind creates are filled in by grace by undeserved beauty goodness truth if we gaze at them long enough so what I know for sure is all is Grace and when I see people like Anne Frank able to emerge how can you not say all is Grace that people can still find freedom and beauty and goodness in horrible circumstances that grace is available everywhere all the time to fill in all the gaps that our mind can't fill in that's the weakness of rationalism it tries to solve the whole problem on the rational level instead of the gazing level you know contemplation just means to gaze at something to gaze at something till you see it all the way through so yeah everything is grace hmm you said in your book which maybe is the best definition of grace I've ever seen grace is just the natural loving flow of things when we allow it instead of resisting it mmm thank you for noting the Dead Sea that's I keep opening this book and I find what day did you write the you know you mentioned this is you feel like this is kind of your life yeah do you have any hopes for what people whether the church or I guess who are you writing to and and what what are you hoping that lasts beyond your life with all these thoughts and these works that you're doing you've written so much it puts so much out of dear old question which I don't have an answer to I don't but what do I hope I think I was writing this is also a cliche but too sincere seekers and hoping there's still some sincere seekers inside the fold of Christianity who are willing to admit they don't have the whole picture yet that's why we need knowing balanced with not knowing if you don't have that not knowing you you're not a seeker you're just a closed-down system that thinks it has mystery in a box which can never be true if this could lessen our attachment to a lot of our historical offenses and to just be patient with everybody because we were all trapped in a very small paradigm all of us hauling this thing together we all got attached to different symbols different rituals different flags to salute and unless we loosen our attachment how is Jesus ever gonna be as John Force as the savior of the world do we really want that I have to say to many Christians I don't think you want that when you never go beyond your own boundaries you have no Jewish friends you have no black friends you have no gay friends you have no Protestant friends you're all nice white middle-class Catholics you know this is not saving the world NORAD doesn't have any hope of doing it so of course I interpret that ending of the Gospels where Jesus says preach the gospel to all nations telling us to get out of our camps wasn't to save them it was to save ourselves by getting out of our own little non diversity systems which we all create why is it that humans are so afraid of other nests it's universal I haven't gone to a country in the world where it isn't true so if this offers people an ultimate oneness it's the best I think I can offer them that the oneness supersedes the divisions but I know that will be fought as people like their their divisions [Music] in the chapter on original goodness I noticed you put believers in quotation marks and I wonder if he saves that on so I can see why I did it do you know believers but do you see anything problematic about Christians thinking of themselves primarily in the framework where we are defined by our beliefs I do it in a different part of the book you you said it you said this which I think goes to that you said in Franciscan theology truth is always for the sake of love so you can love and not an absolute end in itself which too often becomes the worship of an ideology I just love to hear a little bit more about that and you mentioned already some of that in this conversation about how in the West post-enlightenment especially we became so focused on trying to figure things out and but think of ourselves in terms of the beliefs and that being the primary way that we categorize ourselves what do you see that's problematic about that in all beliefs ask so little of you they really do I don't know why we think this is a great thing if we would take most of the time in the New Testament where the word faith is used if we would put in the word trust I think it would be much more existential active energizing and changing of the person because the word faith became believing in certain mental assertions even that Jesus God or Jesus human and divine those could remain at the level of mental assertions so that's probably why I put the word believers because I'm not sure what they believe in except theories and I'd much more trust doers lovers let's highlight those two words and wherever you see creative doing and energizing loving there you have the Christ but I think we're all tired of the word I'm a believer and we're seeing it abusing our brother and sister Muslims too you know but all of us are infidels and I think one reason that can hurt so much is for me as a Catholic is that the way we thought about them for most of history so they're just returning the compliment but by the grace of the eternal Christ I think we've been led beyond that that we can't call anybody infidels because they don't have our vocabulary or our symbol system and first of all knowing there's so many unbelievers infidels in our own midst in the way we understand loving and doing yeah you you referenced Eddie hell with them and she's a dear it was really really beautiful to see how you included her experience and expression of sexuality is not a spiritual practice not necessarily sexual pleasure but extending to pleasure can you talk about pleasure being related to this pleasure perhaps as spiritual practice well you know if Jesus primary metaphors for eternity are a wedding banquet he even a wedding banquet where a hundred and fifty gallons of wine are brought in at the end of the party it's very clear we do not have an ascetic theology or spirituality we read that into it they see this if you stay at the cleaning up stage the first stage cleaning up is getting rid of the impure getting rid of the unworthy not integrating it so a theology of pleasure that would be healthy and creates healthy people I think would be one that can not remain addicted to pleasure but appreciative of pleasure why would that displease God when that's what he wants to give us for all eternity so all pleasures good later but it's not good now that's still at the cleaning up stage now I doubt if most Western middle-class people need to be told that but the trouble is their appreciation of pleasure is not integrated with spiritual delight and that's what limits it it's all having a five-star meal at a five-star hotel and that's pleasure well hardly because there's no capacity to give deep meaning to that it'll be over as soon as you leave the five-star hotel our restaurant so we become almost accustomed to pleasure that's why I admire your courage and asking the question because it is a dangerous question the hedonistic Westerner who's materialistic to the core loves things on their surface not in their substance the immediate pleasure it gives to them they say when you open a package the plot they can prove the pleasure lasts for ten minutes and then you slip back into how you work right before you open the present or the package I don't know if that's true but I think it's true in me of course getting gifts is not one of my love signs signs people give me gifts and I really do appreciate their kindness but it doesn't turn me on that much not in a thought I need it's a pleasure I'm hearing you say is not not necessarily about leaving something or leaving life but entering more into it okay with there you going no thank you for hearing that correctly yeah you know even the Buddha played this asceticism game but when Jesus is accused by the Pharisees of not fasting and not washing your hands we see that Jesus making it very clear in his lifetime ministry that he was not a either he was beyond the cleaning up stage well say he was in the showing up stage that's the incarnation I'm showing up in the completed form of what a full human being looks like what we all should look like I think I do say that in the book if we had known that Jesus came and to give us permission to be fully human and that is to be fully divine sure it all comes together but we thought it he was liberating us to be beyond human and we jumped over the growing up stage and the waking up stage in many cases and so we didn't become very human at all Carol house land the one I agree with she tells the story and that her autobiography the rocking horse Catholic how she went this is in the 1930s Catholic Mass and that time we knelt to receive Communion she's kneeling next to this dear couple who saved me overly papayas and at the end of the mass she meets him in the vestibule and she was sort of short and not so good-looking and was known as an eccentric in town and she said they literally turned away from me and would not look at me and she stopped going to Catholic Church for some time just this isn't working the transference of receiving the body of Christ are not acting like the body of Christ is is the scandal I think isn't that every person you know not ever even moze who've left the Christian religion don't they have a story like that they all have a story of hypocrisy are our ministers priests who are phonies and they lose faith in the whole [Music] [Music] if I were to ask one more question it would be this what is resurrection what is the Christ metaphor after the death and here we see this Christ showing up in a different form every time who is Christ in the resurrection and what is the resurrection for us well for me that's all I can say but I think there's scriptural validation for this and visible validation for this for me resurrection is incarnation taken to its eventual goal once all things are seeded in God the DNA divine DNA is and everything the nothing divine can ever die I mean so the resurrection of Jesus is not a one time anomaly and that was the trouble we we limited everything to the body of Jesus that's what I mean when I say we overplayed the Jesus card first of all in the first six centuries you're not allowed to paint the resurrection there's not a single attempt to paint the resurrection so when it does start being painted in the West it's alone Jesus stepping out of the tomb we call him touchdown Jesus he's always look at me look at me his hands are up he sometimes carrying a white flag which has no message written on it I looked in art museums all over Europe there's never a message written on the white flag because I don't think we knew the message of resurrection then there's sometimes too stunned guards over here there's three happy angels over here that's the West painting of the resurrection now here's the eastern tradition in one classic form he's always trampling the gates of hell those are the gates of Hell there see the locks and chains now I'm sorry this is not a complete picture but underneath his Hades all tied up Hades is not the same as the devil Hades is the god of the underworld in most ancient and we got them all conflated and put together as one this one doesn't show him all tied up but the important thing is he is pulling people out of hell symbolized by Adam and Eve this is Adam and Eve him and he's always joined up above by a whole bunch of other men and women usually half have halos yes this one does half have halos and half don't have halos to show both the justified the pre justified and the we're all up there it's a yeah it's the universal message the other one I know this used to be a put-down of gay people I don't think they use it anymore limp-wristed - people call gay people well it's a compliment in these every single Eastern painting always says Adam and Eve limp-wristed and you know when people couldn't read and write they studied every aspect of a painting it all had meaning for them and the limp wrist was supposed to symbolize I can't pull myself up I am pulled up in that good I'm his good theology it's a good theology of grace there's always these rays coming out or the mandala pulling everything in to this one so he's the microcosm of the macrocosm and this is consistent John Dominic Crossan who's gonna be with us in a few weeks at our conference here at the convention centre he and his wife made some like 20-some trips to Syria Cappadocia Crete Cyprus Egypt just studying the eastern painting of the resurrection and this is the pattern always so it's a corporate understanding of resurrection you didn't expect this long and answer but I love it it's go back to if incarnation is true I'm I'm making everything depend on that really that's the linchpin of the whole book the mystery of incarnation which is why we Franciscans we popularize Christmas you know before Francis as it should be the Holy Week Holy Thursday Good Friday Easter Sonny were the big days you know but Francis got all excited about the Incarnation and that was reflected in our in our theology that Christmas is already Easter if God chose us to become God loves things by becoming them once God does that the problem solved it's okay to be human it's okay to be earthy it's okay to be embodied we don't need a later blood sacrifice I want to emphasize the word need I'm not downplaying the cross not by any means and you know that from the book but as Duns Scotus taught us why do you need to understand everything in terms of need or necessity it's just gift and I do hear that from so many Christians they say let's take a conservative Catholic thing like going to a priest to have your sins forgiven we're really not saying that's the only week but stop seeing it as a need just seeing it as at the right time it's a wonderful gift when you can't convince yourself that you're forgiven and the authoritative voices in the name of God I'm telling you you are forgiven I've been a confessor enough to know that is life-changing for many people but we've got to take all of the aspects of the gospel and understand them as gift not as necessity and Jesus is the supreme gift the summarized was all of these gifts so I'm glad I didn't intend to tell you about this but [Music] Richard Rohr is one of the biggest influences in my own spirituality he's taught me about non dual thinking how to approach aging spiral dynamics and the evolution of consciousness the practical implications of following Jesus and most important of all how to get minded go out of the way my favorite Richard war quote is we don't think our way into a new way of living we live our way into a new way of thinking thanks father Richard for the gift that you are [Music] he has brought so much freedom into my spiritual life by steering me away through dualistic thinking and judgment and by broadening my scope of the influence of Christ [Music] you know I spent most of my life is a really rigid fundamentalist and sometimes I still have tremendous guilt over the actions I took as a result of my beliefs and one of those things was when I was teaching Sunday school and people would have we'd have a time of prayer and prayer requests I would always feel very annoyed with people who would have a prayer request about their cat or their dog because this is not a serious thing that's right Jesus we're here to serve Jesus to share the gospel to save people from Hell and here you are talking about this your soleus being right and then I read the dedication of this book oh and it took my breath away thank you because on the other side of rigid fundamentalism last year we lost a dear friend and family member whose name was max he was a blue Lima writer and I know you know seeing that how you opened the book that Hal Venus your black lab she used to be sitting right here right and how venus revealed christ to you i just i'd love to hear your reflections on the universal christ as seen through venus she taught me presence by her ability to be undyingly present to me any of you've had a dog you know that experience even in the middle of the night if I'd get up on a sick call she would sooner go with me and keep sleeping you know nothing was higher than being with me I mean there's no doubt about it she just uh the the earnestness of dogs I think is what endears them to their eternally earnest and absolutely sincere about the moment let's do it even when she was dying but then I could finally get I think I talked about the look in her eyes she just I look across room and she just be holding my gays and I don't know how she communicated it but I said I think she's in pain and she's trying to tell me now is the time oh that was horrible to accept that one night I had to get up with her and she started groaning I knew she was in pain and sort of just well not sort of spent the rest of the night on the floor with her animals have an ability to communicate this miss nowness enoughness that they get so excited about nothing and to hold your gaze she could hold my gaze much longer than I would eventually tired well I got support today let's stop this look of adoration at one another so the point I hope I make in the book is anything that elicits the flow out of you toward the object doesn't matter if it's a lizard it's okay if it's a leaf a tree anything that starts the flow of delight and appreciation that is contemplation and that object is operating as Christ for you I mean I'm glad we can end on that because that that real and I'm glad you noticed the the dedication I'm making my major point already in the dedication and it doesn't have to be a golden Tabernacle as a Catholic might think it's what elicits surrender aw love response from you that is Christ for you it works it creates very content people who are never lonely again as I say at the end of the book and people who are who aren't competitive anymore there's nothing to compete for even holiness I know like I bet I was like you what are you on the anagram I'm a nine oh that was your one wing it was see that's what I am we ones are so prone to that to being zealous and righteous and and we've a lot of Ministers are ones because you're attracted to this idealistic visionary thing and you don't realize how you are central your righteousness is central to the whole thing yeah that's why I think much of this learning that I've tried to communicate in my books for me was necessary to get out of that early trap of perfectionism gsella tree I'm sure I was never openly unkind to anybody it was worse