GOD IS RELATIONSHIP
“Throw away your measuring tapes, your scales, your weighing—because you’re trying to weigh the infinite. When we talk about God, all the different words of different religions use are like fingers pointing to the moon. Approximations. But you can’t weigh or measure or calculate or dole out the infinite. There’s enough to go around. It’s a worldview of abundance. We understood God in a worldview of scarcity. And so we see politics based on a worldview of scarcity. There isn’t enough healthcare to go around, there aren’t enough homes to go around. Everything is…there’s not enough. I’m getting political now, but people have way more than they need or ever could use in their lifetimes. So let’s throw away our weighing, our counting. Stop counting who’s worthy, who’s not worthy. And if you look at many political arguments, that’s at the bottom. Who’s worthy and who isn’t worthy? They try to weigh worthiness. It ends you up in a hole, a dead end. It’s stupid, stupid, stupid. I’m not worthy and once I’ve accepted and forgiven that, then I can forgive everybody else’s seeming unworthiness.”
Daniel’s Reflection
I felt like I’d won the lottery when Franciscan priest Richard Rohr agreed to my interview request. Early in his career, Father Rohr led the New Jerusalem community in Cincinnati, Ohio so we have a dear friend in common, Dr. Deborah Ooten. He left Cincinnati for New Mexico where he worked with Native Americans and founded the Center for Action and Contemplation. He is quite the rock star priest, with Oprah having interviewed him twice and Bono writing an endorsement for his latest book, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe. His broad appeal is that he takes a very progressive view of faith that he asserts is closer to Jesus’s original message than what is being practiced in Christianity today. In fact, he says the first 2,000 years of Christianity will be called “Early Christianity!”
Richard Rohr’s message is that Christianity (and by inference, all religion) has been hijacked by Western individualism and that we have lost the focus on our collective relationship with God. Rohr believes we incorrectly view the rewards of the spiritual life as a “private evacuation plan for the few.” Instead, he posits that we need to see salvation as an all-or-nothing proposition—that we are all in this together. By “all of us” he means all of God’s creation—including the universe, the Earth, all living and nonliving things that are part of what Rohr calls “God’s original revelation.” Wow! In the world he describes, no one is unworthy and all is sacred. Sign me up!
Father Rohr says that, “God is relationship.” By this he means relationship with the collective, not the singular. This is his understanding of the Trinity, but he does not limit this understanding to Catholic theology. I love the idea that God is in the relationship among us all and that God speaks to us collectively.
My time with Richard Rohr also reinforced for me how prevalent self-hatred and perfectionism can be in spiritual and religious circles. I loved when Father Rohr described in our interview where he realized these were false constructs:
“I think it was after a period of trying too hard to be perfect. In all the little ways we had vows and being on time and being respectful of not thinking unlovingly of your fellow novices and I just realized I couldn’t do it. And I had another strong experience of God and I’ve always said it felt like chains flew in all directions and this was a God I could rely upon to love me, to accept me, to embrace me, to give to me. Even if I was not perfect. Even if I fell. And that’s been much of my message to this day. That you come to God by doing it wrong, that’s breathing under water. Not by doing it right. But for a vast majority of people in all religions, there’s a right way that’s taught you order. You think that by continuing that order you will maintain the favor of God. That’s not true. You have the favor of God already and until you know that and can rest in that it’s really the only thing you can rest in.”
And this sense of perfectionism can lead to self- hatred and doubting our gifts. This is all part of the process that Rohr calls “ORDER—DISORDER—REORDER.” I love this idea that the spiritual journey is constantly reordering us.
I shared with Father Rohr that his idea of the “universal Christ” and “cosmic Christ” reminded me of the wonderful Academy Award-winning film from the 1960s called “Shoes of the Fisherman.” Anthony Quinn plays a Russian dissident bishop who becomes pope during the Cold War. He has to silence his assistant who speaks of a “cosmic Christ” instead of a literal resurrected Christ. Richard Rohr says this universal Christ need not be called Christ and that he cannot be certain it is the only way to salvation. What an amazing time we live in if our paths to living a sacred life need not include judgment and exclusion.
Richard Rohr is living with cancer and he is grateful for a life lived beyond any expectations he ever had. His life as a Franciscan and his status as a living sage to so many of us is beyond anything he ever expected or felt he deserved. I suspect that is exactly his draw. His humility, his self-doubt, and his own journey to spread an inclusive, healing message are exactly what we need in these times.
Thank you for the Rohr interview! He has left an indelible mark on me. Both/and thinking has relieved a lot of suffering. Much love.
Love it!!!
I have just completed “Essential Teachings on Love “
It has changed my life and brought a peace after struggling all my 63 years to be
“worthy”
I think I finally get it .
Thank you my friend
I have been so inspired by Richard Rohr over the many years I’ve read and pondered the daily CAC meditations and have read several of his books. I’ve so appreciated the introduction to so many other spiritual mentors. After leaving a toxic and fundamentalist Christian church, my search for authentic relationship with Life continued via mindfulness practices base in Zen and other contemplative practices. Learning of Richard Rohr and his teachings has brought be full circle to the roots of my faith as a Christian and to a beautiful, expansive, and inclusive understanding of our interconnectedness and that Christ is everything. Words cannot express my gratitude, and my heart hurts knowing Richard Rohr is living with cancer. May you know love, joy, peace and be free of suffering. Thank you for this article and these portraits. Namaste.
If you allow your spiritual life to deepen and learn to be quiet before Jesus and the Holy Spirit (or whoever is your symbol of perfect love), to learn to listen to them, then you could only come to these conclusions or insights of Richard Rohr. Everything he says comes from talking to God and having met Christ. Our true Self, without our ego, is part of the universal Christ Mind. It’s not just Jesus who is Christ because we all are. Though, Jesus is a wonderful elder brother and teacher who is willing to teach us how to get to where he is, to remember who we truly are. And we’re all in it together like Richard says. We are all part of God. He made us and we will all go back to Him, or awaken in Him, but we are so cruel to one another that it keeps us in fear, leading to a constant state of forgetfulness that God is our Father. I mean, to really experience that Love… just even a moment can change your life like it did for Mother Teresa. She only had one experience of the love of God and it directed the rest of her life. She never felt his Love again. And I know what she means. Even a moment of rest within God can give us great courage and kindness throughout our life. Some of us though who have had the experience are still too terrified of His Love because we think He’ll treat us like we treat others and ourselves, with anger, judgment and punishment. And we figure He’s just like us, but thankfully He’s truly not. He knows not of fear, which turns everything inside out. So we need people like Richard Rohr who has been to the mountain top to tell us to remind us that we have nothing to fear, for which I am most grateful. Eventually, through learning true forgiveness, we will all be Christlike with him.
There never was a god until homo-sapiens and the like showed up. The animals and plants ate each other and that was that. To say that there is suddenly a relationship with god and man, is nothing more than poetry. god didn’t turn Moses’ hair gray like in the 10Cs. god didn’t say build a boat, god didn’t appoint Mohammad as his mouth piece and gaia didn’t just go away when her body was raped and molested by organized horror. The Greeks, Norse, Native Americans, Hindus, Buddhists, and shamans took it upon themselves to name the unknown a god. Big questions like, why do we fear death and why should we be nice to our neighbor? These are just used car salesman tactics that start a conversation which attempts to confuse the questioner, sometimes called shuck and jive.
Thank you for sharing this interview. Such a wise and kind elder Richard Rohr.
Richard Rohr literally saved my spiritual life when I was in a free fall with no safety net in sight. He teaches an enlightened Christianity that is in complete accord not only with Jesus’ message but of all mystics and evolved people. Whether one reads his books or listens to his many offerings on YouTube the truth will penetrate the heart and brings peace.
Richard teaches in simple language what the great mystics have revealed in enlarging the experience of unitive consciousness. He integrates past thinking with a maturing spirituality, while encouraging silence and seeking Presence in prayer. He integrates the most modern of scientific theories to expand our understanding and wonder in the cosmic Christ. Moreover, none of this excludes great faith traditions, but allows us to see the one journey to Wholeness, Goodness, Beauty, Truth and Love.
What can you tell me about Richard’s response to Steven Bancarz and other criticism please?
It seems to me that those most critical simply “dont get” Richard or read about criticisms rather than listen openly to Richard.
I am so grateful to you, Fr. Richard, for opening my eyes and heart to the message of Jesus. Anyone I have recommended your books to has been so enlivened by your ideas in their quest for a living God. Thank you for your call to transformation. I do my best to grow into it. God’s continued blessings on you.