Heart's Desire & Social Change, Part 3: The Heart's Desire & Contemplation with Richard Rohr

Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.

• Learn more about ThinkND and register for upcoming live events at think.nd.edu.
• Join our LinkedIn community for updates, episode clips, and more.

Transcript

1:35

Welcome back, everybody. We're here at the Heart's Desire and Social Change podcast to really create a space to have meaningful conversations about things that matter. And as we've done in the past, we like to invite people who are well known in different places and around the world to speak about issues of self awareness and self development and self gift. So it's my pleasure to have Richard Wuerr with us today, who is A Franciscan priest, he's an internationally well known author, and he's the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. So, Richard has been a big influence on our development of the Hearts of Zior course, and what a privilege it is to have you here with us. No, I'm the one, and thank you. And thank you for coming here to our place. Thank you. Well, one of the things that we do in this course in The Heart's Desire is often to first create a space for people to go on a deeper inner journey. And a lot of that is creating a space for silence and contemplation. So Richard, we know that you really have been known around the world of talking to people about first this journey of contemplation. So I'm kind of wondering, how did it start for you as you really embarked on this inner journey? And what were the experiences that shaped you as you got into this work? You know, there isn't one great moment, I have to say that, but let me say this in general, that I don't think I or anybody else will go on an inner journey unless you're first convinced there's something there to journey after. If you're completely caught up in the fascinations of the outer world, the inner world has no interest for you. You don't even have a language for it, you know. And that's what we're dealing with, by the way. But that's not where I want to go right now. Um, so I think because of some early, as a little boy already, experiences of what I would now call God, nothing, you know, like an apparition or theophany, But, um, just where the presence became real and loving and safe to me, I was always fascinated by pursuing that. Now, fortunately, I was in a, unfortunately and unfortunately, a pre Vatican to a Franciscan novitiate, immediately two years before. Vatican II began. The good part was some of the disciplines served me very well. I was only 19, but getting up rather early in the morning, we were required to spend 20 minutes on, in silence on our knee. And I just, all together in the choir, and I just had to learn what to do with that time each day. Well, there it was. And, uh, you know, uh, I had the usual racing mind that a young man would, but, uh, it led to deeper experience, uh, when I could trust that I was safe, it was good, and I was not alone. And, uh, then we had some good traditional Franciscan teaching on Uh, praying without praying, which was the prayer of quiet, uh, going back to the 16th century Spanish Franciscan, and, uh, that helped, but I wouldn't have even used the word contemplation there. We call it mental prayer, which in the midst of a storm right now, we gotta get in something to say that. Well, a storm in New Mexico is wonderful. We're praying for this rain, but, uh. Yeah, it's ironic we called it mental prayer, when in fact the desire was to get beyond your mental cognition. So yeah, it began early and then developed. Maybe that's the most honest way. So when you think about that mental prayer, obviously at some point you had to move from the mind to the heart. This is often a very difficult journey to make. I often say that the, uh, The longest journey of human life is that journey beginning at the heart of the neck. Good, good, good. So I'm wondering, Richard, what was it like for you when you started journeying to the heart? Was that there was a shift in that happened when you did that? Well, again, my Franciscan tradition inclined us in that direction. We always said, well, we're not Jesuits. We're not Dominicans. We're all there is. Terribly unkind of us. But, uh, we felt our prayer was more heart centered, uh, body centered, and there was, that was the emphasis. But let me put it this way, that once you abandon this cognition thing, as the, uh, with the ability to solve all problems, you're, you're automatically much closer to the heart. Does that make sense? Yeah. And, uh, it's not even, as if you even have to go there. You drop there, you are there, but most of us in Western education are trained to think all problems can be solved by more thinking. And the older tradition would never have said that. That only develops after the 12th century. Well, you spent a lot of time talking about the importance of scripture. You obviously draw it from the tradition, but at some point you also begin to say that Experience also matters as well. What was it that led you to say, we need to trust experience alongside scripture and tradition? You know, I think, I'm so glad I could ask these, answer these, well, there's no answer, but respond to these questions without thinking about ahead of time. I don't think it was self observation. I think it was The observation of spiritual directees and people I was counseling, that again and again, people who got somewhere, who seemed authentic, genuine, for real, holy, were invariably people who had taken the risk to suffer their own experience, to trust their own experience, to say, you know, it isn't all wrong. Which is more or less the way both the Catholic tradition and even more the Protestant trained us to be. Don't trust your own experience. We were told in effect, the Catholic was told to trust authority, the Protestant was told to trust Bible quotes. And both of those are a few steps removed from inner authority and inner experience. That's the best I can say. Well, you know, one of the things that speaks to our students is when we begin speaking with the true self and having the true self distinguish from the false self. So as you talk about trusting experience and as you talk about moving into the true self, uh, that's a sort of a powerful notion for people. I want to just read a quote here that, that you've said, and I just wondered if you could elaborate a little bit more. But you say, our true self is who we really are, who we are before God. In contrast, our false self is who we think we are. It's our mental self image and social agreement, which most people spend their whole lives living up to, or down to. Say a little more about that. I could say a book about that. That's just the beginning, but you chose a very good quote. Yeah, you know, in the modern age, post modern age, we, uh, we think when we talk about the true self, we talk about the authentic personality. Am I really, uh, an intellectual or am I a plumber? Am I an introvert or an extrovert? And those all help, but what we're talking about precedes that. by 20 steps. The true self isn't anything you can create. It's only something you can discover. It isn't anything that you can live up to or live down to. It is. Now traditions, most spiritual traditions, we call it the soul. And even we Catholics, We didn't speak of, uh, uh, creating our soul. We spoke of finding our soul, uh, more often than not. So it's something objective that's already there. I use soul almost the same as true self, almost the same as the indwelling Holy Spirit. It's God in you, loving God. God in you, already knowing the truth. loving the truth, loving you. I don't know how to love me. I don't know how to love God. But I draw into this permanent, deeper source. And what we meant by prayer, I think, was learning to trust that such a source was available, that such a source was there. And when you learn to draw upon it, you, you know, there's strange and arrogance. As this sounds, you know what God knows, you uh, you wouldn't tell anybody that. And I don't mean perfectly, but you're moving in that direction. You find yourself, for example, incapable of hating. Remember at a certain point in my life, like all of us, I've been hurt, you've been hurt. And I realized that even the people who hurt me the most, There's little temptations to resentment, but I don't hate them, you know? I can't. Almost like I can't. It's a difference. Me, the me, or who I thought was me. So the false self is, uh, is entirely concocted. And we are so good at it now. The, uh, cult of personality, the imitation of heroes and, and celebrities and sports, uh, stars and handsome, beautiful people. Uh, you know, you're probably familiar with the work of Rene Girard. He says, we're all imitators from, you see, you're a little two year old. We don't know how to do something until we look at it and see it. And say, well, that seems to sell, but that seems to work. And I decided to put on that persona. I'm sure, you know, I was forced to learn Greek. I don't know much of it anymore, but the word persona first referred to the The masks that they wore in Greek theater, and they were really mouthpieces. They, uh, you know, enlarged the voice. And, uh, I remember playing in Oedipus Rex in college and I had to wear this huge thing. It was like a megaphone, really. And it's very interesting that the, uh, Cappadocian fathers from eastern Turkey took that word to describe, first of all, the persons of the Trinity, and then the individual persons. That we are passed through by the life of others. We are not our own. We are contagious. And all we are is what we've collected from our parents, from our early authority figures, from our family, from our culture, from our religion, which is, I'm convinced, what we Catholics meant by, I believe, in the communion of saints. Do you know, I didn't know this until 10 years ago, that phrase was only added to the Apostles Creed in the 4th century. The Apostles Creed was one piece, and there was some new realization that whatever was happening was coming, and they added it to the Apostles Creed. I believe in the communion of saints. My only critique of it would be, we should add, and the communion of sinners. Because it works both ways. My badness, forgive me, rubbed off from you and everybody else in this room. My badness is not just my own. That should be a huge relief. I still have to take responsibility for it. But, uh, the false self is taking too much responsibility for thinking it's real. Thinking it's me. And this is why young people go through such torture. They often say that enough and they need something for that. The false self is not the bad self. No. It's not the real self. That's right. So, can you explain that? Develop that, of course. Yeah. When you use the word false, you immediately think bad. Don't think bad, in this case. It just has no substance to it. Uh, that's Catholic language, I suppose. Uh, no reality to it. No permanence to it. I mean, watch your life. By the time you get my age, I'm 708. You have gone through so many stages, through so many stages of feelings, and, uh, realization, and rejection, and try on this, try on that, especially when you're young, and now I look back at the whole journey, it's like, most of them don't mean anything. Who cares? You cared so much when you were 25, but it's a, it's a game you gotta play, and let me add that to it. False self is not the bad self. God uses the dramas, and that's what they are, the dramas of the false self, to deconstruct it. Because you see how it's not real, it doesn't matter. That girl that I thought I could not live without, and I die for six months after she rejects me. Now I'm so glad I didn't marry her. But that's six years later, you know, or whatever it might be. So, uh, you, you see the impermanence of everything. You know, the Heart Sutra of the Buddhists, which, uh, more mature monasteries chant every day, ends with, Long, gone, utterly gone, gone, gone, utterly gone, all has passed over to the other shore. Uh, wow, you realize what they're saying in that short phrase. Two, 22, infect you with what we don't want to believe. Everything, every institution passes away. You, you just, you haven't lived long enough when you're young to see how true that is. You really think this will last forever. And that's wonderful. God gives you that, as a young person, but it's not true. Let's take that one step further. Okay. We talked about the true self, the false self, but also the shadow. Okay. Tradition and experience is a part of experience of our darker side that also is very difficult. So you've used the insights from psychology and psychology. It's about to understand this part of experience. So why is it important? What is the shadow and why is it important? Integrate the shadow into the healthy lunch. All right. Now, first of all, I want to, so you people don't just think on some 20th century psychologists or the ground that's in the gospel and in Jesus, when he talks about, uh, the, uh, log in your own eye and the spec and so on and else. Right. The shadow is what you don't want to see, what you're not ready to see, what you're not able to see, what you don't like to see in yourself. It's the log in your own mouth. And the best way to not see it is to pay a lot of attention to someone else's. I'm amazed how Pope Francis speaks so much of how gossip destroys Christian community. And I can't help but think that's what he's talking about when you're constantly talking about respect in someone else's life. And notice, he uses the eye metaphor. It's how you see. There is something blocking your 20 20 vision. You have a law, by the way. He seems to be saying, uh, and you so don't want to see it that you make a great deal of everybody else's much smaller splinter, as it's sometimes translated. So the shower self is also not the bad self. It just, this is crucial, it's subtle, it allows you to do bad things, While not thinking of them as bad. And that's why so many people can do evil. Thomas Aquinas said this, you know, Everyone chooses an apparent good. In my little mind, I've got it explained as virtue, even. I just noted in a piece I wrote yesterday in famous Matthew 25, when Jesus talks about, uh, You know, my taking care of the least of the brothers and sisters, he says, and the virtuous will say, when did I see you hungry? When did I see you thirsty? The virtuous will say, we've, we've, uh, we've all got our actions explained to ourself as virtuous. So if you're not willing to suffer a little humiliation, with great regularity, Now, Americans aren't known for humility. We really aren't. Uh, it's, it's making the teaching of the spiritual life most difficult. Most difficult. If you don't know how to learn from your daily humiliations, well, that was really judgmental. That was really harsh. That was really wrong. Why am I afraid of him? Why am I threatened by her? There's always a reason. It's shadow material. Whenever you see an extraordinary, an overkill response in yourselves, your voice sometimes changes and raises higher. Your shadow has just been touched invariably that, uh, so why is it important to make friends with your shadow? If you don't recognize how frequently it visits you, how frequently it's a part of you, It will dominate your entire life. You only surround yourself with people who think like you, who affirm you, who are in your age group, your religion, your gender, your, you know, it's just too much of you entirely. And, uh, the person who begins to face their shadow is not afraid of it. Almost automatically, let's pick the current. Uh, major issue is not threatened by black people, no? Uh, it's very interesting in that word shadow and black and dark, how all of those go together. Why is it that the people of color worldwide have had to accept the projection of us white skinned folks, no? Because darkness, except by people like John of the Cross. Darkness was defined as bad, and, uh, it just, if you don't do your shadow work, you'll really believe that. Now, when you go to John of the Cross, darkness is the way through, but I'm not trying to be a super Catholic. But that's pretty unique to the Catholic mystic. Protestantism has almost no darkness. Teaching on darkness. Almost none. And so, not that we don't have plenty of shadow in the Catholic Church. But, uh, if we have, if we, we've connected to deep Catholicism, we have a lot more ways out and through, you see. So yeah, that, that's why, by the way, Jesus told us, commanded us to love our enemy. Your shadow comes, first of all, as an enemy, revealing, holding up a mirror to you. Richard, you're a phony. Richard, you're a hypocrite, you know, or whatever else it might be. If you're not humble enough to say, well, okay, even 10 percent of that is true, you'll, you'll never grow up. You will never grow up. You'll be 60 years old with the emotional life. of a 20 year old. Well, you know, with the students, when we talk about these issues and their complexity, sometimes they'll say, look, I, I feel guilty that I haven't fully actualized my true self. I realize that there's so much of this stuff that I haven't dealt with and so many other things there and really, I'm probably living out of my false self more than I want to. What would you say to them when they say, look, I just don't feel like I'm fully there in my true self? I, I would actually be very happy that they said that, because that's undoubtedly true at Notre Dame age, with, what are you there, between 21 and 24? 18 and 22. 18 and 22, yeah. Uh, what else could you be? Please don't let me hurt your feelings, but you're trying on half, you're, you're trying on everything. Does this work? You know, uh, was it Ed Koch in New York who said, how do I look now? Or something like that. That's what you have to do. And that's why trends change and celebrities change and so forth. So one who can see that you've got a good starting place that I don't know that I've knocked upon the authentic or what Howard Thurman calls the genuine, um, you, when you meet people, you know, when you've met genuine people, they talk in a different way, they present themselves. in a non nervous way. Uh, they don't care if you like them. These are all relative, of course. But, um, if a young person already at Notre Dame stage says, I don't know if I ever discovered my true self, forgive me, but that's undoubtedly true. Unless they're a child mystic. Well, you talk about forgiveness. I mean, that's, I'm going to transition to this. We have so many quotes that we draw from, from your work and so many themes that you've written about. One of the ones that I think often speaks to our students as well is this theme of forgiveness. Did you say something at one point in your writings where you say if you do not transform your pain, you'll most assuredly transmit it. Can you say a little bit more about that? Loads. I'm so glad that that line has caught so much attention. Because first of all, the assumption is you will have pain, you know? This isn't just how unfortunate this is. That I had to suffer pay, uh, now, people who were raised poor and a minority in any sense, a sexual minority, a racial minority, class minority, they only had start in suffering because they've been, uh, hit by a thousand, what do they call them, microaggressions. And so they've just grown used to it. Those of us who have this horrible white skin, beautiful white skin, whichever we choose to perceive it as, we don't suffer in this dominant white culture. Very much, very many, we suffer them too. Microaggressions. And so with the assumption that you will have suffering, I mean, again, the Buddha says this, in his five great principles, life is suffering. He starts with it. Are we surprised that the crucifix became the symbol of the Christian religion, you know? It's, the cross is saying, what you do with this. Look at me. I think that's my daily meditation today, online. Gaze upon the one you have pierced. When you gaze upon it, you realize, my God, that's me. And my God, that's everybody. My god, that's India dying of COVID 19 in the thousands. That's Syria falling apart for years now. It's the whole story. Well, it isn't the whole story, but it's the pass through story. Great religion, healthy religion, teaches you what to do with that. This anguish, this resentment, this need to accuse, blame. You know, Satan means, the word Satan, means the accuser. When you see people are always blaming someone else. Think of the last election. Uh, you know, your low level consciousness. You know, you're at a level where I'm not transforming my pain, I'm transmitting it to the other political candidates, to the other political party, to the other gender, to the other class, to the other race. It, it, it's very, very sad to be, this is almost the, the shape of America. It really,'cause we don't have much spiritual teaching. We don't, we just have religion. Now I'm a priest. I, I know I shouldn't say that, but one of the safest ways to avoid God, honestly, I mean this, after 52 years as a priest, one of the safest ways to avoid God is religion. Just keep up the externals. And you never have to go on this scary inner journey that you and I are talking about. So you will have pain. Now it all depends on what you do with it. Are you going to project it onto another race? All the people in authority, there's all kind of game. The authority one is a very common one. I remember in the mid eighties, uh, with my first community in Cincinnati, Ronald Reagan was president, and I realized that a lot of the people who are on the picket lines, protesting injustice. really didn't hate injustice. They hated Ronald Reagan. And why did they hate Ronald Reagan? Because they hated their father. And then when I found out how many people hated their father, or at least didn't like him, you realize this anti authority is where people waste 15 20 years because they don't deal with that, what's really going on inside of me. That makes me resentful toward all authority figures. Uh, and I'm not saying you need to fall in love with all authority figures. There's plenty of them I don't like, but I'm not going to let them control my owning. So you see, it's, it's a matter of naming it, owning it, finding someplace to speak it. The speaking is important in some safe space. You know, one thing I always try to say to students in our living school, when people most likely change is when they're caught, not caught, but find themselves in this judicious combination of safety, I'm confident today, I'm okay, I'm not afraid of you, it's okay, and, uh, confusion or conflict. Or dissonance, huh? That's when you change. You have to be safe, and you also have to have some dissonance. When those two come together, new newness can happen. If you don't feel loved, which is safe, uh, you won't change. Because you have nowhere to fall. You have no one to keep mirroring you when you're going through the days of hating yourself. But without, if you avoid all conflict, all dissonance, all, uh, falling apart, You'll just never, you won't. I've heard you say before that two great teachers in life are love and suffering, and yet they come together in the cross in a very unique way. And you have this thing about the cross that we often talk about. There's a number of pieces of this, I think, but A lot. The first is, um, I often say this with my mother, I know when we went through some difficult times, With suffering, uh, through our experiences, uh, of people who were going through a lot of pain and we ourselves were going through the loss of love months, we often said to each other, quote, that you actually had written somewhere, which is carrying the cross is bearing the burden of our own reality. Oh yeah. can you talk a little more about that? That's the biggest cross you'll ever carry in the course, course of your whole life. This constant recognition that you're a bit of a disappointment to yourself. That your life is not all you expected it to be, that your marriage isn't perfect, your children aren't perfect, America isn't perfect, the Catholic Church isn't perfect. Those, each one of those is another bearing of the cross, you see. And people who insist on, well, let's pick the obvious one, um, insist on saying, yeah, don't you know the Catholic Church is imperfect? And I said, I faced that years ago, of course, you know, I know more scandals about the Catholic Church than you do. That's not the issue. In fact, the only way you learn how to love is to live in an imperfect world, not a perfect world. You have to live amongst imperfection. And, um, it's, once you hear it, it sort of becomes, oh, yeah, isn't that true? Real wisdom is not, it first sounds counterintuitive, but if you stay with it, it usually isn't. It's Christian common sense, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Jewish common sense. If love is what we most want, why do we protect ourselves from it and don't allow it? Yes, why don't we? Whenever we decide to love, on some level it's probably more unconscious. We know we're going to lose control. We know we're going to have to change. It's more unconscious than conscious, but we're giving another person power over us. I've always told the story of this is not made up. I don't have many weddings anymore, but in my early years, I had a lot of weddings with the community. It was mostly young people. And three times, one being my brother in law, the groom fainted right before I invited them forward to, to state their vows, you know, and suddenly he's laying on the floor, you know. I think the male psyche, which is even more defended than the female, I think that's why men needed initiation, historically. Uh, the idea of giving over your life, as much as you love her, that she has 50 percent control, at least, some days 100%, uh, that is just frightening to people, and, uh, but I think most of our knowing of that is unconscious, and that is still why we keep love at a distance. Love now is in control, not me. Yet, we never can know who we are if we don't struggle that. That's it. We only know ourselves in communion, in relationship, forgive me for always being so dang theological, but our notion of God is called Trinity, which means God is not a monarchical substance sitting on a throne, male, angry, or whatever. Our God is relationship itself, not one, not three, but one by reason of the flow of infinite love between the three. Uh, what does that say? If we're all created in the image and likeness of God, then we are relational at our core. And, you know, we listen to these people who, who, uh, commit mass murders, and it's seldom that they aren't loners. They, they seldom have, uh, close friends or a history of friendship. There are people who think, They can make it on their own without love. That's, that's, that's atheism. Yeah, really. To, to live in relationship is to live inside the flow of love, which you can't avoid, which is why most of us are called to marriage. Well, you and I took a very dangerous path, really, thinking we can get to God. Without some real love in our life. And then God gives these wonderful married couples something even better. Little children. And the day they're born, apparently, you know forever, this child will control my life. It will never be the same. We don't have that. It's very dangerous. Speaking of danger and vulnerability, I want to come back to the cross one more time before we go. Well, you're a holy cross father. You've really spent some time looking at this whole traditional notion of Substitutionary Atonement. Oh, yes. And then Christ paid for that. I'll be gone two hours, don't go. So this, this notion that Christ paid for our sins, that is what dominates in theology and church circles. Yet, you've said this before, that Jesus died on the cross, not to change God's mind about us, but to change our mind about God. That's it. Can you say a little bit more about that? A little? Don't get me started. Because I think this is a major piece in the corruption of the gospel message. It keeps the whole understanding of the gospel on a transactional level, and it keeps the whole understanding of the gospel on a transactional level. Instead of a transformational one, you know, there is a price to be paid. It's almost capitalistic. And what does it do? It makes the father, I talked earlier about how many people have father wounds, and are so inclined to believe that all fathers are not very nice. Uh, well then you come along and you make God the Father into someone who has to be paid off to love his creation, to love his children. It's a pretty incoherent universe. Now most people don't think about that, but we've got a, a tyrant, punitive father. Secondly, it frames the whole gospel narrative, salvation narrative inside of retributive justice. When the real message is restorative judgment. Even God needed retribution. If God legitimates necessary violence, uh, whoever you think of God, he's somehow the top. You know? If the one at the top needs necessary violence to love, you know what has happened to culture? You have legitimated good violence. All the way down. It's okay. No wonder. I mean, let's be honest. Christian history has been very violent. And I'm ashamed to have to say that, but we didn't have any message of non violence. We had to learn it from a Hindu called Gandhi and a Black Baptist called Martin Luther King. But in the Catholic tradition, we sort of liked war. If, if you read, I mean, I'm just being honest about our history, and why was that true? Because we identified with power, with empire, starting in 313. And once you're on the side of power, you're always on the side of war, because you have to protect your power, you have to protect your everything. So I learned this now theologically and philosophically as a Franciscan. You Holy Cross Fathers probably don't know this, but we were the only major order that did not accept the Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory, which was believed by Thomas Aquinas. And most of you were Thomists, except us. I'm bragging a little bit now. We're a young child. We're going to point twice later. We were called SCOTUS. Uh, uh, now, by the way, Gerard and Emily Hopkins. was a SCOTUS, and Thomas Merck was a SCOTUS, by choice, and this is one of the major reasons, along with several other things he taught. And, uh, he said that, that God could not have come into the world as a mere problem solver. Yeah, I'm back to the transactional notion of reality. That would have made Jesus, God forbid, Plan B. He puts us back in charge. Our sin controlled history, you see. And Scott, as brilliant as he was, that I've got to believe in his cosmology, our Christology, came from Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, John, the first chapter, where he is the image of the invisible God. who reconciles all things within himself. Jesus, for us, was plan A. Now, the term for that now is the cosmic. Uh, it's a very different notion of history, where you start not with a problem, not with sin. Now, to tie this up to Scripture, you start with Genesis 1 instead of Genesis 3, when it's really nefarious, wicked, that we chose to start with Genesis 3 instead of Genesis 1. In Genesis 1, it says very clearly four times, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good. Fifth time, it was very good, the creation story. Uh, then, as we well know, it all seemed to fall apart in chapter 3. But when you begin with a problem, what we call the fall, I, I just look at our 2, 000 year history, When you start with a problem, you never get beyond the problem. I just see that in people's lives. People begin with the problem orientation. After a while, they're creating the problem. And you know what the problem was? SIT IN. This preoccupation with SIT IN. Sin, as something I did, I mean I grew up with the good Irish nuns and I love them, but thinking I caused Jesus to be crucified on the cross, that gives me an awful lot of power that I don't think I deserve, you know? Uh, it's, it all pulls it all back into our realm, whereas what Scotus taught us, I had to study him for four years. He was both a philosopher and a theologian, uh, but he admittedly is very hard to understand. So I realized why he never became as well known, even Bonaventure, uh, who is his parallel, uh, was more understandable than, than Scotus. But he felt Christ was plan A. Jesus came to reveal the nature of the invisible God. He came to show love, not to solve a problem. Yet, a lot of that, as Christians would say, is This whole atonement theories and the reason why Jesus came was to bring us back to God and to help us get into heaven. And yet you say more than that, um, you, you know, admittedly you do say that, but on the other hand, you say that, that the job of a Christian is not just to get to heaven, but it's to become more human. Yeah. I spend a lot of time talking about the importance of really letting the path, the inner journey for holiness really be about becoming more human. What do you say about that? Oh, it's just true. Now, the trouble is, it doesn't feel religious. It feels like mere Sounds like, yeah, humanism. Humanism. Mere humanism. You know, aren't you admitting the spiritual journey? Aren't you admitting the need to grow closer to God? See, if our job is to follow, not worship Christ, but follow Jesus, Um Then our job is to do what he did. Now, what did he do? He put humanity and divinity together in one body, in one person. But you know what? By every human intuition and perception, he looked like a human being. He just did the human being thing right. He didn't walk around saying, I'm God, I'm God. In fact, he goes out of his way. More than any other, and I know you know this, uh, because we have to preach on it so often, what does he call himself? The Son of the Yuma, which, and I don't know why, for God's sake, we translated that the Son of Man. It sounded like some, you know, esoteric, mystical phrase. It's just the Son of the Yuma. I'm one of you. I'm the archetype. I'm the model. Again, 1st Colossians, 1st Ephesians. 1st Colossians. Uh, he, he is the, the one who shows us in visual form in alpha and omega by the Big Bang starting off the universal Christ, ending with the Christ at the end of history, and that you see in the book of Revelation. And at both ends, it's a human being. Well, no, not the first. But at the end, it's the new man, as Ephesians calls it, without any shame. That's not mere humanism. If we would have taught Christians how to be good human beings, instead of pious Catholics, or Baptists, or Lutherans, We would have had a lot kinder history. Really? You know, Leonardo da Boff has a quote that I never forgot. He said, Jesus was so human, that only God could be with him. Wow. It's what he said to us as Leonardo da Boff. Oh. Well, he's one of us, you know. Did you ever meet him? Um, I did not. No. Brazilian Franciscan. But, uh, he had wonderful friends, this guy, exactly. He told stories. He actually knew how to tell narratives. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of narratives, I mean, I think one of the things that's been so great about your work is helping people get in touch with their narratives, their experience, becoming more authentic and becoming more human. And then part of that is also making this connection between being a human being and one's responsibility with the world and growing in contemplation and letting that bear fruit in action. You brought these together very well, because I think we both know we've been around activist people who can be very angry, very difficult to live with. Same time, you've been around very pious people who actually Really almost don't even notice the challenges or the needs of the world around us. So bringing those two together is quite a, quite a gift. And it's been something that you've been worked at for many, many years. And I was just wondering if you could say a little bit more about this connection between contemplation and action, and in particular, I do remember you quoted Rowan Williams, who. When he gave a retreat at the Vatican, he said something very interesting of the need for contemplation in the consumerist world that we're in, and he said this without rewiring, um, our attitudes and behaviors and mindsets, we actually, without contemplation, in other words, we, we go crazy, and this is probably part of it. We can't do it. We really can't do it. But do you still, you quoted this quote from Ron Boyd, Contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems, our advertising culture, and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It's a deeply revolutionary matter. Wow, he is such a wise man. Now, see, we've taught people the catechism, sent them to Sunday school. We gave them a message without a mind that could understand that message. Because almost every major dogma, doctrine of the church is a paradox, is a contrary, I'll just give a couple examples. And when you don't give people the mind for it, we almost birthed Western atheism and agnosticism because it can't be experienced then. The big one, of course, is Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. Your dualistic, rational mind cannot process that. It can't. It just, well, sat it on the shelf. God is one and God is three at the same time. Anybody who's an accountant or a mathematician, that's garbage. That just ain't true. It's religious gobbledygook. You can go, uh, Mary was virgin and mother. Oh, stop it. Yeah. We Catholics just love things like that, you know? Uh, but we don't realize that they, they undid us because we separated experience from belief. And who was it? Was it C. S. Lewis said, how can I believe 10 ridiculous things before breakfast? He said he felt that was the way a lot of Christians understood Christianity. Believing unbelievable things. I don't think they're beyond experience once you have the non dual mind. Once you, you'll, in fact, you'll find yourself saying, Yeah, that's me, too. I'm both human and divine. I'm both sine justus et picator. Simultaneously sinner and saint. I don't know how you can forgive yourself your really bad sins, uh, with the dualistic mind. You'll spend the rest of your life holding it against yourself or blaming someone else. How does contemplation help you go beyond or really take on the mind, if you will? The dualist mind is more the operative mind in society. Yeah. How does the contemplative mind change that? The contemplative mind keeps you from, uh, too quick resolution. It keeps you from what we call now, rushing to judgment. You keep the horizon open. You let life be mystery. I'm sure you've heard me say what Karl Rahner said better, that we should stop using the word God for 50 years because we don't know what we're talking about. And we should simply refer to God as holy mystery. And Holy Mystery is not that which is not knowable, it's that which is infinitely known. So you never get to a point, like I'm afraid our Fundamentals brothers and sisters do, I know, this desire for absolute, rational, mental certitude. You get much more comfortable with it. Well, we call it now a tolerance for ambiguity. With a tolerance for ambiguity, you can let your brother off the hook for one thing. How do you know that was what he intended? You know, little ways like that. You um, you can live without certitude. The gospel never promised us certitude. Where did we think we got that right? And I mean, just listen to religious talk. I'm certain that I'm going to heaven. Well, I'm certain that God loves me now. And if God loves me now, why would God change his mind when I die? That's the way I process it. I experience God's love on a daily basis, so I don't need some proof from a scripture quote. They back me up, and I love the backup, but um, the search for certitude, what I have called in recent years, the lust for certitude, has really undone Christianity. It's made us very rigid people. Very either or people, very argumentative people, very all or nothing people. And if you've ever worked with alcoholics, or addicts of any sorts, they're always all or nothing thinkers. I'd be an alcoholic too. It's a miserable way to live, when it's, it's either perfect, or it's terrible. You know, Lonergan said that, he said there's two types of people in the world. They said there's those who need certainty, and there's those who seek understanding. Wow. I've always found that to be. That's lovely. That's lovely. Whether you have the audacity. And then you've often said, this is another quote that's really stayed with us, is that we don't think our way into new ways of living. We actually live ourselves into new ways of thinking. Yeah. You've gotten to plant yourself in different contexts where your biases. aren't constantly confirmed and validated by other redneck Kansans. I'm from Kansas. As long as you surround yourself with people who are just like you, you will never think different thoughts or new thoughts. Someone has to be able to question your assumptions or to live with a different set of assumptions. And at first you want to harshly judge them, And then if you stay with it long enough, I remember my deacon era in Cincinnati, I worked at the Catholic Worker in the soup kitchen and so many of the people who turned me off. I was at the jail here too, in the first days. By the end of the several month period, I knew their humanity and I, I could forgive them, love them, be patient with them. But if I would have avoided it. The Catholic worker, the soup kitchen here in Albuquerque, the jail you find. I was in a black parish, uh, also, and I was out here with the Indians at Acoma Pueblo. So God just immersed me in a whole bunch of otherness. So I, uh, I couldn't think that the white, German, Catholic way was the only way. So that's living yourself into a new way of thinking. Lifestyle. Lifestyle is what finally makes the difference. Now that was very Franciscan. Francis, uh, told us not to really preach to the world. The Dominicans did that. Preach to the poor, but to go and live alone. That was very clear. And Francis is, in the 13th century, is the first one who makes that clear to the universal church. Not preach to them, It's your life with them. It changes everything. Well, Richard, there's so much more to talk about, and I think you've just, uh, given us so much to think about over the years. This is obviously not your first rodeo. You've been doing this for decades. I wouldn't know how to do a rodeo, but it So But I, I was wondering, you know, we were speaking with Parker Palmer. Oh, wonderful man. Parker, uh, you know, uh, talks about, he's written this book on aging and about growing old and he has this new book called On the Brink of Everything. Oh, yeah. He talks about really the gift of growing old. And he, uh, he really leaves you with a question, which is, uh, working with an artist, working with a songwriter. The question that he was asked is, how will your music play on? So, as you look at the notes you've played over your lifetime, and as you look at the songs you've really tried to write, uh, what is the music that you'd like to live on with your own melodies? Well, I'm going to give you a, a, a phrase, um, But it's all based on a spirituality of imperfect. As long as we keep defining the Gospel as a journey toward perfection, we're going to eliminate most people from the good news. Because that's, perfection is a divine quality, not a human quality. And that's why Francis and Thérèse de Lisieux are my primary patron saints. Because they both got the journey of imperfection. Uh, so I told a crowd a few years ago here in the city that God allowed me to do everything wrong. And that's not being pious. I think by strictly according to the law, I've broken all 10 commandments and all three vows. And so that God could do everything right. You don't know God doing right by you. Until you've done wrong by yourself, you don't have any need for mercy. You don't have any need for, for forgiveness. I think that's the sin against the Holy Spirit, to think you don't need forgiveness. Well, why should I need forgiveness? I, I go to Mass every Sunday. It's, we've done history of very great disservice in preaching this gospel of perfection. And it, it's kept us from learning how to love our neighbor, because not only do we hate our own imperfection, we hate theirs. It's, it's contagious after a while. Well Richard, I want to thank you again, uh, for taking the time to speak with us, uh, but also the ways that you're Your lectures, your podcasts, your, uh, your mp3s, your cassettes. I used to listen to you way back when we had cassettes. Really? So, you're a great guy and I know just so many. So Richard, thank you for the different ways you've delivered this pattern to the heart's desire that causes social change, but the way you've done it, you know, and not only what you do and what you perform, but where you are. It's essentially giving witness to the God of life, the God of mercy, the God of love. You're the humble one coming from the great Notre Dame to listen to me. I always say that. I always said that I, uh, when I was young, I wanted to win a gold medal League Olympics. As I got older, I wanted to go to the Golden Dome, but in the end, I wanted to develop a golden heart. Oh my God. Thanks for the ways in which you've revealed that to us. Isn't that beautiful? Wow. Wow. And thank god's. It's part invisible, the invisible heart of God, visible to the world. That's what you've done. So for giving us. My, my, my, my, my. It says more about you than me, but thank you, thank you. And thanks everybody for being with us today in this podcast for the Heart's Desire and Social Change. We'll continue to explore some of these questions with people who are leaders in the field and ways in which we can explore meaningful conversations about things that matter. So thank you for joining us and hope you can stay with us in future episodes.