Things Unseen

                       
                       

Not Two

The brilliant Ken Wilber says that “the fact that life and death are ‘not two’ is extremely difficult to grasp, not because it is so complex, but because it is so simple.” And the equally brilliant Kathleen Dowling Singh, who has given her life to hospice work, says that “We miss the unity of life and death at the very point where our ordinary mind begins to think about it.”

--Fr. Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

August 30, 2013

Images of Australia: Melbourne

                                                             
                                                                    
Scar Detail, July 2010 (Wounded Healer)

                                                                 
                                                                          
The sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born.  We started with human sacrifice (Abraham and Isaac), we moved to animal sacrifice (the ritual killing of the Passover lamb described in Exodus 12), and we gradually get closer to what really has to be sacrificed—our own beloved ego—as protected and beloved as a little household lamb!  We will all find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to die.  And it is not other humans (firstborn sons of Egyptians), animals (lambs or goats), or even “meat on Friday” that God wants or needs.  It is always our false self that has to be let go, which is going to die anyway.

--Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters, Scripture for Lent

                                                                  

    

iPhone Diary Series: Lent

                             
                                                        iPhone Diary: 21 December 2009

Do you know what the answer for loneliness is? Solitude! No one would have ever imagined it, but I promise you it is true.

In solitude, we are able to let Reality/God define us from the inside out. We stop looking outside of ourselves for diversions, entertainment, or real satisfaction. It is the birth of the soul. When we keep looking outside of ourselves, we always and forever need another then another diversion.

In solitude we slowly learn to live face to face with a Presence that asks nothing of us but presence in return. It is too good to be true. This is the birth of the soul.

--Fr. Richard Rohr

February 2010

iPhone Diary Series: Lent

iPhone Diary: 15 February 2010

The most simple spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest because none of us wants to be with someone we don't love. To be with our own thoughts and feelings, to stop the addictive prayer wheels and just feel what we're feeling, think what we're really thinking, is probably the most courageous act most of us will ever do.

--Fr. Richard Rohr

Radical Grace, p. 106