Well, today is a wonderful turning point in the 25 year history of the Center here in Albuquerque!
As of our web announcement today, we are moving from an internship and conference
based education center, to a year long school curriculum, ecumenical and interfaith, that will start next year after I turn 70.
Franciscans do not retire as such, but I can at least stop traveling–and let that itself be part of our message.
None of us are necessary, surely not me. If it is truly God’s work–and represents the Perennial Tradition–it has a truthful and wonderful LIFE of its own.
The Center for Action and Contemplation plans to make use of the wonder of webcasting and on-line education to both teach students here in New Mexico and simultaneously to stream all of those classes worldwide–in a certificate program that an ordinary person–anywhere–and with limited means can still access. If only Jesus would have had such technical possiblities! Our webcasts from the last 4 years reach all 50 USA states and usually 30-40 other countries, from isolated people in Cambodia to aware South Africans, and from sophisticated theology students in England to working women in Belize. This is a new kind of open education possibility for our world, and no denomination, seminary professor, or church prelate can any longer limit the truths that are now being validated by science, cultural studies, psychology, and the revelations of history. We are inviting a cadre of “master teachers” who can put these things together, and will join me in presenting the Perennial Traditon, the “alternative orthodoxy” that Franciscanism has always represented, and frankly many clear elements of the Gospel that denominations never seem to get around to. We hope it can be both
academically quite serious but also emphasizing practice and lifestyle–all with the trained contemplative mind that seminaries do not seem able or willing to teach.
Our whole staff and Board are so excited, and we hope you will be too. Check it out at our website: cacradicalgrace.org, or just cac.org But mostly pray that we can do “something beautiful for the Gospel”, to slightly paraphrase Mother Teresa kind phrase.
Richard Rohr: Unpacking Paradoxes
contemplation in action, as I try to live it…
This is wonderful news! God bless you for speaking the truth so plainly. Please don’t stop traveling yet! I haven’t been able to see you in person yet. I know you’ve more than earned some time to stay put. Enjoy it.
Hi Christine, thank you for your kind reply to Fr. Richard! Please consider attending our wonderful conference in Santa Fe this Fall! It will be an excellent opportunity to hear Fr. Richard teach on his own Franciscan tradition. For more information and to register, visit http://www.cac.org. Peace
Many blessings upon this wonderful endeavor.
I’m sure the Holy Spirit is smiling.
Thank you, Father Richard, for this. As a married laywoman clearly and most joyously in the second half of life, I look forward to the opportunities you will be offering to people like me, who truly want to live the rest of my life “doing something beautiful for the Gospel” until such time as I go to see the Face of God. Alleluia!
God bless you, Richard. Only someone long in years and wisdom could play midwife to a venture like this with eyes wide open. I pray for its fruitfulness and will seek to support it in other ways.
OMG . . . OMG . . . OMG . . . this is SOOO LOVELY . . . SO JOYFUL. . . SO NEEDED . . . SO WHAT JESUS WOULD’VE DONE
IF ONLY HE COULD HAVE !!! THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANK…!
May you all be given ALL YOU NEED to GROW this program . . . and may it grow like WEEDS !
mb
Richard, your teachings have inspired and challenged countless people seeking to learn and grow spiritually. The Living School will afford you another avenue to continue
inspiring and challenging. God speed! Un Hermano, Steve
I would so love to be a student in this school. Am starting the discernment process now. What a wonderful gift the school will be to the world! Thank God for the idea, and for the idea becoming a reality.
This is interesting to me, not just for the idea itself but for the fact that it is part of someone else’s vision (to have a school and Master Teachers — who don’t provide one-on-one interaction? — to foster enlightenment). It feels antithetical to my current understanding, but I am willing to try to understand that it might serve an important purpose, that my calling and task just happen to be very different from this project, and that the call others hear to do this (or learn from it) is genuine and undistorted. It’s certainly an impressive project.
Since I can’t travel, this is such “good news.” I will spread this message to all!
I look forward to the websites on the “Living School” after March 20, 2013. It will be an easy date to remember because it my birthday also. As for right now I will be praying that others will join us.
Bill Schryer
Michigan
Richard, it sounds wonderful! Deacon Bill Coffey
This is such an answer to prayer and I am so grateful. I am so excited about the possibilities of being a part of this new community since I feel so alienated from the church and long for a Christian community in which I can truly learn and grow. I am praying God’s richest blessings on this wonderful endeavor.
This is amazing news father Rohr. My business partner and I are so excited for this and are already starting to save/plan to attend. We’re praying for all of you at the center/living school and are cheering you on.
Dear Father Rohr,
I thank you for your work to this point and to this school that springs up in a world that desperately needs it and in my life which has desperately been calling for something like it.
It is no exaggeration to say that since your first announcement of this school on the horizon I have been talking about it and waiting for it eagerly.
It is also no small thing to say that my spiritual journey the last 4-5 years has been not just informed but propelled by your work–literary, virtual, visual and otherwise–in every way.
You brought me back to a love of what I had always hoped Christianity was at its root, and what I always wanted to believe it could be in this world. You made me love my “faith of origin” again and you helpe bring me to the spiritual place I stand–a place I never would have imagined I would be and one that brings me so much joy as I attempt to be non-dual in leading young adult ministry, I attempt to stay centered as I teach contemplative prayer, and as I have waited for this next generation of education I have been longing for.
I hope and pray to be a part of the Living School and just ordered my application packet today.
I thank you for the resonance you have brought to my spiritual life and the way your voice called me many years ago to the place I always belonged to and longed for but, before you and your work, never had a name or a form.
We are all, in our best moments when we try to represent the best of what we believe, someone else’s lifeline–spiritual or otherwise.
I know, as a therapist for combat veterans and survivors of military sexual trauma, and as a ministry leader for many broken people out of addiction and trauma and life’s devistating , when God works in me I have been that for others.
I thank you for the God in you which could be that for me so I could pass it along in some small way.
Thanks and prayers to you and your work,
Teresa
Thank you for your faithfulness to Truth and LOVE. I’m so looking forward to seeing all that will be taught and the impact it will make on our Church and our world.
Nt
May God truly bless you in this work and in each moment
Gloria
Fr. Richard, Congratulations!!! I am absolutely thrilled for you. I am so grateful for the Seven Themes that you have shared in the Daily Meditations. I hunger for this information and am grateful to the CAC for it’s endeavor to make it so accessible. As always, you remain in my prayers. Janis
Father Rohr, This is Chuck from Holy Family parish. I am a lector and former helper at Trinity House (with Marcos and Clelsea). We feel very fortunate to celebrate the Mass with you in the Albuquerque’s South Valley. I also was very engaged with your book “the Naked Now” and wanted to congratulate you on your Living School. I am making plans to attend your mid-July lecture — or I”ll hear the webcast. I am currently reading John Steinbeck’s travel memoir “Travels with Charley.” In it, the great writer discusses the mystery of the desert Southwest. I thought this passage applies to the CAC and its location in the desert:
“And there are true secrets in the desert. In the war of sun and dryness against living things, life has its secrets of survival. Life, no matter on what level, must be moist or it will disappear. I find most interesting the conspiracy of life in the desert to circumvent the death rays of the all-conquering sun. The beaten earth appears defeated and dead, but only appears so. A vast and inventive organization of living matter survives by seeming to have lost.”
There are many of your themes here: mystery, non-duality, and most recently “conspiracy.” What an interesting word to use for an ambitious new school founded on mysticism and the ancient, foundational truths. Looking forward to being a part of this exciting spiritual and intellectual oasis.
Chuck Kappus
Albuquerque, NM
As an older adult with responsibilities to both parents and grandkids, I cannot go back to a traditional school to study. This will be wonderful.
Thank you for continuing to open my eyes and heart to Divine Love.
Fr. Richard…I have been teaching online for a few years now through Blackboard @ Luna Community College, ie., Philosophy, Psychology and World Religions. Any way I can be of help, would be honored. Fr. J. Sabine Griego
Go raibh maith agat mo chara, agus nár lagaí Dia do lámh
while both love & suffering are pathways to authentic mysticism, deep compassion & profound wisdom, great suffering seems to hold sway as the primary route for most of us? i have often wondered, though i do not know, what admixture of love and suffering combined to gift fr richard with such great wisdom, but whichever dynamic thus may have predominated in his life, whether love or suffering, i suspect it was immense
modern & postmodern approaches have to a great extent reflected, respectively, such dualities as order & chaos, necessity & chance, pattern & paradox, symmetry & asymmetry, systematic & random, static & dynamic, essentialist & nominalist, substantialist & processive, continuity & discontinuity, even right & left, all which have now been transcended by a nondual approach that is semiotic (meaning-oriented) & emergentist
this is now true in our physical & biological (descriptive) sciences, in our (evaluative) cultures and in our (normative) philosophies
but what about our (interpretive) religions? there’s nothing new going on here!
for in all of our great traditions, there has always been an authentic nondual mystical core articulating the truth, beauty, goodness & unity as encountered in one aspect or another of the divine indwelling
for example, through the lens of poly-doxy (rather than ortho- & hetero-doxy, which can sometimes be dualistic), the abrahamic traditions have thus emphasized the creative, christianity – the contingent (the particular), buddhism – the relational and hinduism – the ground aspect of the divine
within christianity, every aspect of this nondual core has been celebrated (polypathy) practiced (polypraxy) & articulated (polydoxy) dating back to the early church mothers & fathers, thru pseudo dionysius & the neoplatonists, the medieval scotists (early semiotic science) & franciscans, up to & including thomas merton & walker percy
everything that’s old is new again as this nondual emergentist approach is being re-sourced by phyllis tickle, brian mclaren and others who herald emergence christianity
no one has done this better throughout his pastoral career than fr. richard rohr, ofm
that fr richard is poised in “retirement” to take his ministry to the next level is both exciting and consoling!
This is such a wonderful gift to the world – a living school. In today’s educational system, that is an oxymoron. I hope I can somehow partake of this venture or should I say adventure even though I can’t travel to the Southwest. The computer has become my mode of transportation and I rely on it to lift me up to places I have never been or seen. We are all so blessed to be able to access your prophecies. God’s speed, Richard.
Blessings and Peace to you and your outreach, Richard. Congratulations!
Our prayer group here on Vancouver Island, Canada has been an ardent
reader of your daily homilies for many years and we want to wish you
a very blessed Fourth of July a symbolic awakening from the dualistic
mentality that surrounds us; indeed, a spiritual ‘revolution’ in the sense of a turning around ; but a fervent looking ahead.
May you and your Franciscan missionaries to the world continue to be guided; strengthened and empowered by the Holy Spirit to infuse some
light of deep contemplation. A pity that Lenin didn’t find his twelve
Francis of Assisis when he began his revolution: what a very different
world it would have been. But , then, this perhaps, is for us and your
messages to work on diligently. Alleluia !!!!!!!!
F. Richard,
This is a wonderful thing!!
If it were possible, I would dearly love to attend this school. It isn’t possible though.
But I take heart in your words that the CAC plans to, “stream all of these classes – in a certificate program that an ordinary person anywhere- and with limited means can access.”
God Bless you , Fr. Richard for thinking of the many of us who would love to attend your school, but for one reason or another cannot do so.
I have had a taste of such a “living school” – the Breakthrough program run by Caron in PA – it brings me joy and lightens my heart to know I am helping to bring such an opportunity for personal growth to others!
I am also encouraged by others with similar visions, such as Kristin Johnson’s proposal for “sober” learning and motivated high schools (see her website SLAMNYC.org). It’s absolutely brilliant.
Now THIS is what I would call a springtime for the universal church! Bravo, Fr. Richard!
Richard. Been a while and reconnecting. Would love to read your response to this disturbing commentary in the NYT today (7/15/12): Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved? :
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-can-liberal-christianity-be-saved.html?hp
Thanks for bringing that column to our attention. The comments that were posted in response presented diverse views, most very thoughtful. It is precisely in progressive cohorts of our great traditions that noninstitutional vehicles do seem to be emerging and their nonhierarchical character does tend to keep them under our sociodemographic radar, not to suggest that numbers or visibilty have ever been the sole or even major criteria of the degree of a religious community’s level of cooperation with the Spirit.
Also, I do not draw as strict a dichotomy between the secular and religious vis a vis faith practices, as the secular often includes both expressions of implicit faith as well as a sort of pneumatological consensus, or Spirit animated socio-economico-politico-cultural fabric, especially when woven together in religiously pluralistic societies like the US, for example, where atheism is not on the rise? This is all just to recognize that we should not overidentify the life of faith with institutional forms, placing style over content, form over substance. What Douthat unwittingly describes is but part of the life cycle of all institutions, what Emergence is all about. Tradition remains integral, its essence though and not its accidents, which sre clung to by traditional-ISM. Sometimes, progressive-ISM tosses essentials aside. Spirit, move us.
Diana Butler Bass provided an excellent response: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-butler-bass/can-christianity-be-saved_1_b_1674807.html
Thanks for bringing that column to our attention. Also, the comments that were posted in response presented diverse views, most very thoughtful.
America remains very overtly religious but the 30 and younger millennials voice their religious doubts more openly than prior generations. More sociologic study is needed but I do wonder how much of this “open doubting” represents real changes in religious attitudes and dispositions versus how much might come from the destigmatization of “doubt-voicing”? Emerson said something along the lines that “God will arrive when the half-gods depart.” I wonder, too, whether young doubters are truly dispatching God or, in some cases, the half-gods of their elders. I also wonder how many misunderstand the polar reality of faith and doubt and how doubt is integrally and necessarily part of the faith experience, even as I fondly recall my own youthful consolations, upon my first encounter of Tillich’s concept of faith as ultimate concern.
Perhaps part of this phenomenon of the increasingly unchurched can be explained from an increase in noninstitutional religious participation? It is precisely in the progressive cohorts of our great traditions that noninstitutional vehicles do seem to be emerging and their nonhierarchical character does tend to keep them under our sociodemographic radar, not to suggest that numbers or visibilty have ever been the sole or even major criteria of the degree of a religious community’s level of cooperation with the Spirit. This is just to recognize that we should not overidentify the life of faith with institutional forms, placing style over content, form over substance. Some of what Douthat unwittingly describes is but part of the life cycle of all institutions, as accounted for in Emergence paradigms.
Also, in a departure from Douthat’s assessment, I would not draw as strict a dichotomy between the secular and religious vis a vis faith practices, as the secular often includes both expressions of implicit faith as well as a sort of pneumatological consensus, or Spirit-animated socio-economico-politico-cultural fabric, especially when woven together in religiously pluralistic societies like the US.
Finally, tradition remains integral to our faith experience, but only in its essence and not its accidentals, which are clung to by traditional-ISM. Of course, sometimes, a progressive-ISM will toss essentials aside. Some of what Douthat laments is a loss of mere accidentals.