As we count down the days before it's officially 2021, one of the deepest thoughts I've had concerns the importance of prayer. And when I use the word "prayer" I'm by no means confining myself to any particular brand or version.
As it happens, Fr, Richard Rohr's message for today (from his daily web page) is very apropos. He heads up the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico, and is a proponent of Centering Prayer. (And to be clear, although I practice this form of prayer, I'm not intending it to be the only variety that works).
Here is how Rohr describes contemplative prayer (a form of Centering Prayer): "Contemplative prayer allows us to build our own house. To pray is to discover that Someone else is within our house and to recognize that it is not our house at all. To keeping praying is to have no house to protect because there is only One House. And that One House is Everybody’s Home. In other words, those who pray from the heart actually live in a very different world. I like to say it’s a Christ-soaked world, a world where matter is inspirited and spirit is embodied. In this world, everything is sacred; and the word “Real” takes on a new meaning. The world is wary of such house builders, for our loyalties will lie in very different directions. We will be very different kinds of citizens, and the state will not so easily depend on our salute. That is the politics of prayer. And that is probably why truly spiritual people are always a threat to politicians of any sort. They want our allegiance, and we can no longer give it. Our house is too big."
My understanding of the point that Rohr is making is that, contemplative prayer expands our world. It allows us to see the bigger picture. It dissolves artificial boundaries. It washes away fear and sets the table for love. And it ushers in a sense of grounded-ness and peace.
As with most spiritual practices, this is a gradual process. And the process is seen as a threat to those who demand allegiance to political or nationalistic agendas.
Rohr explains: "If religion and religious people are to have any moral credibility in the face of the massive death-dealing and denial of this era, we need to move with great haste toward lives of political holiness. This is my theology and my politics:
It appears that God loves life—the creating never stops.
We will love and create and maintain life.
It appears that God is love—an enduring, patient kind.
We will seek and trust love in all its humanizing (and therefore divinizing forms.
It appears that God loves the variety of multiple features, faces, and forms.
We will not be afraid of the other, the not-me, the stranger at the gate.
It appears that God loves—is—beauty: Look at this world!
Those who pray already know this. Their passion will be for beauty."
Especially given the deep-seated division currently across the world, and the tumultuous nativism it spawns, Rohr's words bring me hope and healing.
This isn't to say that Rohr sets out an easy path for us.
He already alludes to the pushback we'll receive from those who are firmly reliant only on human-made systems. Those who see difference as a threat. Those who are perfectly content to rely on dualistic thinking, where either-or is always seen as better than both-and.
But in the end, it is the ability to be creative, flexible, generous and kind that foster the love we'll need to begin to see a better way.
Photos taken by Dan Salerno at Kalamazoo Nature Center and KNC's Delano Homestead, and Nature Conservancy's Bow in the Clouds Preserve.
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