Dear Friends,
We pray you are safe and well.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that in God’s economy of abundance, when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
In today's Meditation, Richard Rohr reflects on his being ordained fifty years as a priest and all the lives he has touched.
This leads into his central message: all of us are called to be instruments of God, even though we might consider ourselves unworthy instruments. He encourages us to be contemplatives who put compassion into action. We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in healthcare, in the workplace, in the Church--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
We hope and pray that you and your loved ones experience genuine peace of mind and heart, and remain in good health during this challenging time.
In this "Season of Ordinary Time" in the Church Year, may this be a time of peace, of healing and hope, of the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron & Jean
Meditation Seventy-nine: An Instrument of God (Richard Rohr)
(An excerpt from his reflections on celebrating his fiftieth anniversary of being ordained a priest.)
"...Five decades later I am humbled to think about how it has all played out. I’ve written more books than I care to admit, prayed alongside amazing leaders and spoken in front of countless wonderful people. Through it all the Spirit has persisted in her work despite my many personal limitations and times I passionately believed my own message while also denying it in practice.
God always uses unworthy instruments so we can never think that it is we who are accomplishing the work. The older I get, the more I think, “God, you were so patient with me! I didn’t do it right and you still did it right, you still used me.”
2020 has been an unprecedented year—like nothing I have seen before. I believe we are seeing humanity awaken to a new level of awareness of systemic injustice in the world, the suffering it causes, and of the role each of us play in perpetuating these systems—predominantly by those of us with privilege and power. We would do well to remember that evil can only be substantially overcome by collective good. When one part is hurt, we all share in that pain, and if one part is liberated, we all share in the joy.
There is a great need right now for unworthy instruments—people who have done the necessary work to ground compassionate action in contemplative, non-dual consciousness. When you experience the reality of your oneness with God and Creation, actions of justice and love will naturally follow. This message has been at the core of what I set out to teach over the last fifty years, and now that I rarely leave my hermitage, these meditations have become my primary means of sharing what God is putting on my heart. It is my hope they have been a source of both healing and encouragement for you."