I've had the privilege of listening to Richard Rohr twice in the last two months. Yesterday's talk at Montview Presbyterian Church was titled, "The Path of Descent." The following are simply the notes and one-liners that I jotted down during his talk.
Quoting Meister Eckhart – “The spiritual journey is much more about subtraction than addition.”
The style and preference of the human ego is validation, accumulation, and climbing the ladder. (A journey of ascending)
Most religions have been about belief and belonging (forms of ascending) and not about transformation
The trajectory of the catholic church started with the catacombs and traveled toward the basilicas (origin in Latin “royal palace”)
Real transformation undercuts and explodes the ego.
Our Imperial instinct has not yet been overcome because the ego hasn’t been undercut.
The desert fathers & mothers understood that spiritual warfare was typically against your own ego.
“We can’t see what were not told to look for.”
Jesus was… “Born poor, lived poor, died naked & poor.” And yet we’ve built royal palaces and fought wars in his name.
In quoting the bishop of Calgary, when you’re at the top of the food chain “You never get a bad meal… and you never get the truth.”
Grabbing onto one ideology amidst the many takes away your anxiety and creates safety. So, you can’t blame fundamentalist for taking that road.
“Without an encounter of real transformation, idolatry is inevitable.”
The founding representations of the three monotheistic faiths, Abraham and Sarah, had a pretty good life with servants, cattle, land, etc. And God begins with Abraham and Sarah in showing us the pattern for real change and transformation… “Leave it.” Leave it all behind and go where I lead you.
Status Quo thinking almost always leads to violence. (Read-dualistic or fundamentalist thinking almost always leads to violence.)
Job is the summit/epitome of the Hebrew Scriptures.
“Everything circles around what you do with your pain. If you don’t transform it, you’ll transmit it.”
If you've followed the blog in recent months you'll recognize that yesterday's talk fits perfectly into the flow of what God's been dropping on me lately.
...thank you for capturing all those quotes
...great being with you, again, yesterday AM
...looking forward to our next time together
...praying for your week
Posted by: Wes Roberts | April 26, 2009 at 03:55 PM
Profound and poignant. I especially appreciate Rohr's thoughts on transformation. These were such that I've added a link to my site! Hopefully I did it correctly. :)
Posted by: David Shepherd | April 26, 2009 at 11:15 PM