by Richard Rohr
In the practical order, we find our Original Goodness when we can discover and own these three attitudes or virtues deeply planted within us:
A trust in inner coherence itself. “It all means something!” (Faith)
A trust that this coherence is positive and going somewhere good (Hope)
A trust that this coherence includes me and even defines me (Love)
This is the soul’s foundation. That we are capable of such trust and surrender is the objective basis for human goodness and holiness, and it almost needs to be rechosen day by day lest we continue to slide toward cynicism, victim playing and making, and a common self-pity. No philosophy or government, no law or reason, can fully offer or promise us this attitude, but the Gospel can and does. Healthy religion has the power to offer us a compelling and attractive foundation for human goodness and dignity, and show us ways to build on that foundation.
In every age and culture, we have seen regressions toward racism, sexism, homophobia, militarism, lookism, and classism. This pattern tells me that unless we see dignity as being given universally, objectively, and from the beginning by God, humans will constantly think it is up to us to decide. But this tragic history demonstrates that one group cannot be trusted to portion out worthiness and dignity to another. Our criteria tend to be self-referential and thus highly prejudiced, and the powerless and the disadvantaged always lose out. Even America’s glorious Declaration of Independence—which states that “[all people] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”—has not empowered the white majority to apportion those rights immediately and equally up to now.
For the planet and for all living beings to move forward, we can rely on nothing less than an inherent original goodness and a universally shared dignity. Only then can we build, because the foundation is strong, and is itself good. Surely this is what Jesus meant when he told us to “dig and dig deep, and build your house on rock” (Luke 6:48). When you start with yes (or a positive vision), you more likely proceed with generosity and hope, and you have a much greater chance of ending with an even bigger yes. To try to build on no is, in the imagery of Jesus, to “build on sand.”
If our postmodern world seems highly subject to cynicism, skepticism, and what it does not believe in, if we now live in a post-truth America, then we “believers” must take at least partial responsibility for aiming our culture in this sad direction. The best criticism of the bad is still the practice of the better. Oppositional energy only creates more of the same. All problem solving must first be guided by a positive and overarching vision.
We must reclaim the Christian project, building from the true starting point of Original Goodness. We must reclaim Jesus as an inclusive Savior instead of an exclusionary Judge, as a Christ who holds history together as the cosmic Alpha and Omega. Then, both history and the individual can live inside of a collective safety and an assured success. Some would call this the very shape of salvation.
*1 Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey to God 1, 9–10 (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 63.
*2 Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), ch. 6.
*3 Rick Hanson, Hardwiring Happiness (New York: Harmony Books, 2013), xxvi.
*4 I wrote about this concept at greater length in my book Immortal Diamond.
5
Love Is the Meaning
Know it well, love is its meaning. Who reveals this to you? Love. What does he reveal? Love. Why? For Love. Remain in this and you will know more of the same.
—Lady Julian of Norwich, Showings
For Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), a French Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist, love is the very physical structure of the Universe. That is a very daring statement, especially for a scientist to make. But for Teilhard, gravity, atomic bonding, orbits, cycles, photosynthesis, ecosystems, force fields, electromagnetic fields, sexuality, human friendship, animal instinct, and evolution all reveal an energy that is attracting all things and beings to one another, in a movement toward ever greater complexity and diversity—and yet ironically also toward unification at ever deeper levels. This energy is quite simply love under many different forms. (You can use other words if they work better for you.)
In this chapter, I want to talk about this foundational force of love, and how a Jesus who is also Christ allows us to see it and participate in it ever more fully.
What Love Tells Us About God
Love, which might be called the attraction of all things toward all things, is a universal language and underlying energy that keeps showing itself despite our best efforts to resist it. It is so simple that it is hard to teach in words, yet we all know it when we see it. After all, there is not a Native, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic, or Christian way of loving. There is not a Methodist, Lutheran, or Orthodox way of running a soup kitchen. There is not a gay or straight way of being faithful, nor a Black or Caucasian way of hoping. We all know positive flow when we see it, and we all know resistance and coldness when we feel it. All the rest are mere labels.
When we are truly “in love,” we move out of our small, individual selves to unite with another, whether in companionship, simple friendship, marriage, or any other trustful relationship. Have you ever deliberately befriended a person standing alone at a party? Perhaps someone who was in no way attractive to you, or with whom you shared no common interests? That would be a small but real example of divine love flowing. Don’t dismiss it as insignificant. That is how the flow starts, even if the encounter doesn’t change anyone’s life on the spot. To move beyond our small-minded uniformity, we have to extend ourselves outward, which our egos always find a threat, because it means giving up our separation, superiority, and control.
Men seem to have an especially difficult time at this. I have had the pleasure of presiding at many weddings over the years. Three different times, as I prepared the couple to exchange their vows, the groom actually fainted and fell to the ground. But I have never seen the bride faint. To the well-protected and boundaried male ego, there are few greater threats than the words “till death do us part.” (I am sure women have their blockages too.) That may be why so many cultures created initiation rites to teach men how to trust, let go, and surrender.*1
Love is a paradox. It often involves making a clear decision, but at its heart, it is not a matter of mind or willpower but a flow of energy willingly allowed and exchanged, without requiring payment in return. Divine love is, of course, the template and model for such human love, and yet human love is the necessary school for any encounter with divine love. If you’ve never experienced human love—to the point of sacrifice and forgiveness and generosity—it will be very hard for you to access, imagine, or even experience God’s kind of love. Conversely, if you have never let God love you in the deep and subtle ways that God does, you will not know how to love another human in the deepest ways of which you are capable.
Love is constantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned—even, and especially, when things go wrong. Love allows and accommodates everything in human experience, both the good and the bad, and nothing else can really do this. Nothing. Love flows unstoppably downward, around every obstacle—like water. Love and water seek not the higher place but always the lower. That’s why forgiveness is often the most powerful display of love in action. When we forgive, we acknowledge that there is, in fact, something to forgive—a mistake, an offense, an error—but instead of reverting to survival mode, we release the offending party from any need for punishment or recrimination. In so doing, we bear witness to the Ever Risen and Always Loving Christ, who is always “going ahead of you into Galilee, and that is where you will see him” (Matthew 28:7). Un-forgiveness lives in a repetitive past, which it cannot let go of. But forgiveness is a largeness of soul, without which there is no future or creativ
e action—only the repetition of old story lines, remembered hurts, and ever-increasing claims of victimhood for all concerned.
An eagerness and readiness to love is the ultimate freedom and future. When you’ve been included in the spaciousness of divine love, there is just no room for human punishment, vengeance, rash judgment, or calls for retribution. We certainly see none of this small-mindedness in the Risen Christ after his own rejection, betrayal, and cruel death; we don’t see it even from his inner circle, or in the whole New Testament. I really cannot imagine a larger and more spacious way to live. Jesus’s death and resurrection event was a game changer for history, and it is no surprise that we date our calendar from his lifetime.
The Crucified and Risen Christ uses the mistakes of the past to create a positive future, a future of redemption instead of retribution. He does not eliminate or punish the mistakes. He uses them for transformative purposes.
People formed by such love are indestructible.
Forgiveness might just be the very best description of what God’s goodness engenders in humanity.
Waking Up
Religion, at its best, helps people to bring this foundational divine love into ever-increasing consciousness. In other words, it’s more about waking up than about cleaning up. Early-stage religion tends to focus on cleaning up, which is to say, determining who meets the requirements for moral behavior and religious belief. But Jesus threw a wrench into this whole machinery by refusing to enforce or even bother with what he considered secondary issues like the Sabbath, ritual laws, purity codes, membership requirements, debt codes, on and on. He saw they were only “human commandments,” which far too often took the place of love. (See especially Matthew 15:3, 6–9.) Or as he puts it in another place, “You hypocrites, you pay your tithes…and neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and good faith” (Matthew 23:23). Cleaning up is a result of waking up, but most of us put the cart before the horse.
It’s no wonder his fellow Jews had to kill Jesus, just as many Catholics would love to eliminate Pope Francis today. Once you wake up, as Jesus and Pope Francis have, you know that cleaning up is a constant process that comes on different timetables for different people, around many different issues, and for very different motivations. This is why love and growth demand discernment, not enforcement. When it comes to actual soul work, most attempts at policing and conforming are largely useless. It took me most of my life as a confessor, counselor, and spiritual director to be honest and truly helpful with people about this.*2 Mere obedience is far too often a detour around actual love. Obedience is usually about cleaning up, love is about waking up.
At this point, at least in the United States, it appears that our cultural meaning has pretty much shrunk down to this: It is all about winning. Then, once you win, it becomes all about consuming. I can discern no other underlying philosophy in the practical order of American life today. Of itself, such a worldview cannot feed the soul very well or very long, much less provide meaning and encouragement, or engender love or community.
For insight into a more life-giving worldview, we can look to scripture and wise saints such as Julian of Norwich (1342–1416), whose statement that “love is its meaning” opens this chapter. After years of counseling both religious and nonreligious people, it seems to me that most humans need a love object (which will then become a subject!) to keep themselves both sane and happy. That love object becomes our “North Star,” serving as our moral compass and our reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other in a happy and hopeful way. All of us need someone or something to connect our hearts with our heads. Love grounds us by creating focus, direction, motivation, even joy—and if we don’t find these things in love, we usually will try to find them in hate. Do you see the consequences of this unmet need in our population today? I do.
One place where I often see a positive focus and purpose is in the hardworking happiness of young mothers and fathers. Their new child becomes their one North Star, and they know very clearly why they are waking up each morning. This is the God Instinct, which we might just call the “need to adore.” It is the need for one overarching focus, direction, and purpose in life, or what the Hebrew Scriptures describe as “one God before you” (Exodus 20:3). Parenting and family are the primary school for the love instinct, and always will be. They serve as the basic container, in which the soul, the heart, the body, and even the mind can flourish. Thus we leave one family only to create another. When I worked in the jail for fourteen years, I saw that the inmates even tried to create family there. Many insisted on calling me “Father” and their best friends “Bro”! The need for secure grounding and mirroring never stops.
Humans seem to want, even need something (or someone) that we can give ourselves to totally, something that focuses and gathers our affections. We need at least one place where we can “kneel and kiss the ground,” as Rumi, the Sufi poet and mystic, put it. Or as the French friar Eloi Leclerc (1921–2016) beautifully paraphrased Francis: “If we knew how to adore, then nothing could truly disturb our peace. We would travel through the world with the tranquility of the great rivers. But only if we know how to adore.”*3 Of course, adoration is finally the response to something Perfect. But the genius of love is that it teaches us how to give ourselves to imperfect things too. Love, you might say, is the training ground for adoration.
“Love Made Me Do It!”
In some ways, the object of our affection is arbitrary. It can begin as a love of golf, a clean house, your cat; or a desire to cultivate a certain reputation for yourself. Granted, the largeness of the object will eventually determine the largeness of the love, but God will use anything to get you started, focused, and flowing. Only a very few actually start this journey with God as the object. And that is fully to be expected. God is not in competition with reality, but in full cooperation with it. All human loves, passions, and preoccupations can prime the pump, and only in time do most of us discover the first and final Source of those loves. God is clearly humble and does not seem to care who or what gets the credit. Whatever elicits the flow for you—in that moment and encounter, that thing is God for you! I do not say that without theological foundation, because my Trinitarian faith says that God is Relationship Itself. The names of the three “persons” of the Trinity are not so important as the relationship between them. That’s where all the power is at.
In the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s healings, we find a striking lack of logic to who gets healed and who doesn’t. In none of the accounts does the healing depend on the person’s worthiness. Sometimes the recipients of healing do not ask for it themselves—Jesus has to ask them if they even want to be healed (John 5:7). But somehow, across all of these accounts, Jesus is able to complete the circuit of divine electricity in certain people, healing them physically sometimes, but always spiritually. Don’t mistake this as a direct current from Jesus to the healed person. Jesus consistently refuses to be characterized as a miracle worker, and he runs from both notoriety and fame. This is why, after healing someone, he never said, “My magic power did it. Now come join my religion!” Instead, he usually says something like “Your faith has saved you, now go in peace!” (Matthew 9:22, Mark 5:34, Luke 8:48). I think humans prefer magical religion, which keeps all the responsibility on God performing or not performing. Whereas mature and transformational religion asks us to participate, cooperate, and change. The divine dance is always a partnered two-step.
Jesus puts healed people back on themselves, never creating any kind of dependency or codependency on him that will keep them from their own empowerment. All people must learn to draw from their own Implanted Spirit, which is the only thing that will help them in the long run anyway. Jesus gives them the courage to trust their own “inner Christ”—and not just its outer manifestation in himself. Go reread the Gospels and see if that is not true!
You might say that the Eternal Christ is the sy
mbolic “superconductor” of the Divine Energies into this world. Jesus ramps down the ohms so we can handle divine love and receive it through ordinary human mediums.
To complete the circuit of Divine Love, we often need a moment of awe, a person who evokes that electric conductivity, something we can deeply respect, or even call “Father” or “Mother” or “Lover” or just “beautiful.” Only then do we find the courage and confidence to complete God’s circuit from our side. This is why people know they do not fully choose love; they fall into it, allow it, and then receive its strong charge. The evidence that you are involved in this flow will often seem two-sided. You are simultaneously losing control and finding it.
When Peter tells Jesus with gushing enthusiasm, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!” Jesus then tells him that “flesh and blood”—meaning human logic or effort from our side—cannot get you to this conclusion, but “My Father in heaven has revealed this to you” (Matthew 16:16–17).*4 Similarly, as I look at the things and people I have tried to love in my life, I would have to say, “They made me do it!” It was the inherent goodness, inner beauty, vulnerability, deep honesty, or generosity of spirit from the other side that drew me out of myself and toward them. In a very real sense, I did not initiate love toward them. Rather, it was taken from me! It was pulled out of me—by them.
Grace is just the natural loving flow of things when we allow it, instead of resisting it.