by Richard Rohr
Jesus touched and healed anybody who desired it and asked for it, and there were no other prerequisites for his healings. Check it out yourself. Why would Jesus' love be so unconditional while he was in this world, and suddenly become totally conditional after death? Is it the same Jesus? Or does Jesus change his policy after his resurrection? The belief in heaven and hell is meant to maintain freedom on all sides, with God being the most free of all, to forgive and include, to heal and to bless even God's seeming “enemies.” How could Jesus ask us to bless, forgive, and heal our enemies, which he clearly does (Matthew 5:43–48), unless God is doing it first and always? Jesus told us to love our enemies because he saw his Father doing it all the time, and all spirituality is merely the “imitation of God” (Ephesians 5:1).
Ken Wilber described the later stages of life well when he said that the classic spiritual journey always begins elitist and ends egalitarian. Always! We see it in Judaism, starting with the Jews' early elite chosenness and ending in prophets without borders, in the heady new sect of Christianity that soon calls itself “catholic” or universal. We see it in Sufi Islam and Hindu Krishna consciousness, which sees God's joy everywhere. We see it in mystics like William Blake or Lady Julian, who start with a grain of sand or a hazelnut and soon find themselves swimming in infinity. We see it in the Native American sweat lodge, where the participant ends by touching his sweaty body to the earth and saying “All my relations!” I wish we could expect as much from Catholics when they so frequently “go to communion.”
Life moves first toward diversity and then toward union of that very diversity at ever higher levels. It is the old philosophical problem of “the one and the many,” which Christianity should have resolved in its belief in God as Trinity. Up to now we have been more in love with elitism than with any egalitarianism; we liked being the “one,” but just did not know how to include the many in that very One.
Even Pope John Paul II said that heaven and hell were primarily eternal states of consciousness more than geographical places of later reward and punishment.3 We seem to be our own worst enemies, and we forget or deny things that are just too good to be true. The ego clearly prefers an economy of merit, where we can divide the world into winners and losers, to any economy of grace, where merit or worthiness loses all meaning.4 In the first case, at least a few of us good guys attain glory. In the second case, all the glory is to God.
The healing of your amnesia, and any entry into heaven, is the rediscovery of the still-enchanted world of a happy child, but it now includes the maturing experiences of love, unique life journeys, all your relations, and just enough failures to keep you honest and grounded. This “second childhood” perhaps needs a personal or practical example, so allow me to talk about a bit of my own experience in the second half of my own life.
Chapter 9
A Second Simplicity
Beyond rational and critical thinking, we need to be called again. This can lead to the discovery of a “second naiveté,” which is a return to the joy of our first naiveté, but now totally new, inclusive, and mature thinking.
—PAUL RICOEUR
People are so afraid of being considered pre-rational that they avoid and deny the very possibility of the transrational. Others substitute mere pre-rational emotions for authentic religious experience, which is always transrational.
—KEN WILBER
These quick summaries (not precise quotations) are from two great thinkers who more or less describe for me what happened on my own spiritual and intellectual journey. I began as a very conservative pre–Vatican II Roman Catholic, living in innocent Kansas, pious and law abiding, buffered and bounded by my parents' stable marriage and many lovely liturgical traditions that sanctified my time and space. That was my first wonderful simplicity. I was a very happy child and young man, and all who knew me then would agree.
Yet I grew in my experience, and was gradually educated in a much larger world of the 1960s and 1970s, with degrees in philosophy and theology, and a broad liberal arts education given me by the Franciscans. That education was a second journey into rational complexity. I left the garden, just as Adam and Eve had to do, even though my new Scripture awareness made it obvious that Adam and Eve were probably not historical figures, but important archetypal symbols. Darn it! My parents back in Kansas were worried! I was heady with knowledge and “enlightenment” and was surely not in Kansas anymore. I had passed, like Dorothy, “over the rainbow.” It is sad and disconcerting for a while, outside the garden, and some lovely innocence dies, yet “angels with flaming swords prevented my return” to the first garden (Genesis 3:24). There was no going back, unfortunately. Life was much easier on the childhood side of the rainbow.
As time passed, I became simultaneously very traditional and very progressive, and I have probably continued to be so to this day. I found a much larger and even happier garden (note the new garden described at the end of the Bible in Revelation 21!). I totally believe in Adam and Eve now, but on about ten more levels. (Literalism is usually the lowest and least level of meaning.) I have lived much of my subsequent life like a man without a country—and yet a man who could go to any country and be at home. This nowhere land surprised even me. I no longer fit in with either the mere liberals or the mere conservatives. This was my first strong introduction to paradox, and it took most of midlife to figure out what had happened—and how—and why it had to happen.
This “pilgrim's progress” was, for me, sequential, natural, and organic as the circles widened. I was lucky enough to puddle-jump between countries, cultures, and concepts because of my public speaking; yet the solid ground of the perennial tradition never really shifted. It was only the lens, the criteria, the inner space, and the scope that continued to expand. I was always being moved toward greater differentiation and larger viewpoints, and simultaneously toward a greater inclusivity in my ideas, a deeper understanding of people, and a more honest sense of justice. God always became bigger and led me to bigger places. If God could “include” and allow, then why not I? I did not see many examples of God “smiting” his enemies; in fact, it was usually God's friends who got smited, as Teresa of Avila noted! If God asked me to love unconditionally and universally, then it was clear that God operated in the same way.
Soon there was a much bigger world than the United States and the Roman Catholic Church, which I eventually realized were also paradoxes. The e pluribus unum (“out of many, one”) on American coinage did not include very “many” of its own people (blacks, gays, Native Americans, poor folks, and so on), and as a Christian I finally had to be either Roman or catholic, and I continue to choose the catholic end of that spectrum. Either Jesus is the “savior of the world” (John 4:42), or he is not much of a savior at all. Either America treats the rest of the world democratically, or it does not really believe in democracy at all. That is the way I see it.
But this slow process of transformation and the realizations that came with it were not either-or decisions; they were great big both-and realizations. None of it happened without much prayer, self-doubt, study, and conversation, but the journey itself led me to a deepening sense of what the church calls holiness, what Americans call freedom, and what psychology calls wholeness. I could transcend now precisely because I was able to include and broaden. Paul Ricoeur's first naiveté was the best way to begin the journey, and a second naiveté was the easiest way to continue that same journey, without becoming angry, split, alienated, or ignorant. I now hope and believe that a kind of second simplicity is the very goal of mature adulthood and mature religion. Although we often used it in a derogatory way, I wonder if this was not our intuition when we spoke of older people as in a “second childhood”? Maybe that is where we are supposed to go? Maybe that is what several poets meant when they said “the child is father of the man”?
My small personal viewpoint as a central reference point for anything, or for rightly judging anything, gradually faded as life went on. The very meaning of the word u
niverse is to “turn around one thing.” I know I am not that one thing. There is either some Big Truth in this universe, or there is no truth that is always reliable; there is we hope, some pattern behind it all (even if the pattern is exception!), or it begins to be a very incoherent universe, which is what many postmodern people seem to have accepted. I just can't.
Mature religions, and now some scientists, say that we are hardwired for the Big Picture, for transcendence, for ongoing growth, for union with ourselves and everything else.1 Either God is for everybody and the divine DNA is somehow in all of the creatures, or this God is not God by any common definition, or even much of a god at all. We are driven, kicking and screaming, toward ever higher levels of union and ability to include (to forgive others for being “other”), it seems to me. “Everything that rises must converge,” as Teilhard de Chardin put it.
But many get stopped and fixated at lower levels where God seems to torture and exclude forever those people who don't agree with “him” or get “his” name right. How could you possibly feel safe, free, loved, trustful, or invited by such a small God? Jesus undid this silliness himself when he said, “You, evil as you are, know how to give good things to your children.… If you, then how much more, God!” (Matthew 7:11). The God I have met and been loved by in my life journey is always an experience of “how much more!” If we are created in the image and likeness of God, then whatever good, true, or beautiful things we can say about humanity or creation we can say of God exponentially. God is the beauty of creation and humanity multiplied to the infinite power.
Anxiety and Doubt
For me, this wondrous universe cannot be an incoherent and accidental cosmos, nor can it be grounded in evil, although I admit that this intellectual leap and bias toward beauty is still an act of faith and trust on my part. Yet this act of faith has also been the common sense and intuition of 99 percent of the people who have ever lived. I further believe that a free and loving God would create things that continue to recreate themselves, exactly as all parents desire for their children. God seems to want us to be in on the deal! The Great Work is ours too.
I do, however, hold a certain degree of doubt about the how, if, when, where, and who of it all. Creative doubt keeps me with a perpetual “beginner's mind,” which is a wonderful way to keep growing, keep humble, and keep living in happy wonder. Yet it is this very quiet inner unfolding of things that seems to create the most doubt and anxiety for many believers. They seem to prefer a “touch of the magic wand” kind of God (Tinker Bell?) to a God who works secretly and humbly, and who includes us in on the process and the conclusion. This is the only way I can understand why a Christian would think evolution is any kind of faith problem whatsoever. The only price we pay for living in the Big Picture is to hold a bit of doubt and anxiety about the exact how, if, when, where, and who of it all, but never the that. Unfortunately, most Christians are not well trained in holding opposites for very long, or living with what could be very creative tension.
Basic religious belief is a vote for some coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction in the universe, and I suspect it emerges from all that we said in the last chapter about home, soul, and the homing device of Spirit. This belief is perhaps the same act of faith as that of Albert Einstein, who said before he discovered his unified field that he assumed just two things: that whatever reality is, it would show itself to be both “simple and beautiful.” I agree! Faith in any religion is always somehow saying that God is one and God is good, and if so, then all of reality must be that simple and beautiful too. The Jewish people made it their creed, wrote it on their hearts, and inscribed it on their doorways (Deuteronomy 6:4–5), so that they could not and would not forget it.
I worry about “true believers” who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all, as Thomas the Apostle and Mother Teresa learned to do. People who are so certain always seem like Hamlet's queen “protesting too much” and trying too hard. To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable.
After almost seventy years, I am still a mystery to myself! Our youthful demand for certainty does eliminate most anxiety on the conscious level, so I can see why many of us stay in such a control tower during the first half of life. We do not have enough experience of wholeness to include all of its parts yet. First-half-of-life “naiveté” includes a kind of excitement and happiness that is hard to let go of, unless you know there is an even deeper and tested kind of happiness out ahead of you. But you do not know that yet in the early years! Which is why those in the second half of life must tell you about it! Without elders, a society perishes socially and spiritually.
First naiveté is the earnest and dangerous innocence we sometimes admire in young zealots, but it is also the reason we do not follow them if we are smart, and why we should not elect them or follow them as leaders. It is probably necessary to eliminate most doubt when you are young; doing so is a good survival technique. But such worldviews are not true—and they are not wisdom. Wisdom happily lives with mystery, doubt, and “unknowing,” and in such living, ironically resolves that very mystery to some degree. I have never figured out why unknowing becomes another kind of knowing, but it surely seems to be.2 It takes a lot of learning to finally “learn ignorance” (docta ignorantia) as Dionysius, Augustine, Bonaventure, and Nicholas of Cusa all agreed.
I must sadly admit that I am impatient with people who do not see things this way; but it took me a long time to get here myself, so I have learned to be more patient and compassionate over time. I don't need to push the river as much now, or own the river, or get everybody in my precise river; nor do others have to name the river the same way I do in order for me to trust them or their goodwill. It takes lots of drowning in your own too tiny river to get to this big and good place.
I, like everyone else, have had my many experiences, teachings, and teachers, but as T. S. Eliot puts it in the Four Quartets,
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.3
I know that Eliot's wording is dense, but it might be worth reading again. In the second half of life, we are not demanding our American constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness or that people must have our same experiences; rather, simple meaning now suffices, and that becomes in itself a much deeper happiness. As the body cannot live without food, so the soul cannot live without meaning. Victor Frankl described this so well when he pointed out that some level of meaning was the only thing that kept people from total despair and suicide during the Holocaust. Humans are creators of meaning, and finding deep meaning in our experiences is not just another name for spirituality but is also the very shape of human happiness.
This new coherence, a unified field inclusive of the paradoxes, is precisely what gradually characterizes a second-half-of-life person. It feels like a return to simplicity after having learned from all the complexity. Finally, at last, one has lived long enough to see that “everything belongs,”4 even the sad, absurd, and futile parts.
In the second half of life, we can give our energy to making even the painful parts and the formally excluded parts belong to the now unified field—especially people who are different, and those who have never had a chance. If you have forgiven yourself for being imperfect and falling, you can now do it for just about everybody else. If you have not done it for yourself, I am afraid you will likely pass on your sadness, absurdity, judgment, and futility to others. This is the tragic path of the many elderly people who have not become actual elders, probably because they were never eldered or mentored themselves.
Such people seem to have missed out on the joy and clarity of the first simplicity, perhaps avoided the interim complexity, and finally lost the great freedom and magnani
mity of the second simplicity as well. We need to hold together all of the stages of life, and for some strange, wonderful reason, it all becomes quite “simple” as we approach our later years.
In fact, if this book is not making it very simple for you, I am doing it wrong or you are hearing it wrong. The great irony is that you must go through a necessary complexity (perhaps another word for necessary suffering) to return to any second simplicity. There is no nonstop flight from first to second naiveté.
Chapter 10
A Bright Sadness
I die by brightness and the Holy Spirit.
—THOMAS MERTON, “THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY COMPARED TO A WINDOW”
There is a gravitas in the second half of life, but it is now held up by a much deeper lightness, or “okayness.” Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness, if that makes any sense. I am just grabbing for words to describe many wonderful older people I have met. If you have met them, you know for yourself, and will find your own words. There is still darkness in the second half of life—in fact maybe even more. But there is now a changed capacity to hold it creatively and with less anxiety.
It is what John of the Cross called “luminous darkness,” and it explains the simultaneous coexistence of deep suffering and intense joy in the saints, which would be impossible for most of us to even imagine. Eastern Orthodoxy believed that if something was authentic religious art, it would always have a bright sadness to it. I think I agree with them, and am saying the same of life itself.
In this second half of life, one has less and less need or interest in eliminating the negative or fearful, making again those old rash judgments, holding on to old hurts, or feeling any need to punish other people. Your superiority complexes have gradually departed in all directions. You do not fight these things anymore; they have just shown themselves too many times to be useless, ego based, counterproductive, and often entirely wrong. You learn to positively ignore and withdraw your energy from evil or stupid things rather than fight them directly.