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We all must start with our anecdotal experience and then build from there. What else can we do?
Then we can almost naturally see God in others and in all creation too. What we seek is what we are. The search for God and the search for our True Self are finally the same search.10 Francis’ all-night
prayer, “Who are you, O God, and who am I?”11 is probably a perfect prayer, because it is the most honest prayer we can offer.
There is no secret moral command for knowing or pleasing God, or what some call “salvation,” beyond becoming a loving person in mind, heart, body, and soul ourselves. Then we will see what we need to see.
In Franciscan mysticism, there is no distinction between sacred and profane. All the world is sacred,
For those who have learned how to see—and adore—everything is “spiritual,” which ironically and eventually leads to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) courageously called “religion-less Christianity.”13 Don’t be scared by that idea! By it, he meant that many people were moving beyond the scaffolding of religion
Finally, any temptation to either elitism or individualism is strongly overcome in Franciscan mysticism by its adamant insistence on identification with the cross and solidarity with the poor and with human suffering in general.
with the suffering of the world and even with the suffering of God is Francis’ starting place, rather than any kind of search for private moral perfection. This keeps the contemplative journey from mere
introversion, sweet piety, private salvation, or any antisocial or privatized message, whereby I imagine that I can come to God by myself, apart from union with everything else. The Franciscan mott...
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Our only greatness is that we share the common greatness of the whole communion of saints.
If Christ is the first idea in the mind of God, as John Duns Scotus taught, and if the Christ Mystery is revealed already in the Big Bang, then grace is inherent to creation from the beginning and not a later add-on, a dole-out to the worthy or the churched, or an occasional prize for the perfect.
They did not wait for liberation later—after death—but grasped it here and now.
We are either baptized “into his death” and “resurrection”
The “crucified God”7 as personified in Jesus revealed that God is always on the side of suffering, wherever it is found, including the wounded and dying troops on both sides in every kind of war, and both the victims and the predators of this world, which frankly pleases very few people. (Identification
takes immense courage to walk in solidarity with the suffering of others—and even our own.
Instead, it reveals that to accept full reality will always be a kind of crucifixion, both for God and for ourselves. For us, it is a sure death to
Spiritual authority is firstly inner authority, and then it can become an outer authority too. Jesus calls this servant leadership (Luke 22:24–27), which is his way of speaking of bottom-up and inside-out authority.
and the world remains unchanged.
If we imagine we are better, holier, higher, or more important to God than others, it is a very short step
Franciscan prophecy is, at its core, “soft prophecy”—which is often the hardest of all. This is the prophecy of a way of life that is counter to the ways of the world. It is what I am calling “holy foolishness.”
the harmony of goodness itself—and where goodness is its own inherent reward, which is always beautiful in people and yet also demands a basic change in attitude.
“Transcend and include” is the mature principle here: We let the church hold us in place and then move out from there. Franciscans at their best attempted to live inside the universal
Christians got it backward, living in the “world” and occasionally “going to church.”
his life illustrated Jesus’ first definition of church: where “two or three are gathered in my name” (Matthew 18:20).
(that is, our animating spirit) was still romantically held by Francis.
such friars “drones” and vagabonds, and he encouraged them to change or leave.
Franciscanism has always been ethos or spirit more than rule or schedule, which is good, but also dangerous for those who are lazy, unconverted, or unmotivated. If we do not really meet and fall in love with Jesus, we can largely live for ourselves and still think of this as a “religious life.”
Gospel freedom
is always a risk, and only the mature can handle it well.
The true Gospel always leaves us both fragile and vulnerable, or, as Jesus said, “as sheep among wolves” (Matthew 10:16). Yet this is exactly what the world wants and expects from Franciscans. Jesus freed us for this, so we cannot lose heart.
I was once told that two Christian groups carry the least negative baggage in Western civilization: Franciscans and Quakers.
go of our small, egoic self to get there (see John 12:24).
If the supposedly new thing has not been able to change my old self, others will rightly ask why it would change the world or why they should believe it is true. Why should anybody believe you? Yet
The result of contemplative sight is what I would like to call “beautiful” morality, and the lack of it is why so many of us dislike and mistrust so many supposedly “moral” people. Let me explain. To do a highly moral thing, such as caring for the earth, but with the wrong energy (in an angry, pushy, or know-it-all way), is a kind of ugly morality and not the “aroma” and “incense” of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:14–15). It is formally right, but somehow terribly wrong, and we sense it. Perhaps that is why so many religious and formally moral people do not seem attractive or happy to us.
To do a moral or virtuous thing, however, with the right energy is what I would call beautiful morality. Yet it will often be judged by the same kind of people who accused Jesus. This is
This becomes the core message itself.
while others
The motivation, meaning, and inherent energy of any action comes from its ultimate source, which is the person’s foundational and core vantage point. What is their real and honest motivation? Who is doing the seeing? Is it the cut-off branch, the egoic self, trying to do the seeing (John 15:5–6)? Is it a person needing to be right or is it a person who wants to love?
is always a falling! For most of us, our own deepest identity is still well hidden from us.4 Religion’s primary and irreplaceable job is to bring this foundational truth of our shared identity in God to full and grateful consciousness. This is the only true meaning of holiness. The vast majority of humanity and a large percentage of Christians and clergy have not grasped this wondrous truth. There are even fewer who dare to enjoy it even after they have heard it might be true. As we say, it “goes right over their heads” and beyond their hearts.
We know by participation with and in God, which creates our very real co-identity with Christ: We are also both human and divine, as he came to reveal and model. The foundational meaning of transformation is to surrender to this new identity and to consciously draw upon it.
In short, we must change our very self-image rather than just be told some new things to see or do. To be a Christian is to objectively know that we share the same identity that Jesus enjoyed as both human and divine, which is what it means to “follow” him. I, in fact, believe that this is the whole point of the Gospel and the Incarnation. (Read John 14 and 15 in their entirety, lest you think I am overstating my position, or study the early Fathers
Afterward, we know in a different way, although we have to keep relearning this truth over and over again (which is probably the point of daily prayer). It demands a major dying of our small self, our ego, and maybe that is why so few go there.
In practical terms, this mostly feels like taking my “self,” my ego—both its hurts and its importance, which are largely manufactured by the
mind—less seriously, day by day. Growth in salvation is growth in liberation from the self.
to use the two helpful Genesis metaphors (1:26–27). Our goal is to
illustrate both the image and the likeness of God. What a momentous vocation we humans have!
Such
humility, restraint, or even lack. Poverty is when we recognize that myself—by itself—is powerless and ineffective. John’s Gospel puts it quite strongly when it states that a branch that does not abide in Jesus “is withered and useless” (John 15:6). The transformed self, living in union, no longer lives in shame or denial of its weakness, but even lives with rejoicing because it does not need to pretend that it is any more than it actually is—which is now more than enough.
do not have the ability to incorporate the negative, which is always there. The greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection. Please meditate on that.
Paul states the cross has challenged both and comes out with the best and most honest answer—precisely because it incorporates the tragic (the irrational, absurd, and sinful) and uses it for good purposes. In his thinking, only the Christian perspective can absorb and appreciate paradox—which is order within disorder, redemption through tragedy, resurrection through death, and divinity through humanity.
