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by
Richard Rohr
Read between
September 3 - November 6, 2020
Spiritual maturity is largely a growth in seeing; and full seeing seems to take most of our lifetime,
We never get to the second half of life without major shadowboxing. And I am sorry to report that it continues until the end of life, the only difference being that you are no longer surprised by your surprises or so totally humiliated by your humiliations!
The general pattern in story and novel is that heroes learn and grow from encountering their shadow, whereas villains never do.
Neither our persona nor our shadow is evil in itself; they just allow us to do evil and not know it. Our shadow self makes us all into hypocrites on some level. Remember, hypocrite is a Greek word that simply means “actor,” someone playing a role rather than being “real.” We are all in one kind of closet or another and are even encouraged by society to play our roles. Usually everybody else can see your shadow, so it is crucial that you learn what everybody else knows about you—except you!
Such people do not need to be perfectly right, and they know they cannot be anyway; so they just try to be in right relationship.
I am afraid that the closer you get to the Light, the more of your shadow you see. Thus truly holy people are always humble people. Christians could have been done a great service if shadow had been distinguished from sin. Sin and shadow are not the same. We were so encouraged to avoid sin that many of us instead avoided facing our shadow, and then we ended up “sinning” even worse—while unaware besides!
Lady Julian put it best of all: “First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!”
The human art form is in uniting fruitful activity with a contemplative stance—not one or the other, but always both at the same time.1
So many people I know who are doing truly helpful and healing ministry find their primary support from a couple of enlightened friends—and only secondarily, if at all, from the larger organization.
Remember, in the Gospel, at the end of the day, the employer pays those who worked part of a day just as much as those who worked the whole day (Matthew 20:1–16). This does not compute except at the level of soul.
So we have to prepare and equip the two or three second-half-of-lifers in how to stay in there with mostly first-half-of-lifers! That is surely what Jesus meant by “carrying the cross.”
He told us we should wait for receptive soil (Matthew 13:4–
Today, I often find this receptive soil more outside of churches than within, many of which have lost that necessary “beginner's mind” both as groups and as individuals.
There is a certain real loneliness if you say yes and all your old friends are saying no.
But I promise you that those confusing feelings are far outdistanced by a new ability to be alone—and to be happy alone.
the cure for your loneliness is actually solitude!
We should not be surprised that most older people do not choose loud music, needless diversions, or large crowds. We move toward understimulation, if we are on the schedule of soul. Life has stimulated us enough, and now we have to process it and integrate it, however unconsciously. Silence and poetry start being our more natural voice and our more beautiful ear at this stage.
Like Jesus, you may soon feel as though you have “nowhere to lay your head,” while a whole set of new heads are now making sense to you!
“nondualistic thinking” or both-and thinking.4 It is almost the benchmark of our growth into the second half of life.
This calm allows you to confront what must be confronted with even greater clarity and incisiveness.
Dualistic thinking is the well-practiced pattern of knowing most things by comparison. And for some reason, once you compare or label things (that is, judge), you almost always conclude that one is good and the other is less good or even bad. Don't take my word for it; just notice your own thoughts and reactions.
the normal sequencing of the dualistic mind: it compares, it competes, it conflicts, it conspires, it condemns, it cancels out any contrary evidence, and it then crucifies with impunity. You can call it the seven C's of delusion, and the source of most violence, which is invariably sacralized as good and necessary to “make the world safe for democracy” or to “save souls for heaven.”
Inside such entrapment, most people do not see things as they are; rather, they see things as they are.
(Matthew 5:45). Or “Don't pull out the weeds or you might pull out the wheat along with it. Let the weeds and the wheat both grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:29–30).
Nondualistic wisdom is just not helpful when you are trying to form a strong group, clarify first principles, or demonstrate that your idea is superior to others' ideas.
Dualistic thinking gets you in the right ball park (“You cannot serve both God and mammon”), but nondualistic wisdom, or what many of us call contemplation, is necessary once you actually get in the right field. “Now that I have chosen to serve God, what does that really mean?” Nondualistic thinking presumes that you have first mastered dualistic clarity, but also found it insufficient
Nondualistic thinking presumes that you have first mastered dualistic clarity, but also found it insufficient for the really big issues like love, suffering, death, God, and any notion of infinity. In short, we need both.
Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go; split people see and create splits in everything and everybody.
Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of our physical life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite.
That seems to be the great difference between transformed and nontransformed people. Great people come to serve, not to be served.
We seem to be “mirrored” into life by the response, love, and needed challenge of others.
Somewhere in my late forties, I realized that many people loved and admired me for who I was not, and many people also resented or rejected me for who I was not. Conversely, many loved me for who I really was, warts and all, and this was the only love that ever redeemed me.
Much of the work of midlife is learning to tell the difference between people who are still dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you as you really are.
But in a certain real sense, it is not about me at all but about me as their mirror, reflection, and projection.
You can usually do this well only if you have one true mirror yourself, at least one loving, honest friend to ground you, which might even be the utterly accepting gaze of the Friend. But, by all means, you must find at least one true mirror that reveals your inner, deepest, and, yes, divine image. This is why intimate moments are often mirroring moments of beautiful mutual receptivity, and why such intimacy heals us so deeply. Thinking you can truthfully mirror yourself is a first-half-of-life illusion. Mature spirituality has invariably insisted on soul friends, gurus, confessors, mentors,
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Spiritual direction
In the second half of life, people have less power to infatuate you, but they also have much less power to control you or hurt you. It is the freedom of the second half not to need. Both
No falling down was final, but actually contributed to the bounce!
There is a strange and even wonderful communion in real human pain, actually much more than in joy, which is too often manufactured and passing. In one sense, pain's effects are not passing, and pain is less commonly manufactured. Thus it is a more honest doorway into lasting communion than even happiness.
The genius of the Gospel was that it included the problem inside the solution. The falling became the standing. The stumbling became the finding. The dying became the rising. The raft became the shore.
we need elders and those who can mirror life truthfully and foundationally for the young. Intimate I-Thou relationships are the greatest mirrors of all,
My conviction is that some falling apart of the first journey is necessary for this to happen, so do not waste a moment of time lamenting poor parenting, lost job, failed relationship, physical handicap, gender identity, economic poverty, or even the tragedy of any kind of abuse. Pain is part of the deal. If you don't walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it. God will always give you exactly what you truly want and desire. So make sure you desire, desire deeply, desire yourself, desire God, desire everything good, true, and beautiful.
