Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

by Richard Rohr

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Earlier peoples, who didn’t have as many escapes and means to avoid reality, had to find Essence earlier — just to survive.

The path of prayer and love and the path of suffering seem to be the two Great Paths of transformation. Suffering seems to get our attention; love and prayer seem to get our heart and our passion.

“I watch how foolishly man guards his nothing — thereby keeping us out. Truly, God is hated here.”

In God’s reign “everything belongs,” even the broken and poor parts.

Dualistic thinking begins in the soul and moves to the mind and eventually moves to the streets. True prayer, however, nips the lie in the bud. It is usually experienced as tears, surrender, or forgiveness.

You do not resolve the God question in your head — or even in the perfection of moral response. It is resolved in you, when you agree to bear the mystery of God: God’s suffering for the world and God’s ecstasy in the world. Agreeing to this task is much harder, I’m afraid, than just trying to be “good.”

Our skin-encapsulated egos are the only self that most of us know, and this is where we usually get trapped. It is fair to say that the traps of mind and ideology are as toxic and as blinding as the so-called “hot sins” of drunkards and prostitutes, though they are harder to recognize. Most of us have to be taught how to see; true seeing is the heart of spirituality today.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. In other words, our journeys around and through our realities, or “circumferences,” lead us to the core reality, where we meet both our truest self and our truest God.

In Jesus, God tells us that God is not different from humanity. Thus Jesus’ most common and almost exclusive self-name is “The Human One,” or “Son of Humanity.” He uses the term seventy-nine times in the four Gospels. Jesus’ reality, his cross, is to say a free “yes” to what his humanity finally asks of him. It seems that we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The first feels very religious; the second just feels human, and not glorious at all.

Jesus reminded Julian that his crucifixion was the worst thing that happened in human history and God made the best out of it to take away all of our excuses.

we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong!

Traveling the road of healthy religion and true contemplation will lead to calmly held boundaries, which need neither to be defended constantly nor abdicated in the name of “friendship.” This road is a “narrow road that few travel upon” these days (Matt. 7:14).

centered people are profoundly conservative, knowing that they stand on the shoulders of their ancestors and the Perennial Tradition. Yet true contemplatives are paradoxically risk-takers and reformists, precisely because they have no private agendas, jobs, or securities to maintain. Their security and identity are founded in God, not in being right, being paid by a church, or looking for promotion in people’s eyes. These people alone can move beyond self-interest and fear to do God’s necessary work. Look at out how many saints, theologians, and especially woman foundresses of orders were corrected, threatened, and even persecuted by the church during their lifetimes. God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.

they are always free to obey, but they might also disobey the expectations of church and state to obey who-they-are-in-God.

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.

By contrast, probably the most obvious indication of noncentered (“ec-centric”) people is that they are, frankly, very difficult to live with. Every one of their ego-boundaries must be defended, negotiated, or worshiped: their reputation, their needs, their nation, their security, their religion, even their ball team. They convince themselves that these boundaries are all they have to worry about because they are the sum-total of their identity. You can tell if you have placed a lot of your eggs in these flimsy baskets if you are hurt or offended a lot. You can hardly hurt saints because they are living at the center and do not need to protect the circumference of feelings and needs.

Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth.

All religious teachers have recognized that we human beings do not naturally see; we have to be taught how to see.

the Buddha and Jesus say with one voice, “Be awake.”

Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence. The full contemplative is not just aware of the Presence, but trusts, allows, and delights in it. All spiritual disciplines have one purpose: to get rid of illusions so we can be present.

one of Jesus’ favorite visual aids is a child. Every time the disciples get into head games, he puts a child in front of them. He says the only people who can recognize and be ready for what he’s talking about are the ones who come with the mind and heart of a child. It’s the same reality as the beginner’s mind.

This moment is as perfect as it can be. The saints called this the “sacrament of the present moment.”

The nature of the ego is that it tries to fix, name, control, and insure everything for itself. We want predictability. But that fixes us in the past. What was, is, so we are trapped in repeating it and nothing new happens.

The religious version of egocentricity is wanting to be right and wanting to be in control. To give that up is major surgery. Religion might call it major conversion: as Jesus says, “Unless the grain of wheat dies, it remains just a grain of wheat” (John 12:24).

The great spiritual teachers are not concerned about domination and power in the sense our culture uses it. Their power is in descent, not ascent. I find my deepest power is what Jesus visualizes on the cross as powerlessness. We Christians believe that the crucifixion of Christ — seemingly a moment of utter powerlessness — is actually his moment of greatest power. This recognition is at the core of all spiritual teaching. It is a recognition that dramatically turns one’s reality upside down. But with contemplation, this paradox eventually moves from being a dilemma to becoming a choice. The present moment has no competition; it is not judged in comparison to any other.

when I’m in competition, I’m not in love. I can’t get to love because I’m looking for a new way to dominate.

Julian of Norwich, who is my favorite mystic teacher, says, for example, “The Lord looks on his servants with pity and not with blame. In God’s sight we do not fall: in our sight, we do not stand. Both of these are true; but the deeper insight belongs to God” (Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 82).