Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

by Richard Rohr

We are a circumference people, with little access to the center. We live on the boundaries of our own lives “in the widening gyre,” confusing edges with essence, too quickly claiming the superficial as substance.

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.”

My starting point is that we’re already there. We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take. As we take another it means that God is choosing us now and now and now. We have nothing to attain or even learn. We do, however, need to unlearn some things.

Religion has lost sight of Jesus’ message here. It has not tended to create seekers or searchers, has not tended to create honest humble people who trust that God is always beyond them. We aren’t focused on the great mystery. Rather religion has tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers. That’s why so much of the West is understandably abandoning religion. People know the great mystery cannot be that simple and facile. If the great mystery is indeed the Great Mystery, it will lead us into paradox, into darkness, and into journeys that never cease.

We find it hard to be a disciple with a beginner’s mind because we’ve heard it all before, from many directions.

We give answers too quickly, take away pain too easily, and too quickly stimulate.