Just This: Prompts and Practices for Contemplation

by Richard Rohr

The way to any universal idea is to proceed through a concrete encounter. There are a number of ways to say the same thing: The one is the way to the many, the specific is the way to the spacious, the now is the way to the always, the here is the way to the everywhere, the material is the way to the spiritual, the visible is the way to the invisible. When we see contemplatively, we know that we live in a fully sacramental universe, where everything is a pointer and an epiphany. Walter Brueggemann, my favorite Hebrew Scripture scholar, calls this concrete-to-universal principle “the scandal of the particular” and points out how it is the pattern of the entire Biblical narrative. The trouble is that most people stay with arguing about and focusing on the particular (the exact opposite of awe!) and never make the wondrous journey toward the universal, the always, and the everywhere. They substitute relative truth for absolute truth, so much so that our postmodern world denies the very existence of any absolutes. We tend to worship the mediator of the message instead of following the message itself, the finger pointing to the moon instead of standing in stunned silence before the moon itself. While philosophers tend toward the universals and poets love the particulars, it is the mystics who teach us how to encompass both.