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Richard's Daily Meditations

Celtic Knotwork, from xnvx.com  

SEVEN UNDERLYING THEMES OF
RICHARD ROHR'S TEACHINGS

Sixth Theme:
The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines (PROCESS).

Although related to earlier themes, this is also building upon them in terms of development of conscience, recognition of grace, concrete practice, and spiritual direction. In other words, how does transformation actually and concretely happen?

Ladder-climbing Western culture, and the clinging human ego, made the Gospel into a message of spiritual advancement—ascent rather than descent. We hopefully do advance in “wisdom, age, and grace” (Luke 2:40), but not at all in the way we thought. Jesus again got it right! He brilliantly and personally taught the way of the cross and not the way of climbing.

We come to God much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. God absolutely leveled the human playing field by using our sins and failures to bring us to divine union. This is surely the most counterintuitive message of the Gospels—so counterintuitive that it largely remains hidden in plain sight.

~ Richard Rohr, June 2012