Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

Less than a block from where I used to live in downtown Albuquerque, there is a sidewalk where the homeless often sit against the wall to catch the winter sun. Once I saw fresh graffiti chalked clearly on the pavement in front of the homeless. It said, “I watch how foolishly man guards his nothing—thereby keeping us out. Truly God is hated here.” (I returned to copy the quote exactly because it felt both prophetic and poetic at the same time.)

I can only imagine what kind of life experience enabled some person to write in such a cutting but truthful way. I understood anew why Jesus seemed to think that the expelled ones had a head start in understanding his message. Usually they have been expelled from what was unreal anyway—the imperial systems of culture, which always create those who are “in” and those who are “out,” victors and victims.

In God’s reign, “everything belongs,” even the broken and poor parts. Until we have admitted this in our own soul, we will usually perpetuate exclusionary systems and dualistic thinking in the outer world of politics and class, and sometimes even in the church.

Adapted from Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, p. 16