[3.5-minute read]
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations for February 18-23, 2024 focused on “Life as a Spiritual Journey” (Weekly summary).
This passage from another source was shared with me during the same week.
Here are my somewhat strange reflections on both, as a springboard into Rohr’s readings.
If you’re in pain, I know you don’t want to be there. But it’s important for you to hear gently, you must.
If you crave and cling to positive platitudes, I understand. But it’s important for you to hear gently, you can’t.
If you believe you can chart your path toward healing, I wish you could. But it’s important for you to hear gently, you cannot.
If you believe you will emerge from suffering by doing things right, it’s important for you to hear gently, you are wrong.
If you think you have succeeded at healing from your pain, it’s important for you to hear gently, you have failed.
I do not know why, but it’s certain to me that sojourners who have passed through an authentic spiritual journey have all of these things you seek. In the presence of these people, you sense a calm. They have no compulsion to tell you their story, and they will never tell you that you have been wrong. That is not their language anymore.
*Their* language is *listening*.
Picture yourself in the presence of one of these calm and calming heroes who have returned home after their journey. You ask them a “big” question and await their wise answer. They may pause, smile, sigh… They gather themselves, because they were distracted. By what? By YOU. They were listening to you so deeply, it takes them a moment to realize they have been asked a question.
And, most often, they do not answer. Not really. Not in the same language that you asked your question. How can it be that they were so engrossed in you, in your presence, that they were not preparing an answer for your question as you spoke? Their answer to your question is their listening. Quite a paradox…
You sense a calm in their presence because they “live” in a much larger world. As you spoke, they were living with a much larger You than even you are aware of. Everything in the world in which they abide is larger than you can yet appreciate. And yet, it is the same world as yours. It is the same You that you yourself are aware of.
These are not the authors of platitudes or self-help books. They share wisdom through the language of their Life. Their world is larger, so books won’t do. Their world is larger, so answers won’t do. Already they know that you are failing, that you are wrong… For they also know that they are failing and they are wrong, but they are not obsessed or concerned with it, or fearful about it, as you are.
They do not wish to withhold any answer from you. Nor do they judge that you cannot grasp some profound wisdom they would offer. That doesn’t occur to them. That’s why you feel calm in their presence. And that’s why *they* feel calm in *Your* presence.
As You share in their world – their Life – by their listening to you, you too sense the larger You who lives there. And the “there” is not somewhere else. It’s right here. Your “big” question attempts to take them elsewhere, and that is why they have paused. Through their journey, they have long lost interest in elsewhere, and are whole, right here. Wholly here, and holy here.
Life is no longer about them. They are about Life. Their presence is soothing because they have a life energy, unleashed by nothing they have done, but, rather, by work that has been done on them.
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Neil D. 2024-02-24
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