Thursday, December 1, 2011

Missing the Rock through self deception

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today offer some warning advice about the problem of people in making assumptions and being satisfied with surface living by impression and intuition. The spiritual journey to intimacy in the Kingdom of God perhaps has many paths. Richard Rohr, in his recent books the Naked Now and Falling Upward offers the paths of the experience of intense love and/or intense suffering as life experiences which bring us to a rock, a solid place where all the surface distractions leave us face to face with the Divine. The praise for God from the Book of Isaiah today is after the Israelites have endured the exile in Babylon which brought them to the rock of the basics of their relationship with God and are returning now to Jerusalem to deepen the relationship. The psalmist conveys the advice that taking refuge in the Lord is the path which brings life. Princes and mortal people cannot offer the intimate support of God.
Love is other centered and the ego and self serving nature of people inhibit depth and length of our "unconditional support". In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus implores us to "go deep" and seek the intimate resonance of our indwelling Spirit with the Spirit of God  and then "let the wind blow and the rain fall"!

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