I came across a talk given by Richard Rohr at a Science-and-Nonduality conference. He's a Franciscan friar. I'm not very interested in Christian thought, and I wouldn't have expected to be able to find spiritual relevance in what this guy has to say, but I was surprised.
Rohr critiques the imperial influence on early Christianity from the point of view of an insider with deep theological training. He mentions that in addition to the Roman Empire's hijacking of Catholicism, you have the Byzantine Empire simultaneously hijacking Eastern Orthodoxy. Empires, wanting to keep large populations under control, demand that people rely upon external authority. So the Catholic church maintains a big hierarchy that separates the average person from God by several levels in the org chart. The average person's only shot at salvation is to follow a lot of rules and make a lot of heavy donations, and hope the local priest has his story straight.
Catholic monasteries and convents function mostly outside the influence of all that hierarchy. As contemplatives, monks and nuns cultivate inner awareness and inner authority, and they develop a view wherein God is more accessible and more omnipresent. (I'm not a big "God" guy myself, but that seems to me like a way better deal.) So you get anonymous publications like the Cloud of Unknowing and you find people with a very different take on Christ's message than the one known to the masses.
Rohr has a great little discussion about how, as a church progresses away from its initial inspiration and becomes increasingly a tool of the empire, mysticism is replaced by morality. Mysticism makes people smile and relax, morality makes them worry and obey. A population instilled with morality is convenient if you want to assemble an army.
I was particularly fascinated by a passage from an interview on Amazon, where Rohr says
Rohr talks about the verb tense of salvation (or awakening or self-realization...) Is it something that will happen in the future if you jump through the right hoops? Or is it something that was granted to everybody long ago regardless of denomination or allegiance? Does it occur at a particular moment fixed in history, or is it always happening in the perpetual present moment?
Rohr critiques the imperial influence on early Christianity from the point of view of an insider with deep theological training. He mentions that in addition to the Roman Empire's hijacking of Catholicism, you have the Byzantine Empire simultaneously hijacking Eastern Orthodoxy. Empires, wanting to keep large populations under control, demand that people rely upon external authority. So the Catholic church maintains a big hierarchy that separates the average person from God by several levels in the org chart. The average person's only shot at salvation is to follow a lot of rules and make a lot of heavy donations, and hope the local priest has his story straight.
Catholic monasteries and convents function mostly outside the influence of all that hierarchy. As contemplatives, monks and nuns cultivate inner awareness and inner authority, and they develop a view wherein God is more accessible and more omnipresent. (I'm not a big "God" guy myself, but that seems to me like a way better deal.) So you get anonymous publications like the Cloud of Unknowing and you find people with a very different take on Christ's message than the one known to the masses.
Rohr has a great little discussion about how, as a church progresses away from its initial inspiration and becomes increasingly a tool of the empire, mysticism is replaced by morality. Mysticism makes people smile and relax, morality makes them worry and obey. A population instilled with morality is convenient if you want to assemble an army.
I was particularly fascinated by a passage from an interview on Amazon, where Rohr says
When you're in control, in charge, looking good, building your tower of success -- which is what you expect a young person to be doing into their 30s -- you get so addicted to it that you think it's the only game in town... First half of life preoccupations won't get you into the great picture, the big picture, which Jesus would call the Reign of God. So, necessary suffering is whatever it takes to make your small self fall apart, so you can experience your big self--maybe what Buddhists would say is your Buddha self...I've entered that later phase of life myself, where things are starting to fall apart and I can't hold it all together. And the work of this phase of life is not to build new stuff, but to learn to be happy and graceful as I watch everything collapse.
Rohr talks about the verb tense of salvation (or awakening or self-realization...) Is it something that will happen in the future if you jump through the right hoops? Or is it something that was granted to everybody long ago regardless of denomination or allegiance? Does it occur at a particular moment fixed in history, or is it always happening in the perpetual present moment?
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