Once again Richard Rohr reached down deep into my soul, grabbed my ego and gently crushed it in front of my eyes. Okay, I am sure Father Rohr, would use language like that to describe the work going on to my false-self or ego, but the truth is I continue to read and say YES to everything he writes.

Some of you may or may not know but I am on a 6-month sabbatical from the open house and it began with a retreat called the Men’s Rite of Passage in Arizona that I recently returned from last week. This is a Richard Rohr inspired retreat that takes much of what is taught in theory here in this book, and practices it here. It has helped me become more present in many ways of life.

To move back toward the book, all I can say is that Richard Rohr does an amazing way of described what it means to be a non-dual thinking and how that might be practiced. It is basically the life lived in tension, being comfortable with ambiguity, without becoming laissez faire about truth seeking. It also opens the mind to see truth in places you may not have looked previously.

But what I think I gleaned most from this book was Richard Rohr’s way of getting my attention and pushing me to wake up in this life. It doesn’t mean something superficial or consumeristic but instead to be present in this life, and not to allow the emotional noise of this world to keep us from really seeing and taking all opportunities that come our way.

It’s at this point you might ask me if I have gone crazy; because there is so much more to this… incredible

This book was awesome. 4.5/5 on CP scale. Give it a read… slowly. And reflect.

Here are some great thoughts by my wife Anna. Enjoy and share your thoughts.

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The contemplative mind is really just the mind that emerges when you pray instead of think first. Praying opens the field and moves beyond fear and judgment and agenda and analysis, and just lets the moment be what it is—as it is. (Richard Rohr)

Let’s be honest, fear, judgment, and agendas are obvious. You’re not fooling anyone if you live with these things in your heart. If asked an honest person would tell you whether you sometimes come across threatening, judgmental, or overly concerned with getting your point across (if you’re married ask your spouse about these things). It’s as if all humans have a built in sixth sense of knowing when they are being treated out of fear and not love. Although the victim of these things cannot always articulate what they have felt imposed on them, they ultimately know deep down that they are being treated wrongly. A person my react by feeling smothered, misunderstood, trapped, and by forming judgments, fears, and agendas of their own. Conflict is always a two-way street.

The Beautiful Alternative…

A Prayerful Posture opens me up to God in a time of confrontation (fear and judgment are both postures we hold onto within confrontation). This opening gives me a sense of spaciousness (spaciousness is my new mantra these days). God has space for the mess (and frankly I don’t think God would call it “mess” – mess is only what I call the things I don’t like). Prayer opens me up to the Great Seer. God is the only one who truly sees. Ultimately, fear and judgment is my attempt to see what I was never meant to see, namely, the future and someone’s heart. An agenda is my attempt to carry out plans put in place based on fabricated seeing.

How free would I be if I really believed that I can’t see?

When I say I’m open-minded or an open person, how open am I really?

Do I secretly judge those close to me who call themselves “alternative and liberal thinkers”? If so, observe yourself when you enter in judgment towards someone who bugs you by how they differ from you. Observe what comes up and ask God to open you or unfurl you.

Relax today by knowing you don’t have to be the Great Seer.

I am sleep deprived and not reading as much lately.

I have nothing to say other than I really enjoyed this book. Not as much as the others I have read by Rohr (there are 2 more in the past 24 books i have read), but still powerful words.

Read it after you have read Everything Belongs and Simplicity. CP = 2.5/5 due to it being lower on the list of must reads.

Sorry, short review for today.

“Our age has been called the age of anxiety, and I think it’s probably a good description for this time. We no longer know where our foundations are. When we’re not sure what is certain, when the world and our worldview keep being redefined every few months, we’re going to be anxious. We want to get rid of that anxiety as quickly as we can. Yet, to be a good leader of anything today – to be a good pastor, a good bishop or, I’m sure, a good father or mother – you have to be able to contain, to hold patiently a certain degree of anxiety. Probably the higher the level of leader you are, the more anxiety you must be capable of holding. Leaders who cannot hold anxiety will never lead you to anyplace new.

That’s probably why the Bible says so often, “Do not be afraid.” I have a print out that actually proves the phrase appears 365 times! If you cannot hold a certain degree of anxiety you will always be looking for somewhere to expel it. Expelling what you can’t embrace gives you an identity, but it’s a negative identity. It’s not life energy, it’s death energy. Formulating what you are against gives you a very quick, clear and clean sense of yourself. Thus, most people fall for it. People more easily define themselves by what they are against, by who they hate, by who else is wrong, instead of by what they believe in and by whom they love.”

—Richard Rohr in Hope Against Darkness

I have a lot on my mind right now. Richard Rohr just reached into my chest and gave my heart a pump…

I have managed to down another Richard Rohr book, and Simplicity is another winner. He again builds upon many of the thoughts from “everything belongs” and challenges me over and over to get myself out of the way so that God can work through me. There are so many ways that we as Westerners have built up our own “kingdoms” so as to get in the way of what God is doing. What I really loved is how those “kingdoms” manifest themselves in not only our personal goals and ego, but also in the systems we have created. When we finally move ourselves out of the way we will see the corruption in our own lives and in the systems we work through every day.

As a church planter I give this book a 4/5, so consider it a must read, but you need to be in a good place…a quiet contemplative place to read it and really grasp what he is trying to say, because if you don’t you can let his powerful words slip by without causing any change in you. The main thing that this book did to me is open my eyes to see. I am not sure what i will see yet, but i know it will involve some action on my part. Those thoughts to come.

And yes to those who want those levels of maturity that Rohr has put together and presented in the Bahamas, I found them again and will post them sometime in May.

Everything Belongs has now moved to my top 5 books for church planters should read. the first time I heard Richard was at Soularize. And if my thoughts are too brief, please check out jordon’s.

I rate this book on the CP scale a 5/5 (CP is my new scale measurement that i made up, not some sort of authority). And the funniest thing about my rating for this is that i can’t really explain what this book is about. For that reason I recommend buying this book (not borrowing) and rereading it every year.

What I mean is, it’s about knowing yourself, knowing God, your motivations for doing the things you do, the ability to see life as it comes and not react. It is about transformation and the contemplative life, but it’s about church and the mystery of it’s importance for community and God’s purposes in the world. This book also speaks into the ego, and pride and worry and about becoming more complete in who you are as a Christian. It’s about seeing truth where truth is and it’s about living in that truth and not letting lies determine how you should feel or live.

At the end of the day this book is about perspective, and what it means to live a contemplative life and the only way to seek out and obtain this perspective is prayer and suffering. (I am sure many of you are not following me at all). If you are a church planter or leader, or whatever, please give it a read and think about it in light of how you react, maybe when no one comes to your gathering, or if your relationships are failing, or when an outreach doesn’t work out, or when you are incredibly successful. You see what this book does is it helps you put all those emotions into perspective. What a beautiful thing.

I want to leave you with a quote that inspired me from this book. It may make no sense to you, but it helped me in tremendous ways this past weekend.

“Institutional religion is a humanly necessary but also immature manifestation of this ‘hidden mystery’ by which God is saving the world. History seems to make both the necessity and the immaturity of religion glaringly apparent, which upsets both progressives and conservatives. Institutional religion is never an end in itself, but merely a wondrous and ‘uncertain trumpet’ of the message.”