Rohr daily meditations and more

Wow. Pretty lonely around here. :/

YouTube video: What did Jesus Really Teach?

by Fr. Richard Rohr.

Oh, one more advantage to creating a forum. If you post in a group forum, and are in the regular forums and do a "My Posts" search, it will bring up posts from in here and tell you if there have been replies.

OneSheep,

Have you been watching this week's meditations? Rohr has had some great ones before, but from my perspective, the series this week, starting with Nov 13 on "MYSTICISM" have been probably the most meaningful ones, ever!

Truly the difficult times I've been experiencing during the last 10 years of "severe bipolar disorder" were, in fact, my "Dark Night," even as it's still going on. Father Richard has captured things I've felt and thought, but could not put into words in a way anybody could get a clue what was going on. Even at the time I was very manic and doing "destructive" things, often feeling oppressed, I believed I was being guided by the Holy Spirit -- and now that I'm no longer having "symptoms" of my "disorder," reading Fr. RIchard's threads this week have confirmed things I've dared not think nor speak about, because there was just no way anybody but my closest friends would believe me, and even then some of my most open-minded friends could comprehend.

Don't get me wrong. It's great to have a mind that works right. I don't think Shakespeare could tell you how glorious it is to have a mind that works right, unless you yourself have had a mind that "doesn't." But even though I lost my lucrative career in engineering, raised my six children below the poverty level, seen things that were scary to me and done things even scarier to others, those things have all come together and make sense. I am fortunate that I have seen, thought, and felt things that very few people I know of have. Things have come together and made sense that few people who have been in "my condition" ever came out of and was able to see it turn into spiritual gold -- and Fr. Richard had a hand in it, as did many others -- Catholic, non-Catholic Christians, other religions, and even atheists alike.

I do have a STRONG suggestion for you, OneSheep, and as the originator of this forum I think you have the permissions to do it. There is a "create forum" button above, which I clicked but didn't have permission. If you were to create a forum associated with this group, I think it would be hugely easier to get into detail with these discussions. For example, on a forum I started six years ago basically for renegades from CAF to discuss things that couldn't be discussed there for a few reasons (I won't list them now -- will upon request -- but CAF knew of us and was actually happy we took our discussions elsewhere because the things we wanted to discuss were not a good "fit" for CAF) we have one thread per week, starting each Sunday, in which we copy Fr. Richard's email and optionally take turns commenting on it.

This week, for me, Fr. Richard has outdone himself, at least in my life. Truly, even at my most manic moments I was in fact being guided by the Holy Spirit (and had a GREAT guardian angel btw) just like I thought I was... although the world tried so hard to convince me otherwise and I even believed it myself at times. Times such as when I was very depressed.

I'd rather not get into detail yet on his meditations this week yet, because I truly do believe that if OneSheep can set up forums, it would make it vastly easier to have a great discussion about it. And if you do set up a forum, I think it would be great to back retroactively to the beginning of this week's "MYSTICISM" meditations, and maybe even the beginning of his "CHOOSE LIFE -- CHOOSE DEATH" ones before that. Just a suggestion; if you start the forum I'd be happy to create threads with those.

But as far as my own forum, if you are interested you may view this week's discussion I've had with the few very close friends that have remained posters there, but I'm not trying to "farm" this group for members -- I'm thrilled this froup OneSheep exists in fact -- something we would never have imagined a few years ago on this website. But if you do go over there, and wish to become a member, you would probably be better off sending me a PM with your email, intended handle, and starting password (unless you want me to make one up), and I'll set you up. We have so many attempts by bots to register we may accidentally reject your attempts, and if it says you are "banned" then it's because we have banned quite a few IP addresses from where we were getting lots of bots. So if you do try to look at our stuff and it says you are banned, send me a PM with the date and time it happened, and I can look in the error log, try to find the IP you came from and remove the ban. If you want to join, fine, but I just wanted to show what we have done as a model in case OneSheep wants to try the same. Our section discussing Fr. Richard's meditations of this week are publicly accessible (there are various privately accessible areas to members-only and even certain specific members -- which is where a lot of the "action" is over there) and can be found here:

Oh yeah, also if you start a forum associated with this group, you will have the same editing tools, such as embedding URL's and adding smileys, that you do on the main CAF boards, without having to click the "go advanced" button below.

Again, OneSheep, I appreciate your starting this group, and I VERY much like your views on CAF on the topic of forgiveness.

Alan

Does anyone subscribe to the daily meditations? Yesterday's was about change. Most of us feel that God will love us if and when we change. Fr. Rohr makes the point that God loves us already and it's the experience of love that empowers us to change. Nicely explained in the meditation.

Olaministries,
Missed it but hope to catch the replay. Did you see it? If so, what did you think?

Did anyone see the webinar this weekend?

Just read today's reflections by Rohr.....loved his concept of "one love" ....reminds me of the Body of Christ.......

I think that today's meditation, copied below, goes along with rainbow1's reflection on the sacredness of wounds. When I am wounded, I typically learn a lesson, the lesson is "don't do that" in reference to my own actions or those of others. I incorporate the new rule in my rulebook and enforce it on myself and those around me; violators are punished with my disappointment and/or worse. To me, to find the "sacredness", I can pay attention to my disappointment toward myself or others, find the wound, the source of the rule I am enforcing, and transform that wound into a blessing by seeing the wound in a different light.

It takes a lot of self-reflection, but it certainly seems worthwhile. Otherwise, yes, we go about our lives unwittingly transferring the wound onto someone else.

Today's meditation:

HOPE WITHIN DARKNESS


The cross is how to work for the answer without becoming part of the problem. The cross is about how to stand against hate without becoming hate yourself. How can you stand against hate without letting it frame the question? How do we oppose the evil, the hurts, the betrayals, the abandonment, the rejections, and the disappointments in our lives, the people who let us down, the people who turn against us, and the people who tell lies about us? How do we stand against that in a way that we do not become a mirror image of the same thing? In the end, this is the essential spiritual question.

The cross is a geometric image that you can hold onto and draw life from, a visual metaphor for the paradoxical nature or cruciform pattern of reality. Reality is filled with contradictions. Jesus was killed on the collision of cross-purposes, conflicting interests and half-truths that all of life is. The people who live and hold the contradictions, in fact, are the saviors of the world! These are the people who are the agents of all true transformation, reconciliation and newness.

Adapted from Hope Against Darkness:
The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety, pp. 33-34