Dear Brothers and Sister in Christ,
I think there have been three great Catholic writers in the current senior generation. Brennan Manning and Henri Nouwen have died now but keep reading them! The third is Richard Rohr, who is now about 74 years old.
Rohr has written in ‘Falling Upward’ that God uses all of our mistakes to make us more like Christ. In ‘Immortal Diamond’, he writes that we are always searching and moving to find our True Self. This occurs though after we get established in the world by creating our False Self, that persona we adopt to get along in this world. We try on different identities until we find something that fits, i.e. that allows us to make a living, find acceptance from friends and family and find a mate, etc.
But eventually we want to find our True Self, who we were created to be, who we are in Christ.
As he says, “Humans cannot live without meaning and ever deeper meaning.” His paraphrase of John 20:29 is “how happy are those who know more than they can see!”
This eternal or Cosmic Christ is God as revealed through every aspect of creation, which is clear in the Scriptures. Most Christians today believe in a historical Jesus, but seldom in a Cosmic Christ, as the personalization of the whole universe story. Rev. 21:6 and 22:13.
Rohr writes that “I believe that the full Christ Mystery serves as a map for the entire journey of the True Self from divine conception to beloved status through crucifixion, and unto resurrection.
Who of us has not been able to eventually see the silver lining in the darkest of life’s clouds? There have been too many silver linings in my life to count, and you would think the death/life pattern would be utterly clear to me by now. Yet I still fight and repress my own would be resurrections. I am normally catastrophizing within three seconds of any difficulty or dark emotion. We give and get our energy from dark clouds much more than silver linings. True joy is harder to access and even harder to hold onto than anger or fear. The False Self is energized by problems and by self-created goals almost moment by moment, the True Self needs and feeds on a different fuel: union and contentment itself and especially deep resonance (meaning) of any kind.
The Risen Christ represents the final perspective of every True Self: a human-divine one that is looking out at God from itself- and yet knowing that it is God-in –you seeing God-who-is-also-beyond-you and enjoying both yourself and God as good and as united.
The Risen Christ is the standing icon of humanity in its final and full destiny. He is the pledge and guarantee of what God will do with all of our crucifixions. At last, we can meaningfully live with hope. It is no longer an absurd or tragic universe. Our hurts now become the home for our greatest hopes.
The major point is that Jesus has not left the human sphere; He is revealing the goal, the fullness, and the purpose of humanity itself, which is ‘that we are able to share in the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4).
As Paul says in Colossians, the mystery is that Christ is in you and that is the hope of glory!!!
The only catch is that to have transformation there must be “crucifixion” that intervenes between this life and the Life. Loss always precedes renewal in all physical and biological universes. This is where we struggle and falter.
The great unfolding of God’s Mystery is that it “unfolds” all the previous stages and nothing is wasted or discarded-not even evil, death, or sin (this is precisely why the Bible includes those disappointing stories of murder, rape, deceit and war).
“Once you know there is an implanted and positive direction to creation, you can go with the primary flow (faith); eventually you will learn to rest there (hope), and finally you will actually enjoy and exalt God each day manifesting His Spirit to others (love). “ Immortal Diamond, page 90.
On that day, you will know that you are in me and I am in you. Jesus’s words in John 14:30.
Love triumphs, love lasts, love endures. God is love! Love overcomes fear, “perfect love casts out fear”. It is love alone that lasts. As we become more like Christ, our love abounds more.
Love is both who you are and who you are becoming!
As our love abounds all the more, the more we “feed His sheep”.
The more we have a heart to love and care for His children!!
Summer is always a slow time for donations. We are praying for about $5500.00 that we need to fulfill our programs in country for this quarter.
We are also preparing for an evangelistic outreach in Puerto Penasco the first week of October. We need to raise $4,000.00 for expenses. This will be an outdoor revival with hundreds of people with a city wide campaign. We are sponsoring this with several churches there. Pray that God goes before us and touches hearts.
To help our cause you can donate online here.
In His Love,
Cameron