John Duns Scotus with Sr. Mary Beth Ingham

Summary

Everything Belongs: Living the Teachings of Richard Rohr Forward

Episode Summary: John Duns Scotus with Sr. Mary Beth Ingham

Date: February 14, 2025

---

Overview

This episode of "Everything Belongs" explores the profound and often misunderstood wisdom of John Duns Scotus, a 13th-century Franciscan philosopher and theologian. Through a rich, multi-part conversation, hosts Paul Swanson, Mike Petro, Drew Jackson, Richard Rohr, and special guest Sister Mary Beth Ingham illuminate Scotus’ influence on contemplative Christianity and Franciscan spirituality. The discussion dives into foundational Scotist concepts like the University of Being, “thisness” (hexeity), and the cosmic nature of the Incarnation—revealing how these ideas can transform how we see God, ourselves, and our participation in the world where everything and everyone belongs.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why John Duns Scotus Matters (00:44–05:16)

• Paul and Drew reflect on the significance of Scotus as presented in Richard Rohr's book Eager to Love, noting its gateway role for many into contemplative Christianity.

• Drew recalls Rohr's interpretation of salvation—as an unfolding awakening to our true nature, rather than a simple divine transaction:

  "It’s not a divine transaction, but this sort of ever organic unfolding that we wake up to become conscious of, almost as if it’s us becoming who we already are." (01:11 — Drew Jackson)

• The playfulness of the term “dunce” is explored, tracing its origin to Scotus’ followers—who were termed “dunces” after struggling to match his subtlety and depth.

---

2. Richard Rohr’s Encounter with Scotus (05:34–15:57)

• Richard shares the formative impact of a liberal arts seminary education, and how encountering the friars’ example shaped his integration of intellect and spirituality.

• Rohr emphasizes the importance of self-education and “good thinking,” involving self-critique and the ability to see through one’s own illusions and historical perspectives.

  “A capacity for self-criticism. To critique your own thoughts, to see through your own illusions… All of that gave you perspective.” (10:14 — Richard Rohr)

• Rohr describes Scotus as a “subtle doctor,” with thoughts that are rarefied, dense, and hard to distill — which only added to his mystique and the later misconceptions around his legacy.

---

3. Scotus’ Three Transformative Ideas (15:10–35:08)

a. The University of Being (15:57–22:13)

• Scotus challenged the prevalent idea (from Aquinas) that our experience of God is only analogous. Instead, he posited that being is unified—“with one voice” (Unus Vox).

• Rohr:

  “The being of God and my being and your being are the same being. That’s what we’re saying.” (17:37)

• This concept found poetic resonance in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” read aloud on the podcast (21:15–22:39).

• Rohr links this to modern mysticism and cosmology—suggesting that participation in being unites all creation.

b. Hexeity: “Thisness” (22:52–28:33)

• Scotus balanced unity with the uniqueness of each entity—coining “hexeity” (thisness). Every being, down to an individual tree or person, has particular value and is loved for “being this tree.”

• Rohr:

  “God loves this tree for being this tree... That’s the holding of the two together where you have, we are Christ and yet Christ is everything.” (24:16)

• The conversation considers how this influenced Jung’s idea of individuation, and finds analogy in modern concepts like fractals—the part mirrors the whole.

c. The Incarnation as the First Idea in the Mind of God (29:24–35:08)

• Scotus upends the “redemption-centered” theology, proposing that the Incarnation was God’s plan from creation’s outset—not merely a response to sin.

• Rohr shares the Colossians hymn to demonstrate the cosmic Christ:

  “He is the whole, we are the parts, and all things are reconciled through him and for him everything in heaven and everything on earth when he made peace through the blood of the cross.” (29:49)

• This shifts Christianity from being “problem-focused” (sin) to “good-centered” (original blessing, Genesis 1), inviting believers to see life as a wedding banquet, not a judicial court.

  “It’s a wedding banquet instead of a judicial court.” (34:55 — Richard Rohr)

---

4. Sister Mary Beth Ingham’s Perspective on Scotus (38:05–73:10)

a. Discovering Scotus Through Beauty (38:36–43:39)

• Sr. Mary Beth narrates how she reluctantly encountered Scotus during doctoral research, only to have his philosophy click during an afternoon walk—realizing his project was rooted in an experience of beauty and harmony.

• “Maybe what he was doing was describing an experience and describing an experience of beauty... If we can really grasp the dignity of the ordinary, then we’re able to understand God’s love.” (38:36–41:05)

b. Franciscan Tradition: From Individual Experience to Cosmic Communion (44:05–47:07)

• She observes that Scotus’ insights gain clarity when situated in the broader Franciscan context—where beauty, gratitude, and pilgrimage shape spirituality.
• The “What would Francis do?” question is reframed:

  “They're dead. The question is, what are you going to do? ...at this moment in history, what are you called to do?” (46:36)

c. On the Title “Scotus for Dunces” and Accessibility (47:25–52:32)

• The story behind her approachable book title is discussed, lampooning the complexity of Scotus and celebrating the need for philosophy that speaks to ordinary experience.

d. Mysticism, Experience, and Action (53:06–55:19)

• Sister Mary Beth contrasts Franciscan mysticism with other traditions:

  “Bonaventure brings us to a moment where we enter a kind of mystical night. Scotus brings us to a party. And the party is the life of the Trinity...” (53:06)

e. Elevator Pitch: Why Scotus? (55:19–57:08)

• To the uninitiated:

  “He’s a follower of Francis... who has experienced God’s love in such a way that he simply cannot stop talking about it.” (55:22)

• Critiques the “birdbath” caricature of Franciscan tradition, underscoring its deep prophetic and practical edge.

f. Dignity of the Individual and the Whole (58:24–62:21)

• In a society obsessed with individualism, Scotus’ medieval context reversed that—valuing the part within the whole. She uses stained glass and choir harmonies as metaphors.

• “The individual is important, but it’s not more important than the role it’s playing in a whole symphony, a cosmic symphony.” (58:24)

• Dignity arises from relationship and contribution, not separation or absorption into the whole.

g. The University of Being—Clarified (62:38–68:09)

• Sr. Mary Beth explains that “univocity of being” is about having a conceptual bridge—meaningful language that connects our experience with the divine. It does not mean “everything is everything else” or that we are God.

• “I can think about myself and help my own experience of thinking about myself and my own life and my life experience to say something meaningful about God.” (66:00)

• When united with “thisness,” Scotus offers both universality and particularity—a basis for dignity and participation.

h. Living the Teaching: Beauty, Suffering, and Participation (70:36–73:01)

• The Franciscan vision celebrates both beauty and suffering without denial.
• The movement is a dynamic dance—“embrace the dynamism of reality”—always inviting people outwards to share, not just contemplate, the divine.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The being of God and my being and your being are the same being.” – Richard Rohr (17:37)
• “Once you have a living example of a certain kind of wholeness, you want that, you want to be that way.” – Richard Rohr (07:00)
• “To love God and to love good things is one and the same.” – Origin, read by Mike Petro (21:01)
• “God loves this tree for being this tree… That’s the holding of the two together where you have, we are Christ and yet Christ is everything.” – Richard Rohr (24:16)
• “Bonaventure brings us to a moment where we enter a kind of mystical night. Scotus brings us to a party. And the party is the life of the Trinity.” – Sr. Mary Beth Ingham (53:06)
• “The individual is important, but it’s not more important than the role it’s playing in a whole symphony, a cosmic symphony.” – Sr. Mary Beth Ingham (58:24)
• "Tourists complain and pilgrims give thanks.” – Franciscan proverb shared by Sr. Mary Beth (44:33)
• “It’s the experience of the divine all around us that unleashes the dynamism of life and love in the world.” – Sr. Mary Beth Ingham (74:02)

---

Important Timestamps

• 00:44-03:50: Introduction to the episode and why Scotus matters for contemporary spirituality.
• 05:34-10:51: Richard Rohr's early formation and the role of integrating head and heart.
• 15:10-22:13: The “University of Being” explained; Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem read (21:15).
• 22:52-29:08: “Hexeity/Thisness”—each individual’s unique value and participation in being.
• 29:24-35:08: Christ as the “first idea,” shifting from sin-centered to incarnation-centered Christianity.
• 38:36-41:05: Sr. Mary Beth’s beauty-focused insight connecting personal experience to philosophical comprehension.
• 53:06-54:49: Describing Franciscan mysticism as “the life of the Trinity... a party.”
• 62:38-68:09: Deep dive into “univocity of being” and why it matters.
• 74:02: Sr. Mary Beth’s quote on beauty, participation, and daily spiritual renewal.

---

Thematic Flow

The episode flows from introducing John Duns Scotus and his misunderstood intellectual legacy, through Richard Rohr’s deeply personal engagement with his ideas, into practical and poetic explorations of unity and diversity, and concludes with Sr. Mary Beth Ingham grounding these philosophical concepts in everyday experience, beauty, action, and community. The tone remains light, inviting, and grounded in lived spirituality—never shying away from complexity, yet making space for wonder, participation, gratitude, and transformation.

---

Takeaways for Daily Practice

• Participate, don’t just contemplate: Our uniqueness (“thisness”) is vital, but only meaningful in concert with the whole (“university of being”).
• Celebrate beauty—especially the ordinary: Divine love is both found in and fuels the appreciation of daily life.
• Let theology fuel action: Gratitude, not just awe, leads to loving participation in the world.
• Mysticism is exuberance, not escape: The fullness of reality is found in dynamic engagement, not withdrawal.
• Ask: “What is mine to do?” Find your note in the cosmic harmony and trust it matters.

---

Closing Reflection

This episode urges listeners to recognize their place in the “cosmic symphony” of being. John Duns Scotus’ teaching, as unpacked through the voices of Richard Rohr and Sister Mary Beth Ingham, calls modern contemplatives to embrace their unique “thisness” not for self alone, but as a vital part of God’s unfolding love and beauty in the world—reminding us that truly, “everything belongs.”

Transcript

[Podcast Narrator]

You're listening to a podcast by the center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit cac.org everybody.

[Paul Swanson]

Welcome back to Everything Belongs where we are focusing this season on Richard's book, Eager to Love the Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi. And again, you do not have to read along with us, but we go through it chapter by chapter. Those who get the added benefit of reading won't be steeping in this content, but if it's not your bailiwick to read along, there's no pressure to do so because these conversations are more than enough. Today we're going to Talk about Chapter 12, John Duns, SCOTUS Anything but a dunce. I'm here with Drew Jackson. Drew, good to see you this morning. How are you doing?

[Drew Jackson]

I'm doing well, Paul. Good to be with you.

[Paul Swanson]

Always great to be together. So you're not featured on this episode as a host, but I know that you've mentioned many times that Eager to Love is kind of a gateway book for you about how you got introduced to Richard's work. What do you remember about this chapter on John Duns SCOTUS and his work in life and theology? What kind of remains as you've sat with his work? What sticks out for you?

[Drew Jackson]

Yeah, Paul, I mean, Eager to Love, like you said, was really an intro and a gateway into Richard's work for me. And even as I say that, I'm pretty sure that his work was the first place that I encountered scotus. In particular, there was, I remember Richards talking about SCOTUS focus on the university of being in his work, this whole idea of the oneness of everything, sort of the one voice of creation and our participation inside of this one creation of all things. And I think in particular I remember him saying something along the lines of salvation not being a divine transaction, but this sort of ever organic unfolding that we wake up to become conscious of, almost as if it's us becoming who we already are. And that was something that really just stuck with me. And it was, I was like, I want to hear more about this. This is resonating with something in my soul.

[Paul Swanson]

I love that you mentioned that because it's like you're reading my highlights from this chapter because that's one of the things that certainly, I think connects for me. We go in depth with Father Richard on that theme in our conversation. And we also talk about hexeity, which is a word I struggle saying, but I think it's important in how SCOTUS use it on this idea of this ness. And then also on the incarnation as the first idea in the mind of God. And it's really fun to wrestle these ideas out with Richard and hear his not only past ruminations, but how it's evolved since he's written this book. And the title, of course, is a little bit humorous, Anything but a dunce. And in the second half of this episode, Mike and I are in conversation with Sister Mary Beth Ingham, who wrote a book called SCOTUS for Dunces. And the playfulness of both her title and also Richard's title of this chapter. I think it's fun to just mention a name. Note that John Duns Scotus was a huge thinker and complex thinker and his work was really difficult to understand. And part of my own theorizing around why that is because he died so young and so he didn't have time to distill it in a clear, easier to understand like there was no systems thinking built into that. Where we get with some of these other great theological doctors of the church with him. It's just so subtle.

[Mike Petro]

And part of the humor of it.

[Paul Swanson]

To me is as I understand, I think Sister Mary Beth goes into it as well, is those who followed the work of John Don Scotus and tried to emulate his way of teaching and the theology that he was espousing became known as dunces. But like so often happens when the next generation behind a luminary, they can't articulate it quite as well, especially somebody who didn't have time to develop it more fully. And so they became nicked. Their names were nicked as dunces. And so then dunces became equated to those who are unintelligent. And so here we are in our times thinking of dunces as someone sitting in the corner with the dunce hat on or somebody who is a fool when in, in reality, John Dunst's SCOTUS was this larger than life intellect, trying to marry it within this Franciscan tradition and the best of Christianity. So it's a fun, swirling conversation to be a part of. I know it touches, I think, our hearts and our actions, but also how we bring our intellect and our mind into our hearts. And so with that, I got nothing left to say. But let's hear Richard talk about this, because there's no one I would rather hear talk about this beyond Richard and Sister Mary Beth Ingham. It's a win win conversation.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

From the center for Action and Contemplation, I'm Mike Petro.

[Paul Swanson]

I'm Paul Swanson.

[Drew Jackson]

And I'm Drew Jackson.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

And this is Everything Belongs.

[Mike Petro]

Richard. Paul, it's great to be back with you again here in the hermitage.

[Richard Rohr]

A new year. Welcome.

[Mike Petro]

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

[Paul Swanson]

It's so nice to be somewhere warm.

[Mike Petro]

It's so cold out in Albuquerque right now.

[Richard Rohr]

Yeah.

[Mike Petro]

Richard, I was thinking and one of the things I really love about your teaching, Richard, is I think you give all of us permission to be in our heads and in our hearts and to bring them together. But I'm curious, how did you get there? You told us in one of our episodes that you started your seminary education. It was at 14.

[Richard Rohr]

Well, high school.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

High school.

[Richard Rohr]

But it was a classic liberal arts seminary education.

[Mike Petro]

And you've said you really got a lot out of that, eh?

[Richard Rohr]

Oh, God. We had to spend hours in the study hall, you know, and then from the study hall we went to the chapel. It was just back and forth between study hall and chapel. There it is. What you're just saying, was it torture.

[Mike Petro]

Or did you enjoy.

[Richard Rohr]

Oh, I loved it.

[Mike Petro]

Yeah.

[Richard Rohr]

As a young man, you don't know what your focus is. Where wisdom is to be found. And to find a discipline for him is very satisfying. At least it was in the late 50s.

[Mike Petro]

Were you encouraged to bring your spiritual whole self to it?

[Richard Rohr]

I think so, mainly by the example of the friars, who are all very liberally educated men themselves. They could quote poetry, philosophy, history. Once you have a living example of a certain kind of wholeness, you want that, you want to be that way. You can quote poetry and literature and history.

[Mike Petro]

Well, for those of our listening folks who maybe they don't have a graduate degree in theology, but they're interested, they're curious, they like to use their mind and they like to use their heart. What advice would you give for us, especially today? We're going to talk about pretty robust theologian.

[Richard Rohr]

You have to not be afraid to self educate by reading and interested in something. I'm going to say it. Beyond contemporary culture. Yeah. Which is so big and fascinating and colorful and delightful. It just sucks everybody into the truth is to be found here in common culture. These are our heroes. Along with sports athletes. Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Petro]

You know, there's a question when it comes to self education that I always.

[Paul Swanson]

Think about of like, what has stood.

[Mike Petro]

The test of time? Like, what are these repeatable lessons?

[Richard Rohr]

Yes.

[Mike Petro]

Do you see some of those enduring questions in your own integration of head and heart about how you approach your own self education? Because you've done that your entire life. It seems like you've dipped into different interests and themes throughout your teaching life, that it always stems from curiosity. But you seem, as Mike was saying, you bring the head and the heart to it. Are there overarching questions that have brought you from curiosity into those discoveries?

[Richard Rohr]

I think it was studying philosophy for four years giving you a fascination with thinking and with good thinking and being given tools to critique not so good thinking and to admire superb thinking. You know, it was four years of the entire history of philosophy. That was good stuff. A lot of it was boring, but most of it wasn't. You recognize. Wow, those are good questions that Emmanuel Kant and Leipzig, as bored as I was by them, were trying to pursue. I remember actually getting a headache trying to understand Immanuel Kant. Yeah, just one paragraph, you know, and. But we had to keep our nose to the grindstone because we were tested every week on the material. You know, it was rigid.

[Mike Petro]

Well, what do you think good thinking looks like?

[Richard Rohr]

Well, I guess it's reflected in my last book, a capacity for self criticism.

[Mike Petro]

Oh, that's good.

[Richard Rohr]

To critique your own thoughts, to see through your own illusions, which then fascinates you with psychology and to understand the human person and history, to understand the phases of history, why that idea emerged in the 13th century and why this one in the 17th. All of that gave you perspective.

[Mike Petro]

I remember you telling us once that you took a class in philosophical psychology, and it sort of set the tone for all your work. And yet it seems like some of these theologians stayed with you. Like. So this chapter's about dunce scotus. I'm gonna be honest with you. I have tried. SCOTUS is very dense.

[Richard Rohr]

Very. He's called the subtle doctor. Oof. That's his official title.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Subtle is one word for it.

[Richard Rohr]

I feel like scotus Rarefied prayer is another. Yes.

[Mike Petro]

I feel like SCOTUS is the friend of my friend. Like, I have no great love of scotus, but I love how much you love scotus.

[Richard Rohr]

Oh, thank you.

[Mike Petro]

It's like your. It's like your precious friend's friend.

[Richard Rohr]

Yes.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

And I suspect I don't want to project, but a lot of our readers are probably going to feel the same way.

[Richard Rohr]

Just the same.

[Mike Petro]

They may not want to tackle SCOTUS on their own, but can love how much you love scotus.

[Richard Rohr]

Until Mary Beth Ingham wrote her book, there was no one who attempted a popularization of Duns. Scotus. Yeah.

[Mike Petro]

Yeah. Someone in Albuquerque has a copy of SCOTUS for dunces. Because I left my copy at Java Joe's Coffee last Week? No, I don't know where it is.

[Richard Rohr]

Was it all marked up?

[Mike Petro]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So I'm gonna have to start over.

[Richard Rohr]

Whoosh. Woof.

[Mike Petro]

But I love that you love scotus. So before Paul, you know SCOTUS better than I do. Before you take us in, what do you love about this subtle doctor that's been your friend all these years?

[Richard Rohr]

Well, first, what led us to trust him was, of course, in the community. He was one of us. He was a Franciscan, and an underappreciated Franciscan at that, so we sort of felt it was our job to popularize him. Our college, where I went for philosophy, was named after him. And most of the church was Thomist. Diocesan seminaries, religious orders, almost all studied Thomas Aquinas, called Thomism. We were a subset. The only strong subset that studied another doctor of the church, John dod. Scotus? Yeah.

[Mike Petro]

Do you feel like with some of these theologians that they are like a friend after a while you get so immersed in their ideas. Does it feel like they're just kind of around?

[Richard Rohr]

In the wonderful grand staircase at Duns Cotis College, where I'd walk from my room to chapel seven times a day or whatever, you came down the grand staircase and there was a giant painting of Duns scotus. And studying them during the day and seeing his picture so often, I did. I began to feel he was a friend, an underappreciated friend.

[Mike Petro]

Oh, yeah, that's really lovely. That makes me appreciate that much more how you've sort of introduced his thought to a broader audience.

[Richard Rohr]

Yes. It almost became an obligation. You've gotta know what I know. This man holds some big secrets that shouldn't be secret, as you'll see if you ask me the right question.

[Mike Petro]

That's right. Well, now it's up to us.

Bring your awkward, nerdy friend to the party with us.

[Richard Rohr]

Let's do it.

[Mike Petro]

But I do love that imagery of, like, if Richard's hosting a party, he.

[Paul Swanson]

Wants to introduce everyone to scotus.

[Mike Petro]

And one thing that Mary Beth Ingham said was that because SCOTUS died so young, he never got the chance to distill it or to nuance it in a way that was more accessible to more common folk. So I don't want to completely throw SCOTUS under the bus for dying early. He's the victim of his own timeline. And so, thanks to you and Mary Beth, like folks who are taking the work of SCOTUS and trying to offer.

[Paul Swanson]

It so those of us, as plebeians.

[Mike Petro]

Can have a chance at it, so good. We talked about Bonaventure in our last.

[Paul Swanson]

Conversation and like that chapter, you name.

[Mike Petro]

Three significant contributing ideas from John Duns SCOTUS that we'd love to bring out here and circle around for a little bit. I'm going to name them first the University of Bean. Thisness also in a word that I have a hard time saying, but it's hexidity. And then the third idea is the incarnation as the first idea in the mind of God. And I'm going to quote you on this where you say that these are three world changing ideas, that one changes your philosophy, the second your cosmology and and the last your foundational Christian theology. So I think these are worthwhile.

[Richard Rohr]

I'm glad I said that.

[Paul Swanson]

Me too.

[Mike Petro]

And so you've, you've set this up well through your own words. Can we just briefly walk through each one individually and then talk how they complement one another?

[Richard Rohr]

They do.

[Mike Petro]

All right, let's start with University of Bean. What are we talking about when we're talking about the University of Being?

[Richard Rohr]

The general opinion in the 13th century thinking it was a real breakthrough and it was, was called the analogy of being that we could find an analogy between things in this created world and God. But it was at best an analogy. And that's what Thomas Aquinas taught and I'd be grateful for that. That gets you pretty far. But SCOTUS breaks through and makes his rarefied step by step argument for the University of Being that you may speak with Unus vox one voice, or is it unum, I forget the genders of the being of an ant, the being of a tree, the being of an angel, the being of a human, the being of God. It's one voice university. They're all being in the same way. Although God is not a being, he laid the ground for what the 20th century called the ground of being. God is the ground of all being, but still participates in the same existence that we do. We participate better Sid, in the same being, our existence as God does. Well, that's what the mystics are saying. That's what John's gospel is trying desperately to say. I and the Father are one. So Duns SCOTUS for me laid the foundation of, for a very concrete, lovable, believable mysticism. The being of God and my being and your being are the same being. That's what we're saying.

[Mike Petro]

And so then the world that I can see and touch and taste and smell and you and you and Opie and you is not less than God.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Mike Petro]

It's not.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

All this is just a pale reflection.

[Mike Petro]

To point to something more important. This matters.

[Richard Rohr]

Very well said. You take it to its logical conclusion. Okay. We're not just an analogy.

[Mike Petro]

Yeah, I like that.

[Richard Rohr]

We're a participation, which I found myself using that word much more after I studied SCOTUS and why the doctrine of the Trinity became so attractive to me. It's a doctrine of universal participation in this flow of love and life that we call God. It's one flow. Now modern cosmology is coming at the same thing from another angle. At the flow of the atomic and the flow of the galaxy is the same self affirming flow that lives itself, does itself. I should have brought the poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Both Hopkins and Thomas Merton were rabid scotus. And this was one reason why what I do is me, for that I came everything is doing itself. And this became one reason after the Enlightenment for a lot of Christians to reject scotus. I think it was Ratzinger, God bless him, Pope Benedict, who said SCOTUS created the basis for Western individualism and thus should be condemned. Wow. I would realize why you could say that you interpret it negatively in its individualism, interpret it positively. It's mysticism. Does that make sense?

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah, 100%.

[Mike Petro]

And the risk he took in that, not knowing that what was possible.

[Richard Rohr]

Not knowing what was coming. Yeah. Saying the individual could be spoken of with the same voice as God or an angel or a dog. Did you hear that, Opie?

[Mike Petro]

Well, and you've heard me say this before. I love this passage. It's from Origin. To love God and to love good things is one and the same.

[Richard Rohr]

There. That's which University of Being.

[Mike Petro]

That's really cool.

[Richard Rohr]

Did you look up that?

[Mike Petro]

Oh, as king fishers catch fire.

[Richard Rohr]

As king fishers catch fire. That's one portion of a longer poem.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah.

[Richard Rohr]

Read the last verses.

[Mike Petro]

Well, I'll read the whole thing. As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame. As tumbled over rim and roundly wells stones ring like each tucked string tells each hung bells bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name. Each mortal thing does one thing and the same deals out that being indoors each one dwells selves goes itself myself it speaks and spells crying what I do is me for that I came.

[Richard Rohr]

There it is. That's the most succinct poetic statement of University of Being and Hexiade put together. By the way, we're already moving into the next one.

[Mike Petro]

Well, let me give you the end of this and then I'D love to hear you ask about hatesity. I say more. The just man justices, keeps gr. That keeps all his goings, graces, acts in God's eye. What in God's eye he is Christ. For Christ plays in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men's faces.

[Richard Rohr]

In that Christ plays in the. It might be my most favorite poem of all time.

[Mike Petro]

So good.

[Richard Rohr]

Oh, so good.

[Mike Petro]

Poetry, I feel like, can distill so much.

[Richard Rohr]

Make you love the idea. Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Petro]

That is the mind and heart coming together. I feel like, in a poem like that, that exemplifies the education of the arts.

[Paul Swanson]

Right there.

[Mike Petro]

Richard would love. As you've mentioned, we dipped into hexeity. Can you go a step further of what is it this, this ness, this hexidi that SCOTUS would talk about? You've talked about how it's related to the University of being. Can you take it a step further to hold it on its own and then maybe dip back into how it's related to university of being?

[Richard Rohr]

Well, you see, once he develops his university idea, you could get into a big mass, the monad theories of philosophy. Everything's just one. Everything's one. To say that too glibly is dangerous. You have to protect the other end of the spectrum. Once you've created oneness, you have to provide a philosophical basis for differentiation, and that's hexeity. So H A, E, C is the Latin word for this, and he called it thisness. That God doesn't just create universals, which was the term in Scholastic philosophy. Let there be angels, let there be cattle, let there be maple trees or trees. No, he developed, and I can't even remember the development because it was that rarefied thinking that gave me a headache. Step by step. No, God only creates this maple tree and loves it and holds it in existence by his love of it, as it is, in its isness, in its. Yeah, so it's universality. It's union with universality keeps it living, but its hexiety keeps it special and persistent in not just monadic existence, but God loves this tree for being this tree. And then Christ becomes the stamp of that, the incarnation in one little baby boy in Judea in the first century. It's almost too much, this ness. Come on, come on. We're supposed to believe this little child is the Son of God? I mean, it's a daring proposition. But that's the holding of the two together where you have, we are Christ and Yet Christ is everything. Which became my book, the universal Christ. Yeah, most people were never. I'm already jumping into the third. Most people weren't trained in the cosmic Christ. It was simply Jesus of Nazareth. So they got the specific, but they didn't get the universal. And to understand Jesus, the specific Christ, the universal is to hold the whole of creation together. Now by the way, there's verses in, in Colossians and Ephesians which state this very specifically, that the Christ is the image of the invisible God. In him all things cohere in existence. He holds together the specific with the universal. So read over the hymn in the first chapter of Ephesians and the hymn in the first chapter of Colossians how Paul, a first century Jew, came to that realization. That's enough to make him a first rate mystic, theologian, poet. You wonder, did he write those two poems or hymns we call them now? Yeah, hymns, yeah. We don't know.

[Mike Petro]

It's wild again, I'm thinking of origin. Who talks about it says God inhabits the entire universe like the soul of a body, but also says that each person is a universe within themselves. But leans into Paul and says and it is and is becoming more and more that God is all in all.

[Richard Rohr]

That's in the same letter. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

[Mike Petro]

Well, I know this. I still can't say the word.

[Richard Rohr]

Hey.

[Mike Petro]

A city haec hake. Theity hakes sometimes is translated as individuation, which I know had a huge influence on Carl Jung who used the word individuation. That each thing matters, is created to be what it is, and yet we are not the center of the universe at the same time. And that God is everywhere in everything. That's such a. What a wild paradox is close to.

[Richard Rohr]

Our contemporary astrophysical word fractals where the part replicates the whole and yet is whole in itself. We see it in art now and artistic attempts to make pictures that you have a bunch of little patterns and then the whole thing is a pattern that replicates the little pattern.

[Mike Petro]

I love that. I know we're just about out of time, but I think about if that fractal shape of reality and where we find our place in God is real, what does that mean for each one of us and how we live our lives every day?

[Richard Rohr]

It makes incarnation the only believable way that this physical world has to have specific glory and goodness and meaning to it. It's a non spiritual religion. It's an incarnational religion. Christianity. That tree is a fractal. And I'm a fractal. It makes you not afraid of science, not afraid of physics, not afraid of mysticism, all of which we've largely been afraid of in favor of so called theology. He is the image of the unseen God. This is Colossians. He is the firstborn of all creation. So the first idea in the mind of God, Scotus called it, was one living image of matter and spirit coexisting as one. In him were created all things. All things in heaven and on earth. Everything visible and everything invisible. Thrones, domination, sovereignties, powers. All things were created through him and for him, before anything was created, he existed and he heals all things in unity. It's just like there's the whole Christian religion. He is the beginning. He was the first to be born from the dead, implying we're the second or the follow up, so that he should be first and everywhere. Because God wanted all wholeness. The word was pleroma, the fullness to be found in Him. He is the whole, we are the parts, and all things are reconciled through him and for him everything in heaven and everything on earth when he made peace through the blood of the cross. Now I know we get right into our redemption theories, but totally rush there. He's just saying the price of realizing that is a bloody one, it's a suffering one, to realizing you're a part of the whole.

[Paul Swanson]

They're so beautiful.

[Richard Rohr]

It really is, once you let it be a cosmic message.

[Mike Petro]

Yes.

[Richard Rohr]

And know that the problem is solved at the beginning. Jesus didn't solve it on the cross. He revealed it on the cross. Cur de es homo. Why did God become a human being? Because he needed one human to reveal to us our own humanity, not our own sinfulness. Dang it. He spent so much time trying to get rid of this horrible notion of sin.

[Mike Petro]

All this time focused on what not to do instead of what to do, which is to follow the imitation of Christ.

[Richard Rohr]

Sin centered religion is what we are all raised in. And that's more than anything. Why say we're only in baby Christianity? It's all been problem centered, sin centered. It built on the negative. And when you built on solving a problem that's negative, you never get much beyond it. There's always that dark side showing itself, which is true, but allow it to be the shadow, which again Jung understands, not the substance. The substance is Genesis 1. God created it and it was good, very good. So my shorthand way of saying it was we began with Genesis 3, the fall, whereas SCOTUS begins with Genesis 1 and it was good and it was very good. And all created in the image of the beloved Son. We also are the beloved Son of God now. It's just a positive journey to be replicated. And it's already written in our DNA.

[Mike Petro]

Well, and it's again such a different thing to see the image of Christ and to grow into that, to see the good and have more of that as opposed to see sin or focus on the bad and only focus on having less bad.

Or to start with a Christ soaked universe and a Christ soaked world.

Yeah.

And then even before I am, I am in Christ in this Christ soaked universe, this Christ soaked world. How can I grow into being that fractal of Christ and that revolution you guys get? I was going to say revelation, but I said revolution. I think both are true. For what Jesus revealed about how to be human and what does that call to us?

[Paul Swanson]

And this is where I get excited.

[Mike Petro]

About SCOTUS because of you. Take these three ideas together and you start to get a very beautiful universe that we're being invited to participate.

[Richard Rohr]

It's a wedding banquet instead of a judicial court.

[Mike Petro]

Wow. Yes.

I mean, that's a note to go out on.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah.

[Mike Petro]

Holy moly. It's a wedding banquet instead of judgment.

[Richard Rohr]

And that's what Jesus read. How often Jesus talks about the wedding banquet. Only Matthew 25 is a courtroom scene. And that's the one we were all raised on. Even though I'm glad he said it. Cause it was to make the point of the poor.

[Mike Petro]

Goodness gracious. Well, thank you for introducing your friend to us.

[Richard Rohr]

Wow. Thank you for wanting it.

[Mike Petro]

Duns. Scotus. That's pretty awesome.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah. Thank you, Richard. This is great.

[Mike Petro]

Yeah. Thank you, Richard.

Thank you.

[Richard Rohr]

You're welcome. And I'm looking at a big black crow that just flew into my tree in the front yard. They only come this time of year. They rest here for a while in the cold month of January. And when you let that wand crow, I only see one be every crow and everything. I don't need to go to philosophy class to appreciate reality or love reality. I just need to be a biologist and a poet. Wow. Yeah. And it's enough so you stop thinking theology is the best or quickest path. If you have a fully incarnational theology, it is. But if you have a spiritual theology trying to make you spiritual, it's more a part of the problem than the solution. So thank you, Mr. Crow. He's still there. Okay, I'll stop.

[Mike Petro]

That's great. Our teacher has left. We can go now.

[Richard Rohr]

All right.

[Mike Petro]

Everything Belongs will continue in a moment.

[Drew Jackson]

Sister Mary Beth Ingham, CSJ currently serves as congregational leader of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, California. She has published widely on the thought of Franciscan master Blessed John Duns Scotus. Among her many works are SCOTUS for an Introduction to the Subtle Doctor. In her research, she argues that the spirituality of beauty is at the heart of the Franciscan intellectual tradition. To learn more about Sister Mary Beth, please see the show notes for this episode.

[Paul Swanson]

Sister Mary Beth, we are so grateful.

[Mike Petro]

And thrilled to be talking with you today. There is no one else that we.

[Paul Swanson]

Would want to have this conversation with on Blessed John Duns scotus. You have done such extensive work on this Franciscan master like nobody else. And whenever a scholar like yourself has spent so much attention and care in working to understand and share the ideas of a master like scotus, I'm always curious to know, like, how did that start? What's the origin story?

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

When I was doing my doctoral work, I was very interested in medieval thinkers, medieval philosophers, and theologians. And so I was speaking with my doctoral advisor about moving into the doctoral research itself. And he had had a dream. And in his dream, he thought about Franciscan ethics. And he said to me, why don't you think about Franciscan ethics? Now, at the time, of course, I knew only two Franciscans that would fall into the category of ethics. One would be scotus, of course, and the other would be William of Ockham, who did a lot with the divine will. So I wasn't entirely excited about that. And then I went and spoke to my spiritual director about this, who is a professor at the university, and he said, oh, absolutely, you need to take a look at Franciscan ethics because somebody needs to nail those people. So that was not why I began to work on scotus, but it did say to me, there's something important here that you need to look at. So completed my doctorate. Always struggling with trying to understand what he was trying to say, because he's both intricate and expansive. He goes to the most minute detail about the dignity of the individual, and I'm sure we'll talk about that in a little bit. But he's also got this enormously global vision that incorporates everything. And I really struggled to try to understand it, because it didn't. It never made sense to me. I mean, it made sense, and it didn't make sense. So this one day, I was looking at a text that he had written and struggling with it, trying to map it out. It didn't make logical sense, or at least it wasn't what I was expecting. And I said to myself, okay, I'm just terribly frustrated, so I'm going to go out for a walk. And I went out for a walk, and it was a beautiful day. So I was out walking in the neighborhood. A lot of trees, a lot of birds. You know, just kind of your beautiful afternoon. And all of a sudden the thought struck me that maybe what he was doing was describing an experience and describing an experience of beauty. So I went back to my room, looked at the text again, and suddenly it made perfect sense. So that was the introduction to scotus, which was remarkable in itself because of a dream. I never would have chosen to do SCOTUS on my own, but I think I turned the corner in my understanding of SCOTUS when I completely reframed what he was talking about. And I reframed it through my own experience of beauty. And then, of course, that beauty just led to more and more insights about beauty, among them, harmony, musical harmony, and the way in which we hear things and we know things because we hear them, not because we see them or not because we understand them. So that just really one thing just led to another. It's rather mundane in its own remarkable nature, but I think that's something SCOTUS would say. Yes, reality is remarkably mundane. And if we can really grasp the dignity of the ordinary, then we're able to understand God's love. God's love for the world. To get in touch with that kind of a shift in looking at reality. It's not our love for God that matters. It's God's love for us. And once you've done that, then, of course, then you can understand the incarnation differently. Then you can look at a paradigm shift that really relates to our own spiritual journey as a journey of gratitude that all is gift. To come back to your question, yes, it was my experience of beauty that helped me understand his experience of beauty. And then, of course, through all of this, through all these years, I began to meet Franciscans. And the Franciscans I met simply gave me evidence of the truth of my experience and the truth of what SCOTUS was trying to say. So it's pretty remarkable, and it is not a journey I would have chosen to make. You know, I walked the Camino several years ago, the Camino da Compostela. And a colleague of mine who has walked the Camino many times said, don't worry. When it's your time to walk the Camino, the Camino will call you. And that's been my Experience. And so I think it's a metaphor for God really, that we're drawn into a reality that we are meant to experience, not because we've figured it out, but because we've been invited.

[Paul Swanson]

As you've spent so much time and energy with SCOTUS and Franciscans and living and being with these pieces, how has SCOTUS genius or particular insight kind of revealed itself that you didn't see earlier on, but maybe has become more transparent or luminous later, after spending so much time with the. Is there something that's become more evocative the more time you've spent with SCOTUS work?

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

I became more and more aware, more and more appreciative of what SCOTUS was up to when I began to teach at the Franciscan School of Theology, first in Berkeley and now affiliated with the University of San Diego. Because the more we read around in the tradition, right, you read around in, well, the stories, of course, Francis, but you read around Clare, you read around Bonaventure, you read around Peter John Olivi, who's becoming increasingly more important now in terms of his influence on these later friars. And even you read around Occam, and it becomes clearer that SCOTUS is not just a one off voice in a tradition. Originally you think, oh, he's novel, he's different, he's doing this, nobody else is doing this. And then you read Franciscan's through the lens of beauty, for example. Well, it's remarkable. They are all talking, you know, grosso moto, right? More or less. They're all talking about the same experience. And it's this experience of their Franciscan vocation, insight, tradition, spirituality, all of the ways they're talking with each other about what they know to be true of God's love for the world and their own journey that they're on as pilgrims, as Francis says, you know, pilgrims in the world. Well, if you really embrace what it means to be a pilgrim in the world, then you never complain, right? Because what's the saying? Tourists complain and pilgrims give thanks. So no matter what happens, you don't complain, you give thanks. Because this is another way of God's love being revealed in our lives. So it's, you know, I hate to use the word optimistic because it can be trivialized into Pollyanna, but I think rather it's such a hope filled vision of what it means to be human, what it means to be on this earth, what it means to be in this time and place. There's a colleague of mine, Father Joe Canici, teaches at the Franciscan School often gives retreats to Franciscan groups. And he says he's frequently encountering the question, well, what would Francis do? What would Claire do? And his response is, they're dead. The question is, what are you going to do?

[Richard Rohr]

Oh, that's good.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

What are you going to do with the insights of this tradition in this time and place, at this moment in history, what are you called to do? It's not about looking at the past as if it was some incredibly romantic time when everybody was holy and everybody looked after the poor. They were times like we are living in right now. And so they did what was theirs to do. What is it Francis says at the end of his life, I've done what was mine to do, and God will show you what's yours to do.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Years ago, I was a living school student, and Richard shared his love of scotus. And I emailed him, and I said, okay, I want to read more. Where do I go? And he said, you have to read Sister Mary Beth's books on scotus. Like, that is absolutely where you have to go. So I fetched a copy of Scotus for Dunces, which I've had for years.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

And I told you both before we started recording, moments before we started this recording, I was at a coffee shop reviewing everything for our conversation. I zipped over here to get online with all of you, and I realize I've left my copy of Scotus for Dunces on the table in Java Joe's, my favorite coffee shop in Albuquerque. So right now, while we're talking about this, someone is picking up that book and looking at the title and reading Scotus for Dunces, An Introduction to the Subtle Doctor.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

In solidarity with that person. And I'm friends with all the folks that work there, so I'm imagining who it is looking at that book. I have two questions. The first one is, what does the title mean? It's such a great play on words. I know, I know. Scotus verdunces and then a subtle doctor. What can you tell us about the title?

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Okay, so I had to fight for the title, by the way, because serious scholars thought it was trivializing. But I actually thought it was the pun because the word dunce actually is derived from his name. Because in the Middle Ages, you know, all these great teachers had followers, and he had these students, these followers who got so. I mean, he's really. If you get into his thinking, it's so confusing because you never know where he's gonna land. He's someone you know, Father Alan Walter, great Franciscan scholar of scotus, said, when you read scotus, what you're doing is you're listening to his mind work and you never know if and when he's gonna resolve he's gonna come up with the answer to whatever question he's looking at because he considers every answer and he'll backtrack and go back and forth. So his students tried to do the same thing and of course, not having the razor sharp mind that he did, they just made more smoke than light, right? It was just more and more confusing. So they, over time they were called the Duns man. Right? Followers of Duns. And then after that it became the dunces, the Dunses with an s. And then it became dunce. So it's meant to be an insult. And you know, there are all these something or other for dummies books. And I thought, well, you wouldn't have a scotus for dummies, but you might have a scotus for dunces because that's, you know, the term has now come to mean someone who's not very smart. Now having said that, I do want to say that father Alan Walter, who read scotus verdunces, said to me in a very kind way, there is no such thing as scotus verdunses because scotus is so difficult. And that's true. So I can say yes, in scotus verdunsis. I may have, I won't say trivialized him, but I might have watered him down a little bit to get across the main insight. Because I was working on this book after I had my insight about beauty. And of course once I had my insight about beauty, I thought to myself, we're coming at this man and his thinking in the wrong way. We're coming at him as if he's a university professor in an ivory tower. Never had a life, is just kind of abstractly creating a lot of these arguments. So let's come at this man as if he is very, very down to earth. He's brilliant, but he's down to earth. He pays attention to his experiences and he's a teacher. So what he's trying to do is help his students learn how to think. So that helped me a lot. And then I said to myself, okay, in scotus verdensis, what I'm going to do is I'm going to slice his thought differently. I'm not going to do a chapter on cognition followed by a chapter on metaphysics followed by a chapter on the existence of God followed by a chapter. I mean, that's kind of the academic, scholarly way you come at these things. I said, no, I'm going to slice it horizontally and I'm going to bring together things that are often not put together for him. And so I came up with the three kind of chapters headings, Creation, Covenant and Communion. And in that way I was able to reorganize a lot of his thought under a category like creation. And so you have insights around cognition in the chapter on creation because that's how we encounter creation. We encounter creation by experiencing it cognitively. We study it so it doesn't develop his thought in a logical way, in the way that I have done in a few other monographs on SCOTUS where I bit the bullet and just did the, you know, chapter, chapter, chapter.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I have to tell you, a three point argument with alliteration is the language of my soul. So thank you for organizing it as such.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

You're welcome.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

The old preacher in me loves that.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Yes.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

The second thing is, you know, and then I have a question, but everything you're talking about, I can't help. You know, I hope this is not an oversimplification, but it reminds me so much of my favorite little poem from Mary Oliver, which is instructions for living a life. Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

It feels like such a good way to approach SCOTUS theology.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Yes. And then SCOTUS would say and make decisions on the basis of it and have it inform the next day. But definitely, because it's not just about standing in awe. I mean, I know Richard roariant. He talks about mysticism and I think the mysticism of SCOTUS is not an out of body experience. It is not this kind of, whoa, I can't speak. I'm so. It's not a Bonaventurian mysticism. You know, if you look at the end of the mind's road to God, Bonaventure is just talked out. He is not going to say anything else because we're into that mystical night, you know, being beyond knowing where. It's just we stand in awe before the grandeur of God. If you look at Scotus treatise on God as first principle, which is his equivalent journey to recognizing the existence of God, you get to the end of this thing and this man cannot shut up. He has pages after pages after pages of praise. And talking about this is so wonderful. I just can't get over it. This is what God must be like. So it's almost as if Bonaventure brings us to a moment where we enter a kind of mystical night. SCOTUS brings us to a party. And the party is the life of the Trinity. So, you know, we can think about mysticism as an experience of reality in its fullness. And that can be life. Not silence, but exuberance, gratitude.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's so fantastic. The idea of mysticism as an experience of life and its fullness is fantastic. I think you answered the question which I was going to ask you, but I'm going to ask it anyway, just for fun, which is when I go back in a few days or tomorrow to the coffee shop to get my book back. And they say to me, from no knowledge of anything, not the Christian tradition, not anything, who is SCOTUS and why do they matter? What would be your elevator sales pitch to a complete outsider for why SCOTUS matters in helping us be human God?

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

What a question. Well, you certainly want to say he's a follower of Francis of Assisi. You might want to say he's a Franciscan, especially for someone who perhaps has no religious or faith tradition, who is a follower of Francis of Assisi. Very popular person to everybody, right? Who has experienced God's love in such a way that he simply cannot stop talking about it. So go thou and do likewise. Right? Go and have an experience of God and then just keep talking about it, because that's what giving witness is all about, right? And Francis himself says, proclaim the gospel and use words if you have to. So in actions, in words, in songs, in poems. I mean, really, when you think about it, the Franciscan tradition has everything. I have to say that one of the reasons I would not have chosen a Franciscan thinker is because I didn't think much of the Franciscan tradition for years, because it was that birdbath image that trivializes the saint. It trivializes the tradition. And it's not helpful for one to understand how incredibly prophetic the tradition is. And I think what we're seeing with Pope Francis right now is the lived. What does it feel like to have somebody speaking from within an understanding of that tradition and how many enemies he's making, you know, all the people that want him to fall on one side or the other of a debate, and he refuses to get caught in a rhetorical trap. He simply says, who am I to judge?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

We talked to Richard this morning a bit about Scotus, and then I was connected with a colleague over lunch on a completely different topic. My training is Jungian psychology and comparative mythology. So I was talking to a Colleague. And they were talking about dissertation work that they were doing, and they said, yeah, this really is important to connect to the theology of John Duns scotus. And I went, wait, what? I didn't realize how much, you know, one of my great teachers, Carl Jung, was influenced by SCOTUS's teaching on individuation. I had no idea. And so this was so funny because I said, oh, this is wild. I am having three separate conversations about SCOTUS today. That's as many conversations as I've had about SCOTUS in the last eight years. And so the synchronicity, and I didn't mention it. I didn't bring it up at all. My colleague brought it up, and I thought, gosh, that's so wild. I absolutely have to ask Sister Mary Beth about that today, because to think about this beautiful cosmology, and then, like you said, the dignity of the ordinary and the dignity of the individual. Living in such an individualistic society as the one that we live in today, I think it's hard for us to imagine how groundbreaking it was for a teacher to say that the individuals matter. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Well, yes. I mean, the medieval culture was a culture of the whole, not a culture of the part. And within the whole, SCOTUS saw the part. I was thinking about this earlier today, and maybe this is an app. Example, if you look at a stained glass window, the whole is a beautiful image, and yet each portion, each particle of glass is its own color, is its own shape, is doing its own work within the whole. And so, you know, the medieval cathedrals were being built before, during, and after SCOTUS lived. So talk about his experiences. He may have been walking into one of the cathedrals, but to see the whole image, and yet to see that the whole would not be the whole if each particular part were not doing its part. And the same is true of music, right? Harmony. Harmonies were emerging. Polyphony was emerging in that era of the Middle Ages, moving from Gregorian chant, which is a single tone, to the multiple voices, you know, Gabrielli, and all of these beautiful voices that against each other and counterpoint and all that. But if you're in a choir and there's a harmony, you have to sing your part. You can't be singing somebody else's part, because the whole would not be the same. And the same is true of an orchestra and the instruments in an orchestra. So, yes, you know, the individual is important, but it's not more important than the role. It's Playing in a whole symphony, a cosmic symphony, I think, which is the, you know, the music of all reality together. And I think thinkers like Jung and others have brought us into this sense that there's a whole that has meaning. But SCOTUS would say yes, and the part has meaning that's so good, because in his time, the parts didn't have meaning except in reference to the whole. Maybe he can help us get back to the greater whole because like us, he values the individual. But it's the individual in relationship. It's not the individual as a self standing, autonomous being that's so helpful.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

The balance of knowing that our own individual dignity matters. But we're part of a community. We were talking this morning about, you know, there's the way to live where we think we're the only thing that matters and we're selfish and we're self absorbed. And then on the other side we recognize that we're part of a community and we're part of the community of the earth. And there's so much hurt and there's so much brokenness and there's so much work to, to do. And that can be overwhelming and exhausting unless we get back to what you already referenced, that notion of Francis saying, I've done what is mine to do, now you do what is yours to do. I so appreciate for me personally that image that you just gave of the piece of the stained glass, because it reminds me that I can do my part and trust that I am a part of a greater whole where everyone is doing their part. And that is the only way to sort of contribute to the healing of the world and the wholeness that Christ calls us into. Wow, this really good.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Well, and I think it's an invitation to find people like yourself who are not identical to you, but find people who have that same intuition and form communion or community in small. Right. And then it replicates, replicates, replicates. You don't change the world all at once. You change it one day at a time.

[Richard Rohr]

So good.

[Mike Petro]

Thank you.

[Paul Swanson]

That's fantastic. And I think about SCOTUS pointing to us towards a way that doesn't teeter on the extremes. But there is the, as you said, there's the part and there's the whole and the relationship within that. And how we think about such language around the mystical body of Christ and what is mind to do as a part of that body.

[Mike Petro]

And there's this term of university of.

[Paul Swanson]

Being that SCOTUS has given the world. Can you share a bit about what that means?

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Well, it's a tricky term to bring in to this moment because in a number of cases it's being misunderstood. So let me explain how I understand Unobasia being. It's really an insight, it's SCOTUS insight about the relationship between our mind and reality. SCOTUS introduces the argument around the university of the term being, or the concept. Being is probably a better way of saying it, the concept being. When he's exploring how in the world theology can be a science in a strong sense, can give us real now, not science like physics, but give us scientific knowledge, knowledge that we can be confident about. So he says, you know, unless we were equipped with a concept that can bridge our experience of the world with our experience of God, nothing we say about God based upon our experience of the world is valid. Because if there's this gigantic gap between my everyday experience of love, of goodness, of kindness, of people, how do we know what mercy is? Well, we know it because we've experienced it, but we've experienced it through a human being. Now, is that mercy is my experience of mercy that I'm now really deeply committed to. Can I say that about God? And SCOTUS says, well, folks, unless there is some way that our mind is framed to no reality. Alan Walter uses the term isomorphic, that the mind and the world are isomorphic. And maybe Jung talks about this too, that the way the mind knows is the way the world is. And that's not naive. It simply says that we have a capacity that's a genuine capacity to know the world. And, you know, we need critical thinking, we need to analyze things so we're not just going to take things at face value, but there is a foundational connection that enables us to be able to use language to talk about our own experience and to talk about God. And in order to ground that logically, he says, well, there has to be a single concept that is used when I speak of my own experiences and when I speak of God. So for me, this is how I understand it. It's the word what? What is it? What am I thinking about? What am I talking about? What am I doing? Now, of course, that's in English, right? And he was from Scotland, so he would have had a Anglo Saxon English type of vocabulary and a frame of thinking that would be like English. So can I think about God in terms of what? In other words, what is God like? What is this big being? What is the source of all things? And if I can use that term for creation, what day is it? Right? And I can use that term when I speak of God, then language has a connection that enables me to make sense of my experience as a spiritual journey that leads me to God. So what it doesn't mean is that I am God. What it doesn't mean is that God is creation. What it doesn't mean is that everything is everything else. Right? It doesn't mean that because you couple univocity of being with hexeity and then you've got the bridge from knowing to being and you've got the particularity of every being that exists. I'm not saying God is me. I'm not saying I'm God. I'm not even saying that the way I am is the way God is. What I'm saying is I can think about myself and help my own experience of thinking about myself and my own life and my life experience to say something meaningful about God. So to be able to say that God is love, that has no meaning unless I have myself experienced human love in my life, from my parents, in my family, from my friends, so that I know something about what it means to say that something is love and then to say, okay, well, let me attribute that now to God and I'll do it in a sentence. I'll use the verb is, which is the univocal term. It's the way in which we think about reality and how we make sense in language. So the university of being is a very, very intricate, complex part of SCOTUS thought. I think it is absolutely foundational to understanding ourselves, understanding the world, and understanding God.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So what I've loved in our whole conversation up to this point is the dignity of the individual, the dignity of things, and then even this, the dignity of our experience. I know so many of our listeners. Their journey is to learn what it means that they are loved. Like you said, this isn't about loving us, loving God. It's about realizing that we are loved. And for so many of us, their journey is to figure out what that means if they've not experienced love in their life. But the dignifying of that real, concrete, real world experience mattering is so profound, and I think the exact opposite of what a lot of our listeners might think about when they think about theology. Not to be too trite about it, but I think a lot of folks are intimidated by theology because they think it is so far removed from their lived experience. I love this notion of, of scotus. Not necessarily the easiest thinker to appreciate, but someone immersed in the celebration of experience, reality and beauty that's profound and.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Gratitude and it's all about and now what am I going to do with this insight? I'm not going to fold in on myself and just be me, myself and I. No, it's about recognizing, as Thomas Merton does, in that beautiful reflection in conjectures of a guilty bystander. I looked around and I saw that everybody was shining with light. And I hadn't noticed that before. And so it is this sense of when we get to the deepest part of our own experience of reality, we're suddenly connected with all these others in a way that we can't describe because we recognize the community that we are, the family that we are, that we are all brothers and sisters, we're all equal in that way and we're unequal in that we're not the same as each other. So it's the university of being anxiety. Together make this kind of explosion of a beautifully diverse world which is a celebration of God's creativity. And you know, it was Bonaventure that says that, that if the world were not this diverse, it would inhibit God's creative power. And so the fact that there's all of this diversity and more than we can even imagine is a testimony to how creative God is.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

It's amazing. But as we leave our listeners, I'm struck by in the Franciscan tradition, there is this celebration of beauty that is not a looking away from the suffering of the world. And there's a celebration of the individual and the this ness of each person and each thing and each animal and creation itself that is not a looking away from the wholeness. What would you leave our listeners with in living in the both end of that?

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Well, it's, I would say it's embrace the dynamism of reality. Nothing is static. So even the both and can become a kind of either or static. Right. It's the moving back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. You know, I live in California and so you go out to the ocean and you watch the waves and it's so calming and soothing because they're going out, they're coming back and they're going out, they're coming back. And we talk about the perichoresis, which is the Trinity, the dance. It's all in movement. And so it's even beyond the both and it's embracing a movement that we're inside of, not looking at from outside. It was a surprise to the fish to learn that he was in water. Well, I think when we enter eternal life, we're going to be Surprised to discover that we may have been searching for God all our lives, to understand more. To understand more. But in actual fact, we were always surrounded by God and couldn't see it because we thought it was far away. So your point about people who think theology is something other than themselves? Well, that's not theology. Or it is theology, but it's not good theology. It's more abstract. I mean, it's the experience of the divine all around us that unleashes the dynamism of life and love in the world. And we just have to put time aside every day to get back in touch with that dynamism so that it fuels us to go out. We don't stay with the dynamism. We go out and we share it with others.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I mean, could we ask for a better way to end than that? That was.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Well, thank you. That was a tough question.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That was a great answer. That was a great answer.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Thank you.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Oh, my gosh.

[Paul Swanson]

That was a great answer.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

This has been so good. Sister Mary Beth, thank you so much. I've learned a bunch and been inspired by this conversation. We so appreciate you introducing our listeners and my friends at the coffee shop and everyone else to the importance of SCOTUS and, oh, my gosh, the invitation to slow down and pay attention to the divine all around us.

[Mike Petro]

Goodness.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah. That's so beautifully said. And then also to act, to not just rest on your laurels, but there's the. The deeper invitation of deeper participation to see that, take a risk and take a risk and see that everywhere and risk being hurt. I love it. Spirituality with tease.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

That's right.

[Drew Jackson]

Oh, my gosh.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

And the willingness to risk being hurt.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Wow.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Goodness gracious.

[Paul Swanson]

Thank you so much, Mary Beth.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Thank you both.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So good. This has been awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

You're very welcome. Thanks for the invitation.

[Paul Swanson]

It was so fun to be in conversation with Sister Mary Beth Ingham. Her intellect and, like, her approach from this multi varied way of seeing truth, beauty, and goodness in this world and in this theology just really inspires me. And Drew, one thing that she said at the end that I just wanted to reiterate here, a quote that just kind of really touched me is when she says, it's the experience of the divine all around us that unleashes the dynamism of life and love in the world. And we just have to put time aside every day to get back in touch with that dynamism so that it fuels us to go out. And I love, like, the grandiosity of that and our own small participation in that. And it just feels like an achingly beautiful way to seek to participate in the world. That's what struck me. Drew, I would love to hear, as you sitting with this conversation, what drew you in, because you started us out with this beautiful reflection on how the university of being really spoke to you.

[Drew Jackson]

I think what's really landing with me or sticking out to me is her reflections on beauty and the particular ways that she talked about her sort of aha moment, you know, talking about the walk that she went on and really struggling with the text of SCOTUS and not really understanding all that he was saying or how all of the things kind of made sense together. I mean, she said it made sense, and it didn't make sense. But as she was on this walk and just witnessing the beauty of the world in something as mundane as a walk, that it struck her that maybe this is what SCOTUS was trying to do, was to describe an experience of beauty. And as I think about that and I think about this idea, this grand idea of the university of being and the oneness of everything, and alongside of that, this ness that is so central to SCOTUS work, it's like the interplay between those two things is where this beauty, this harmony, is seen, right? Where it comes to life. When you think about how me or any one of us or any particular creature being has its own uniqueness and distinctness, and yet as part of this larger whole, it's the harmony that exists between everything as each individual thing is singing its own note, is playing its own tune, and how all of those things work together, that that is the harmony is the beauty, right? And the beauty is also in the fact that not everything is the same. Not all of us are the same. There's this harmony in our distinctness, in our uniqueness brought together in this larger thing that the divine is working, has been working from the beginning and is continuing to unfold that we participate in. If I sit with that, it prompts me to ask the question again, what is my note to sing? How do I participate in this larger thing that God is unfolding, that I'm a participant in? It's the question that we often ask here at the center, right? What is ours to do? What is mine to do? I think it's an invitation for all of us and for our listeners to consider the question, what is the note that I'm being invited to sing, the tune that I'm being invited to play in this larger orchestra that God is directing as all of eternity is unfolding and that we're participating in. We're being invited to play that song, so how are we being invited to play our part and that God brings it together so it harmonizes and makes a beautiful, beautiful sound of love.

[Podcast Closing Narrator]

Thanks for listening to this podcast by the center for Action and Contemplation, an educational nonprofit that introduces seekers to the contemplative Christian path of transformation. To learn more about our work, Visit [e-mail] Everything belongs is made possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters and the shared work of Mike Petro, Paul.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Swanson, Drew Jackson, Jenna Kuyper, Izzy Spitz, Megan Hare, Sarah Paul, Dorothy Abrams, Brandon.

[Podcast Closing Narrator]

Strange, Vanessa Yee and me, Corey Wayne. The music you hear is composed and provided by our friends Hammock and we'd also like to thank Sound on Studios for all of their work in post production. From the high desert of New Mexico, we wish you peace and every good.

[Paul Swanson]

Sa.

[Sister Mary Beth Ingham]

Foreign.

[Podcast Narrator]

Do you feel called to walk a more contemplative path? The center for Action and Contemplation is an educational nonprofit supporting the journey of inner transformation. Our programs and resources will help grow your consciousness, deepen your profile, practice, and strengthen your compassionate engagement with the world. Learn more about our resources such as publications, podcasts, email series and [e-mail].