← Everything Belongs: Living the Teachings of Richard Rohr Forward
Everything Belongs: Living the Teachings of Richard Rohr Forward
The Tears of Things: Your Questions Answered
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- [00:00]
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
You're listening to a podcast by the center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit cac.org welcome back.
- [00:09]
Mike Petro
Folks to another episode of Everything Belongs. This is our final episode on the Tiers of things and in just a few minutes we're going to be discussing some of your questions. But first I have to tell you, it has been a bomb for me to have these sanity making conversations. So thank you again to our guests. Thank you, thank you to Richard. And big, big thank yous to our podcast team. From the center for action and contemplation, I'm mike petro.
- [00:44]
Paul Swanson
I'm paul swanson.
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Carmen Acevedo Butcher
I'm carmen acevedo.
- [00:47]
Mike Petro
Butcher.
- [00:47]
Cassidy Hall
I'm cassidy hall.
- [00:49]
Drew Jackson
And I'm drew jackson.
- [00:50]
Mike Petro
And this is everything belongs. It has been so good be in these conversations. And one of my favorite conversation partners this year has been Cassidy hall, who was a guest with us this season in our episode on the Three Isaiahs. And you might not know this, who has worked with us behind the scenes on each and every single episode. I am thrilled to announce to folks that you will be joining us next season as one of our regular hosts on Everything Belongs. I could not be happier. I have to ask you, what has been your favorite part of this journey with the tears of things looking back on the last year.
- [01:38]
Cassidy Hall
Yeah, thanks Mike. I'm so excited to be joining the conversation. But I have to admit, Mike, I love that you're welcoming me by asking me an almost impossible question. Indeed, what a great season it was hearing from Walter Fluker, Jackie Lewis, Randy Woodley, and so many other wise, wise teachers. I also think back to that first episode titled Good Trouble. I vividly remember being on a walk when Drew's blessing at the very end of that episode washed over me. And in that blessing, I keep thinking back to this. In that blessing at the very beginning of this season, he asked us, would you go from wherever you are in the prophetic spirit and find yourself in good and necessary trouble, stirring up chaotic love for the sake of the flourishing of our world? And in that blessing, in a form of a question that has just like followed me throughout this entire season as we've journeyed through this book and in this time in history.
- [02:33]
Mike Petro
That's just amazing. And I feel like that question has gotten more and more potent for me with each episode and with each month that has passed since Drew asked us. You, you know, so many folks listened along and they had their own conversations about the book in reading groups, with friends, on the Internet, in person. Thank you to everyone who listened along. And thanks especially to those of you who wrote in and shared your experience with us of reading the Tears of Things. You know, Cassidy, you know what's coming. One listener especially sent us something that touched us so deeply it had all of us in tears and we just wanted to share it. Dear CAC Friends, this season of Everything Belongs and the book the Tears of Things accompanied me as I cared for my beloved husband of 49 years, Tom. Tom died of ALS on November 24, 18 months after the diagnosis. In the spring, a woman who writes a blog called A Joyful Sorrow about her reflections in caring for her husband who was diagnosed with als, posted the Rosemary Trommer poem for When People Asked. It spoke to everything I was feeling and reeling from. Then to find out, the poem opened the Tears of Things. Well, a cosmic entanglement for sure. I would listen to the podcast episodes or slowly read the book at night after Tom went to sleep. It's become a way of connecting my ongoing movement from anger to sadness to tears, witnessing the devastation wrought on Tom's body and trying my best to care for him, to connect all that to the deep story. Thank you for helping me place Tom's and my story in the bigger, deeper story. It does indeed all come down to love, harsh and dreadful and miraculous, as the winding down from exhaustion and the living into a new reality happens. One step forward, two steps back. I thank you for the ways you have accompanied me this year. Peace. Kathy wow. Cassidy.
- [04:47]
Cassidy Hall
Yeah, deep breath.
- [04:50]
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
Mike.
- [04:50]
Cassidy Hall
You and I have read that a couple times and are moved to tears every time. What a gift to be in community with the listeners in such a way and to be along on each other's journeys. And that message reminds me not just of the actual tears of things in this life, but also the reality of things. One thing I love about these episodes is it's a time where we get to be more in dialogue with each other and more in conversation. So, you know, when we invited listeners to send in questions for this episode, we could learn more about things we all might still be wrestling with, thinking through and the many ways that we engaged in deep conversation this season. Questions were sent in from all over the world. We heard from some of you in Belgium, Ohio, Florida, Texas, New York, Canada. And as Mike just said, some were reading in groups along with us, others were joining on their solitary journey, and some were amid a journey of grief, like Kathy.
- [05:51]
Mike Petro
So many good questions. Thank you to every one of you who sent questions in. We did our best to select questions that felt like they were in the spirit of what other folks were asking. And please know if we don't ask, your question doesn't mean that it's not important and precious to us as we let it inform our process in building future seasons of Everything Belongs. But before we get to those questions, Cassidy, I so appreciated your episode. It was one of my favorites and one of the things that came up all season and became really, really clear in the conversation you and I had with Carmen is to look and listen for who's missing in the conversation, whether we're looking at the tiers of things. And it lets us ask, hey, where are the women prophets? Where are the queer prophets? Where are the prophets that are outside of the mainstream? Richard tells us to notice who's missing when we pay attention to who's been suppressed. That often shows us the shadow of. Of the dominant culture, and it shows us what our culture truly worships. It often also points us to the folks who have the medicine that we need, the wisdom we need for our shared wounds. So, Cassidy, my first question for you is, why is it so crucial to listen to who or what seems to be missing? And honestly, how do we do that?
- [07:17]
Cassidy Hall
I love this question because it's one I have to continue to ask myself and remind myself to think about. And in this season, we thought about the prophetic, and we learned that we often see and hear the prophetic on the margins. I was reading James cone the other day, the Cross and the Lynching Tree. And in this book, James cone writes, the real scandal of the gospel is humanity's salvation is revealed in the cross of the condemned criminal Jesus. And humanity's salvation is available only through our solidarity with the crucified people in our midst. Meaning to me, those suffering in our midst, those navigating, hurt, loss, pain, those in need. So I hear this as the real scandal of the gospel, which I love that phrase will stir up love for those hurting in my life, my community, my world. The real scandal of the gospel is a call to solidarity, which is something, Mike, you and I have been talking about a lot. How do we do that? Because I think that's the hardest question you asked, right?
- [08:18]
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
How?
- [08:18]
Mike Petro
Yeah, for sure.
- [08:20]
Cassidy Hall
And that begins with, I think, our own vulnerability and humility. Because solidarity is not hierarchy. Solidarity is about equality and equity. Solidarity is about the recognition that the human experience in all of its extremes, in all of its forms, could be upon us at any time and in any way. Solidarity is truly loving our neighbors as ourselves, our neighbors next door, our neighbors in other states, our neighbors in other countries. So I think when we really look and listen for who and what is missing, as so many of us have learned to do from womanist scholars and theologians, we get to understand more of God's image in our midst. And I think we have to be open to the discomfort of that because we don't get to see more of our image that we've created of the divine, but more of the reality of God's image. So for me, all I can say for me is that a lot of the work is in paying attention, putting aside what I think I know, and putting into questions some of the narratives I find comfort in. Because voices and truths on the margins, as we've learned this season from the prophets. Right. Are voices that will always point us to more discomfort because they are always concerned with the greater good, the liberation of all people and not the comfort of a few, as the season has taught us. Yeah. The prophetic is coming from those spaces of where we see voices missing and where we need to listen.
- [09:44]
Mike Petro
So good. So much wisdom there. Cassidy, I doubt I've ever told you this story, but, you know, I love that you referenced James Cone. I once had a conversation with him waiting for a bus, and it was when I was an undergrad, and it was one of the most impactful conversations of my life. I still think about it all the time, 30 years later. And what we were talking about was I had watched him get in an argument with a room of all white theology professors. And what they were saying, and this was a long time ago, this was 30 years ago, was, you know, our students don't believe that racism is a thing anymore. They think it's something that got solved in the 60s, and it's a thing of the past. And what Dr. Cohn was telling them was, when you are in a room of all white people talking to all white people, that's a very easy belief to have. The secret is to listen to who's missing, pay attention to who's not in the room, so that we're not in an echo chamber. And I watched Dr. Cohn have to literally raise his voice and yell at someone to get them to hear what they did not want to hear. Back then, we used to call that educating in the presence of an absence. Right. But this idea of noticing who's not there and then listening to the stories of others to expand our own experience seems to be such a pivotal and important aspect of us living as prophetic people in times that call for that. And I think the tears of things is guiding us into that.
- [11:17]
Cassidy Hall
And we have a question about something, Mike, that you jokingly refer to as the missing chapter and the tiers of things. So here Richard encourages us that we cannot understand Jesus if we do not understand the prophets. And he talks about Jesus as prophet, but not to be confused with the Jesus we make in our image here. He talks about the fierce and wild Jesus, the prophet Jesus.
- [11:45]
Mike Petro
How does it deepen our understanding of Jesus now on the other side of tears of things, to think of him as a prophet?
- [11:54]
Richard Rohr
I think it's needed to counterbalance the Sunday school image that most of us grew up with of Jesus, a sweet good shepherd, which all fits in, he was. But you separate that from the prophet and you don't get the full Jesus. And that's what we pretty much did in certainly American Christianity was the Sunday school version, which was a version appropriate for kids. I don't think they're ready for sacred criticism. So first you have to have the capacity for the affirmative, which Jesus exemplifies. But when it's used to eliminate Jesus the critic, you haven't got Jesus anymore, which is what we're stuck with.
- [12:46]
Mike Petro
Yeah, I can see where the nice Jesus doesn't jive well with the prophetic Jesus. And I've heard you for the decade that I've been a student of your teachings, Richard. I've heard you say over and over again that a weak Christology is captured by culture. We interpret Jesus through the cultural lens that we have. What do you think the danger is for American culture to interpret Jesus through its own lens? And how's that showing up right now?
- [13:14]
Richard Rohr
He becomes harmless, innocuous, safe, not worth engaging with. And that's what's happened. He's been too easy to throw out of the public conversation because all he would say is, peace be with you. You know, which I don't want to make fun of. It sounded like it. But peace I give is not the peace that the world gives. It's not this sweet peace. It's a suffered through to peace. I don't know how we're going to re establish that in the Christian conversation, but the educated person doesn't take Jesus seriously. How did we get to that? They're embarrassed by him being brought up as part of the conversation.
- [14:08]
Mike Petro
It seems it's easy to make Jesus be what we want him to be. I think about we can cut this part, but I think about he's malleable.
- [14:15]
Richard Rohr
To the ego, to the culture.
- [14:17]
Mike Petro
Jesus is like soft clay that we can just sculpt into Whatever we need him to be to justify us.
- [14:24]
Paul Swanson
It's almost like we've professionalized Jesus as like, you work for this church, you clock in, you clock out, you show up on time, you say the nice things, you don't trouble the waters where the examples in the gospel takes that evolving understanding of the image you first get when you're a child to understand that Jesus does love you, but that love is much grittier and more fierce.
- [14:48]
Richard Rohr
Love is a harsh and dreadful thing. Yes. Dorothy Day.
- [14:54]
Paul Swanson
We've taken the wildness out of Jesus.
- [14:56]
Richard Rohr
That's a good word. Yeah, yeah.
- [14:59]
Mike Petro
The Jesus who would flip tables or call Herod a fox or tell people they need to repent.
- [15:04]
Paul Swanson
Right.
- [15:04]
Mike Petro
Well, Richard, for those of us who can still call ourselves Christians, or for those of us, whatever we call ourselves, you know, we're committed to the Christ path and the imitation of Christ. What does it mean for us to recognize that what we're imitating is a prophet? What does it mean to live a prophetic Christianity right now?
- [15:24]
Richard Rohr
It gives you the freedom and the ability to speak the shadow side of everything, which it always has to expose it not for the sake of meanness, but for the sake of truth. It gives you the voice. Well, there's another side to that, you know, it gives you the freedom to speak that way to the president, to the government, to the legal system. And prophets point out things like that.
- [15:55]
Mike Petro
Feels like a moment in time where we need some good prophetic Christianity right now.
- [15:59]
Richard Rohr
Right. It's so needed, but it's not allowed when the voices that be immediately step in and whitewash a killing without any time to have studied the evidence. And that's got to be visible to the whole country. Lord, how did we get to this? That's what imperial Christianity is used to. There's our version, and it overspeaks everything else immediately after the killing or after the catastrophe. Here's the version. Don't bother me with an investigation. It basically oversteps all critical thinking, and the prophet insists on critical thinking.
- [16:51]
Mike Petro
Gosh, that guy. I love him so much. Cassidy. I know that Richard's book on the Sermon on the Mount is probably his best answer to what it looks like when we listen to Jesus as a prophet. And what's really exciting is that there will eventually be a season of everything belongs on that book. And that'll be so great when we get to it.
- [17:11]
Cassidy Hall
I can't wait for that season. And I know it's going to challenge me just like this one did. I think it's one thing for us to say that we need this fierce and wild Jesus, but a whole different thing to say. We're willing to follow him because we know that path is never easy or simple. I mean, we learned that this season in the way of the prophets. Speaking of being challenged, the tears of things brought up for me a lot of challenges with these violent God images of the Hebrew scriptures. And I know that that came up for a lot of us because some of these texts are just really, really challenging. All of the war and violence. And why is God like that? And we received another great question specifically about this topic from a listener that Richard also responds to.
- [17:58]
Mike Petro
I'm going to ask you a question from our listener, Sharon. She writes this good morning from St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands where the roosters are praising God to greet the day. Father Richard, what do you think about all the references to war in the Bible? As a patriot and a pacifist, I cringe when I read about thousands of lives being trashed seemingly at God's hands. Are these lost lives collateral damaged like the pigs into whom Jesus sent the legion of demons? As a veterinarian, a vegetarian and a humane sympathizer, this one also troubles me. I've always just written these things off as instances where I have to just trust God. But when my husband said he didn't think much of Scripture because of all the violent images, all the times God says I will crush your enemies, I fumbled for an answer. All I could say was, what if the enemy is cancer or hunger or addiction or war itself? From Sharon, Richard, what do we do with all these images of war and all these seeming commands to violence coming from God in the Bible?
- [19:09]
Richard Rohr
We were given the impression that the whole Bible, and I know what we're trying to say when we say it is inspired, therefore everything in there is high level. In fact, it's an evolutionary document that charts the growth of Israel. The growth facilitators are called prophets. But left to themselves, the Jewish people are as violent as anybody to this day, just as the Christians are.
- [19:39]
Mike Petro
As are Christians.
- [19:40]
Paul Swanson
Yeah.
- [19:41]
Richard Rohr
If you don't have that self correcting element inserted clearly in the text, in the whole anthology of books that the Bible is. And that's what it is. It's a whole bunch of books from different periods from people at different levels of consciousness. If you don't insert that, the Bible is dangerous, which is exactly what it's been up to now in most of history. Why empires could misuse it, kings could misuse it, angry people could misuse it, and they Did. It feels like it's only in the last 50 years that we've had the freedom to see that. We call it liberation theology. Seeing the Bible as a liberating text, not a confirming of my already existing prejudices, and a text basically telling us to be nice, which is just harmless. You'll end up being not very nice at all if that's how you read the text. A lesson in being nice. It's ironic, you end up being hateful because there's no self observation, there's no self criticism. But very few denominations were trained to read the Bible that way. The Mennonites, the Amish. But even they were selective in what they saw as healthy capacity for criticism. It's not their fault the culture didn't allow them to go all the way.
- [21:24]
Mike Petro
It's interesting, early Origen called out these passages very specifically. He would point to passages where supposedly God was commanding people to murder women and children and calling for violence. And he said that our job was to grow past those passages and never to be satisfied with an interpretation of scripture that was not worthy of, of God and the God of love. But it seems we always lose the ability to be critical of our own religion and pardon the free association. I think of a conversation I had with a friend one time, and he said to me, I don't believe in religion. I only believe in science because every war that's ever been fought in human history was fought in the name of religion. And I shot back and said, well, I don't believe in science, which is not true, of course I believe in science. But I said, I don't believe in science because every war that's ever been fought in human history has been fought with the tools of science. And he laughed and we acknowledged that, you know, there's so much in science and religion for the healing of humanity, and yet it seems like we can take the very best things and still use them to inflict our hurt on others.
- [22:38]
Richard Rohr
And we're given so much leeway to, to do that, so much permission by seeming leaders and clergy who are not healed people themselves yet. And so they sort of thirst at the violent texts. Thirst isn't the word. I wanted savor something that gives them permission to be violent or hateful. I mean, your friend was right. It's amazing how much of religion has produced hateful people. And Jesus points it out. Your religion says to you, love your neighbor, but hate your enemy. He knows that's the way we think. Hate your enemy. So all you gotta do is find a justification to Name him an enemy.
- [23:28]
Paul Swanson
What it brings up for me is our inability to work with limitations. How do we look at a scripture text with our own limited way of viewing through it, Acknowledging that we can't just take everything as it is. There's some things we need to outgrow.
- [23:42]
Richard Rohr
Yes.
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Mike Petro
Yeah.
- [23:43]
Paul Swanson
And then if you take the other side of the tools of science that have been used for violence, we don't have a good track record of self limiting tools of destruction. We don't respect the limits of what's possible and also the limits of what's possible in our own destruction.
- [23:57]
Richard Rohr
Yes. Voracious appetite to expand itself, to increase itself. And if there isn't a limiting factor that it's inserted into the equation. Religion is used for nefarious purposes. And that's true in Judaism, Islam and Christianity and Hinduism too. It seems to have become most dangerous in the three monotheistic religions that we insist on an agreed image of God. He's always our God, always representing our team, which allows us to eliminate everybody else's unimportant, not good, bad, dangerous, heathen.
- [24:46]
Mike Petro
It seems like all of these religions always the prophet lives in tension with the king, or the prophet is in tension with empire, or always with the preferential option for the poor and the downtrodden and the outsider.
- [24:59]
Richard Rohr
Always. That just only started getting developed 50 years ago. The recognition of God always being on the side of the poor.
- [25:08]
Paul Swanson
And that's certainly a crucible for the prophet to be in.
- [25:12]
Richard Rohr
Yes, it is. Because they always know the powers that be will be immediately offended by that very thought. Those who are eliminated always reveal what the culture idolizes. That's why you want to look for who is the poor person, the person we have no time for. It reveals what we worship, what we really worship. That's why Jesus had to get rid of the animal worship in the temple, because this is what you're really worshiping. Yahweh by animal sacrifice. It's a smokescreen to show what you really worship is the whole temple system itself. That makes you the saved and everybody outside of Jerusalem the enemy.
- [26:09]
Cassidy Hall
I love what was said there. Let's look at the biblical text as an evolutionary document that charts the growth of Israel. And the growth facilitators are called prophets. I just love thinking about the prophets in our midst and the prophetic as these guides almost, these chaplains, these midwives of growth and that critical need for self observation and self criticism. And if we don't use and read the text with the lens of liberation for all people, we are missing the point. That was just such a powerful response for me.
- [26:41]
Mike Petro
You know, I think the way I would say it is that love is the greatest lens. Right. It's the holy hermeneutic. It's wild to think about the Bible is ever asking us to grow up in our reading of it, and it's giving us these prompts. This is a statement that sometimes is confusing for people, but it's why I try to remember to read the Bible mythically instead of literally or historically. And I don't mean mythically in the sense of a myth that is untrue. But I think of myths as stories that help us make meaning. You know, myths are messy and they're mystical and they're mysterious, and they have multiple meanings. Myths motivate us. They move us deeper and deeper and deeper, and they're alive, and they don't like to be stuck in a simple, rigid meaning. I said it there and I'll say it again. Like Origen says, I never want to be satisfied with a meaning that is not worthy of the God of love.
- [27:44]
Cassidy Hall
Amen to that. I love that you use the word messy because messy is not bad, right? Yeah, messy is real. Messy is real. And I love that you brought to the conversation the topic of myth, because I'm so excited now to hear from co host Carmen Acevedo Butcher, who responds to a question somewhat about this. A question from Elda, who is in a study group in Canada. And Elda writes much as Mike Petro said on each podcast, each chapter has become our new favorite. We spent two weeks on chapter seven and had much discussion on the meaning of, quote, if we do not mythologize our pain, all we can do is pathologize it. And she writes. Any insights on what that means would be helpful. Sincerely, Elda and others from the study group. Let's hear from Carmen on that.
- [28:37]
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
Thank you, Cassidy and Michael. If we don't mythologize our pain, we just pathologize it. And thank you, Elda, that's such a good question. And everybody in the study group. So for me, being, you know, dyslexic, when. Whenever I get a question like that, I have to go to the essential words of it. So mythologize and pathologize. Because until I understand what those mean, really, I really can't get to the question itself. So mythologize actually means to make a story of. I mean, mythologize sounds like a $10 word, and I suppose it is, but at its heart, it means to use the mouth to share, in other words, to tell a story. And what I like about that, especially as a trauma survivor, is to remember, to re member myself, to tell my own narrative, to restory and restore my history, to mythologize. Because I think sometimes what we think when we hear mythology is to make it like Zeus, thunderbolty. But actually what it means to me is I find in my story where my story opens up into everyone's story, others and the story. So the story of the universe in Richard's egg, the story of love. And then if I don't do that, which is really a joyful thing to do, full of self compassion, yes, heartbreak. But at the same time, to love is to have one's heart broken. If I don't do that, then I pathologize it. And the heart of the word pathologize is to suffer. And for me, what that means in my experience is if I don't embrace my story with that Rogerian, unconditional positive regard that Jim Finley often talks about, in which I love Carl Rogers myself, if I don't do that, then what I end up thinking is that I am where I am, broken. I spent a lot of years thinking I was depression when I was depressed and having a lot of self loathing, that is pathologizing it, thinking I am my self loathing, thinking I am my self hate. Instead of seeing how did this happen? Who am I really? And opening my story up to seeing where it fits in with other people who have suffered childhood abuse and difficulties in evangelical churches and church wounds. And really, and as Michael Petro often says, you know, finding the wisdom in my wounds, that to me is mythologizing it. So becoming the heroine of my own story in a way that takes the wisdom that comes from that and brings it to the community and then we all share it together. And I think because we are all sort of taught to be passive takers, we take in other stories on the TV or on the Internet or wherever we get our media, I think we can forget the fact that people used to sit around campfires and tell stories, that mythology, this is a very human, very deep, just part of being human is to tell these stories and to tell our own story and to have that agency. So that's what it means to me. And what I love about it is that it really does bring me face to face with love and with the fact that Julianne of Norwich says God is nearer to us than our own soli, that God is closer to us than our own soul that God loves me and is right here.
- [32:44]
Mike Petro
Everything belongs will continue in a moment.
- [32:54]
Paul Swanson
We want to be healed and empowered so we can participate in healing and empowering other people.
- [33:00]
Richard Rohr
That's why hundreds of thousands of us.
- [33:03]
Paul Swanson
Receive the Daily Meditations from the CAC every day. We wake up in the morning and find in our inbox a brief and insightful message that gives us good news.
- [33:14]
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
That was Father Richard Rohr's colleague Brian McLaren talking about the new theme for the Daily Meditations, the free daily, weekly and monthly email series from Richard Rohr and cac. The the start of a new year is the perfect time to commit or recommit to your practice. Learn more and sign up@cac.org daily26 that's cac.org d a I l y 26 we hope you can attend CAC's next virtual event on March 13, 2026. This online gathering poses the question, how do we find hope in hard times? CAC's dean of faculty, Carmen Acevedo Butcher will be featured at this 90 minute event. Carmen will be joined by our special gu New York Times best selling author Cole Arthur Riley who appears often in our Daily Meditations as well as Grammy Award winning musician John Batiste. Learn more@cac.org hope that's cac.org hope.
- [34:26]
Mike Petro
Carmen is so wise and she nailed this when Richard says if we don't mythologize our pain, we'll pathologize it. Unless I'm mistaken, he's quoting the late great archetypal psychologist James Hillman from his appropriately titled Revisioning Psychology, which is a profoundly visionary book. And I think it's important to remember this because we live in a moment in time where very often our pathology is our mythology. So many of us go through this moment in time utterly and completely defined by our wounds instead of letting our wounds be invitations to healing. Carmen and I talk about this all the time and I love that she referenced that. It's our wounds that very often set us out on our wandering and shape our life path, but they also give us our wondering, the questions that we wrestle with and they lead us to our wisdom. And I think that's the essence of mythologizing, letting it be an invitation. What we said earlier, myths are invitations to make meaning. And in that process, myths are messy. Myths are multiple. They invite us to tell the story over and over and over again in different ways. Myths are mutual. They connect us to each other and and myths are medicinal. They are stories told with the intention of healing and that doesn't mean we put a bow on something before it's ready, but it is an invitation to lean into meaning. Okay, I could go on and on about this for hours and I won't. But I get super excited about it. What do you think, Cassidy?
- [36:07]
Cassidy Hall
You know I love what you said. We so need story. And with what you said and what Carmen shared, we also need each other. She talked about using the mouth to share and it makes me think of the fact that we need a witness. We need to be seen and heard by each other and to pathologize is to suffer. So how critical to think about it is being seen and increasing our wisdom rather than internalizing it and suffering through it. But also this ever present question of balancing solitude and community, which makes me think of this pathologizing and mythologizing in the sense of in community, witnessing is possible, so telling our stories is possible. In solitude. It's not that it's not possible, but I think it reminds us of the need for the balance between those two. So this next question is one I love reflecting on, but it's a layered question as it comes from someone who has experienced that unchosen solitude forced upon them by illness. So let's hear the question and then what Richard, Paul and my captorshare.
- [37:14]
Paul Swanson
This comes from one of our listeners in Belgium from Nelly. Nelly writes, the question that lives in my heart is, not coincidentally about community. There is great value in aloneness. I know this better than most. I've spent months and years in solitary confinement due to ill health. And I gathered so much wisdom there, not just through reading or listening, but through going through the being alone and also just the being instead of the doing. But I have sorely missed community over my 25 years of soul searching and shadowboxing. It seems here in secularized Western Europe we walk inverted paths. Solitude first, community after. Since secularization, people in search of spirituality had to figure it out alone. Some like me, wandering through all the stories, some clinging to one story they found along the way, some losing themselves entirely due to the lack of grounding or community. I feel like we are ready for a new form of community. I would love for you to speak to this inverted path of solitude and community. And secondly would love to know if there are Bible stories that speak to this. It is a daunting path and I am humbled before it with much love and gratefulness. Nellie Wow.
- [38:27]
Richard Rohr
I do think we probably need community first to be a corrective to our natural egocentricity. We need to be a part of A group. The trouble is that it creates group think, addiction to belonging, belonging as a substitute for being converted. But if you look at the tradition already, starting in the early centuries, in the second half of life, there emerged the monk and the hermit and the pilgrim who wandered apart from the community. So what I think she's probably exemplifying is both, which is exactly right. If I hadn't had my first half of life based in relationships, interactions with others, meetings, communal prayer service, I don't think I'd be prepared. But to be honest, a lot of that now is. This is going to sound so arrogant, it feels so boring. Just worrying about what others think and what others want me to do, and the fostering of a deep codependence about other people instead of the radical clarity of what does the soul know and what does the soul have to do?
- [39:59]
Mike Petro
I'm curious, Paul, being your friend the last few years, I feel like you've had a really interesting journey with the importance of being solitary and also being in community, being in family. I'm curious how you'd answer this question.
- [40:13]
Paul Swanson
Yeah, you know, for a long time I never thought I was gonna get married just because of how.
- [40:18]
Richard Rohr
Is that right?
- [40:19]
Paul Swanson
Yeah.
- [40:19]
Richard Rohr
I didn't know.
- [40:20]
Paul Swanson
Just thought, you know, the single life is probably, for me, I'll probably end up as like a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest or something. And I think it is a recognition of the love awakened in both solitude and in community, particularly, you know, first in my marriage and family. And I think of my wife just got back from five days in Colorado and like that, creating space for one another to be in solitude in other ways, because then the return is even better. She comes back fulfilled, revived, and me too, and the things that I'm a part of. And I've also found, like, there's no community that has all the goods.
- [41:02]
Richard Rohr
That's right.
- [41:03]
Paul Swanson
Like I. I'm a part of a numeness community, the community of the incarnation, which I love. It's a backbone of part of my community, but that's a dispersed community. So I'm also part of the local Mennonite church here, and that's a localized community. And like having these kind of rippling effects is really helpful for my own interiority, but it also sort of become overly self referential about. It's about me and my soul without interdependence. I look at Jesus, you know, Jesus was always palling around with the disciples and those followers, but would always go into the wilderness alone.
- [41:37]
Richard Rohr
There you go. It's so clear.
- [41:39]
Paul Swanson
And there's that going out in return. I feel like a solitude and community. How about you, Mike? How does that ring for you in your life?
- [41:48]
Mike Petro
Oh, I just appreciate so much what you both shared. It helps me think about it. 1 First, I want to say one of my favorite running gags is they say the greatest miracle Jesus ever performed was having 12 close friends in his 30s. Twelve close friends in his 30s. You know, as life gets busier and busier, it's harder and harder to make.
- [42:07]
Richard Rohr
I've never heard that.
- [42:08]
Mike Petro
That's hilarious. Yeah. Community and friendship. I grew up in a church, you know, as a teenager that my family founded. So my family was in church. My spiritual teaching was in church. I volunteered and did community service in church. I socialized with people in church and I deconstructed that. Things happen. But I think one of the things I realized is there's always been this longing in me. Since then, it's very unconscious for a one stop shop that I will find a community that will give me everything. So I really appreciate what you said there. No one community can give you everything. No one partner can give you everything. No one practice can give you everything. So being liberated in that and recognizing that community is beautiful. Connection is beautiful. And also I'm glad that nothing can give me everything because it reminds me of the importance of being connected multiple places, but also of the call to interiority to find that solitary place. To get out on the mountain and be alone. To sit down with my journal and be alone. To sit down and practice and be alone. And last, I'll say something that I've really become aware of in the last two years is in some ways I'm never alone, you know, because when I'm in quiet or I'm out in the mountain by myself, I feel like my deceased loved ones are there with me. And I know that animals show up. And I feel like, as crazy as it sounds, I feel like Carl Jung and Julian of Norwich and Origen are with me in some ways. There's that other component. Component too, of never less alone than when alone.
- [43:40]
Richard Rohr
Communion of saints.
- [43:42]
Mike Petro
Yes.
- [43:43]
Richard Rohr
You now have access to all generations and all periods.
- [43:53]
Mike Petro
Cassidy. So Rich. I know that this has been a really intense thing to wrestle with and balance in your own life. I'm curious, what does the dance between solitude and community look like for you?
- [44:07]
Cassidy Hall
You know, I first just have to repeat that line, that opening line from Richard. When he answered, he said, I do think we probably need community first to be corrective to our natural Egocentricity. Just amen to that. And, Mike, you and I have been talking a lot about Howard Thurman's the Sound of the Genuine speech, which he gave in 1980. And I can't help but think of Thurman again here when he says, in that speech, I hear the sound of the genuine in myself. And having learned to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough, to hear the sound of the genuine in you. Now, if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, so that when I look at myself through your eyes, having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me. And the wall that separates and divides will disappear, and we will become one, because the sound of the genuine makes the same music. Now, this is. This is solidarity. This is witnessing. This is community. This is the path of what we talked about earlier. Don't you think?
- [45:11]
Mike Petro
Oh, my gosh. So much so. And I. When I think about the sound of the genuine making the same music, I can't help but think about Dr. B. Who is such a good friend and mentor and who used to say to me, you know, Mike, life has a rhythm, and every now and then you lose it. And when you lose the rhythm, you just got to go back and find it again. And I think that's true for all of us.
- [45:29]
Cassidy Hall
Oh, absolutely. And I think to your point, really listening to the sound of the genuine and really being true and honoring that sacred, true self, you know, all these different, maybe, words for it. It's not simple. It's not easy. It's not always the answer we want about who we are. It's something that does make us recognize that interconnection with all other people when we see parts of ourselves, maybe, that are dark or hard to look at. For me, it creates almost this sense of solidarity with all other people who have experienced that thought, that feeling, that emotion. And we got a really great question from another listener that relates to this in some way. Listener Lee writes, One thing I'd love to hear the group dive into more is how to hold the quote. Tears, for one thing, are tears for all things. How to hold that intention with not allowing that generalization to dilute our resolve to work on very specific, concrete, discrete injustices. Now, I fear that some people will be satisfied with a kind of vague, mystical grief that ends up taking no actual action in the material world. I can't wait to hear Drew respond to this.
- [46:42]
Drew Jackson
Cassidy, it's a great question. Thanks so much for that. Question Lee. And I mean, you're exactly right. Like, anytime we stay at the universal level, whether we're talking about something like grief or love, like, there's a real danger of falling into a vague mysticism that doesn't move us to any real action in the world. Everything can just remain up in the head and abstraction and the real world remains untouched. Like Richard, kind of. He gets at this in his chapter on Amos a little bit when he says theoretical truths that touch no one deeply are hardly truth at all. Yes, truth is universal and absolute, but it must show itself in a specific context. I love that. I think that's so helpful. Are universal abstractions without concrete particulars easily become ideologies that the ego feels it must defend? And one of the things that Richard has always taught and comes a lot from his Franciscan tradition and teachers like the Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus, is the importance of what is often called the scandal of particularity. Duns Scotus called this hexeity or this ness. This is just a way of saying that we can't love or. Or grieve universals. It's really hard and I would say impossible for us as human beings to wrap our hearts around ideas or concepts. This is the brilliance of what Christian theology calls the Incarnation. That's why incarnation matters. Richard says love, or God incarnate, always begins with particulars. This woman, this dog, this beetle, this Moses, this Virgin Mary, this Jesus of Nazareth. It is the individual and concrete that opens the heart space to an I thou encounter. So beautiful. I think the point that Richard is trying to make with this idea of tears for one thing are tears for all things is actually quite the opposite of vague mysticism. But it's really asking us the question, what is the one thing, the one person, the one experience of suffering, the one injustice that breaks your heart and breaks it open? And how is that specific, concrete solidarity and those specific concrete tears pushing out the boundary lines of your heart to be in solidarity with all the suffering of the world? So the only way to get at any true, genuine, universal grief is through the particular and concrete. And we must stay with the particular and the concrete. Or if your starting place is the universal, it has to move to the concrete and the specific. Is your heart breaking over the injustices being done toward immigrants in our country. That's beautiful. That's a beautiful place to be. And the question is, out of that, how might those tears move you to stand alongside your immigrant neighbors, in your neighborhood, in your city, in the place where you are. And so I think the invitation is to pay attention to what is breaking our hearts, because that might be where the spirit is leading us. To show up, to stand in solidarity, to push back against injustices in concrete ways with real people who have names. And so I'll end with this quote from Richard, who says, you can only know anything by meeting it in its precise and irreplaceable this ness and honoring it there. I love that question. It's so important. Thanks so much for the question, Lee.
- [50:38]
Cassidy Hall
Gosh, there's nothing like hearing from a poet and a theologian all in one take. And what a gift it is to hear from Drew on that question in particular. I think when we are really engaged, when we really engage in the present moment, we can learn how to love one thing really, really well, whether it's the human before us or the bird in the sky. And the present moment can also bring that sense of awe. Don't you think, Mike?
- [51:00]
Richard Rohr
Yeah.
- [51:01]
Mike Petro
You know, gosh. So thought provoking. Richard often says, how you do anything is how you do everything. And I think the same thing is true. How you love anything is how you love everything. So the irony here is that universal love, really, I think, often starts with loving one thing. Well, Origen said, to love God and to love good things are one and the same. So I do think it's a real spiritual practice to start committing to love one thing well. Right. So we talk about, listen to what breaks your heart. And I also think it's true to listen to what warms your heart. I know for a lot of us who've experienced a lot of trauma or suffering in our life, it's really terrifying to love. This is something I don't think we talk enough about is how genuinely scary it is to love. For me, I will admit that one of the most profound spiritual practices I have had in my life. Don't laugh. Is owning a cat. I had come through a season in life where my heart had been so completely broken, it had been shattered. I had lost a spiritual community and a friend circle. I had been betrayed by family members that I never thought would betray me. I'd been let down and I'd let other people down. And looking back, I know that my heart was very, very closed off. And right around this time, I adopted my cat and I. I brought him home two days before the pandemic kicked off and we all went into lockdown. And then I was in this place of having this tremendously broken heart and being cut off from the world, stuck at home, interacting with my neighbors from a distance, and strangers threw masks. And I had this cat in my house. And every morning when I woke up, he would jump and sit on my chest and he would headbutt me and he would purr. And I realized that my natural instinct was that I wanted to push him away. And I thought, no, I am actually going to force myself to sit here and be with this cat and be vulnerable with him and give him all the snuggles that he desires until he gets to that moment that inevitably comes where he's like, now, I'm done with you. And he just dashes off into the other room. But this idea of forcing myself to be fully present to this one creature and accept the love that it was giving me and give some in return slowly started to thaw my heart. And then things started to happen. And I think also coming out of lockdown was a part of this. I started to get to know my neighbors. I started to get to know the folks that worked in the Walgreens on the corner and in my favorite coffee shop. And I started to listen for tiny little sound bites about their lives. And I started to catch when they were having a hard day or when I could tell they were carrying a little bit heavier of a burden. And that, to me, was an unexpected place of reconnection and thawing of my heart. So I would say yes, 100%. Pay attention to what breaks your heart and let it start with one thing and one person, but also pay attention to what warms your heart and find those little places that you can start to take risks, to step into a place of loving, loving one thing as a gateway to loving everything. What do you think, Cassidy? Does that make any sense?
- [54:35]
Cassidy Hall
Oh, that resonates so deeply. Yeah. I got my cat packs in a somewhat similar state. And just the way that changed my heart space was such a gift for my life. And I think that we can learn a lot from those seemingly small moments, be it with animals, our pets, our nieces or nephews, our friends, our friends, kids. I think there's so many ways that we can be open to what warms our hearts. And I think that's so crucial, Mike, that you also brought into the conversation trauma, because it's one thing to say go after what breaks your heart, but we need to do that in a way that is safe and to be able to do that in a way that is holding with it what warms our hearts. Because we need to be okay. We need to be okay in order to do that loving action towards the things that break our heart.
- [55:27]
Mike Petro
It's so true. I feel like so much of our spiritual practice and so much of walking the path of the prophet that Richard shares with us in the Tears of Things is a perpetual practice of bringing our heart back online when the world is doing everything it can, every moment of every day, to shock or scare or exhaust or bore us into being numb. And it's this constant invitation, as Howard Thurman says, to listen to the sound of the genuine, to bring our heart back online.
- [56:03]
Cassidy Hall
Yeah. You know, in thinking about these things we've mentioned, these animals we've mentioned, and these kind of little reminders of truth and God's presence, it brings us to another question because we also got to talk with Richard about this being the year of Saint Francis as declared by Pope Leo. And so we got to hear from Richard, a Franciscan, of course, of what that might mean. What does it mean the year of Saint Francis or what could that encourage us towards?
- [56:36]
Paul Swanson
Richard, we know that Pope Leo has declared this year the year of St. Francis.
- [56:41]
Richard Rohr
I just heard that. Yeah. What do you think about Augustinian?
- [56:44]
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
Yeah.
- [56:46]
Paul Swanson
Pulling from the wider collective. Why do you think that this is important right now with everything going on in the world?
- [56:53]
Richard Rohr
Francis exemplifies a joyful, non reactive response to the empire, to the system, to the church itself, by going on the side and doing it more happily, more freely, more joyfully. I don't know Leo's reason exactly, but there's something in Francis that's the universal man that keeps appealing to people because he did it positively, not reactively. You could say he's reactive, but not really. He loves the world, he loves the animals, he loves the brotherhood, even though he has to get away from him.
- [57:40]
Paul Swanson
Well, it kind of reminds me of Nellie's question about, like the inverted culture. And I think about how often we in current culture, it feels inverted of like defining yourself by what you're not, what you're against o rather than what you're for. And St. Francis feels like somebody who knew what they were for and just.
- [57:59]
Richard Rohr
Went about it for the great lover. And therefore all else could be included. The lesser loves can be included in the great love.
- [58:09]
Mike Petro
When I think about what you were saying earlier too, Richard, about how Jesus has become so malleable in some circles, and we can either make Jesus what we want Jesus to be to justify all manner of bad behavior, or Jesus is so easily dismissible and Christ have mercy, that should not be the case. The real Jesus demands to be taken very seriously. But there's something About Francis. I have friends in so many different places on the spectrum of reactivity to Christianity, from folks who love it, to folks who are skeptical, to folks that hate it. But Francis just seems to walk through that like Jesus passing through the crowd. He seems so universally well received. What do you think it is that he carries that people almost universally or to very large numbers respect Francis as sort of being the real thing.
- [59:01]
Richard Rohr
It sounds so glib to say his positivity that we're tired of sin management, which is the version of Christianity so many of us were given. And Francis moves beyond sin management to delight in animals, nature, brother, son, sister, moon, creation itself. We want to reposition ourselves in a non sin based religion that's based in nature, creation, the universe. I love to watch these nature shows and these whole scientific shows on the mycellae and the heart of a root. You wouldn't think you could spend a whole hour learning about micellae, our roots, and how they control everything, they feed everything, our photosynthesis. There's so much to be in awe of. Maybe that's the word. Francis was an awe based religious leader, not a sin based. He didn't have modern science, but he was already in awe of the universe.
- [60:18]
Mike Petro
There's some thinking out there that awe might be the one thing that's big enough to counteract the severity of trauma. Right. We experience trauma and then inflict it and relive the patterns. But awe is even bigger than that. It drops us into something that's just so gigantic. I'm going to think on that for a long time. Thank you for that, Richard. Richard's answer on Francis surprised me. I expected him to talk about Francis challenging dominant culture. I expected him to talk about Francis going against capitalism and empire. I'm going to be honest, I was blindsided when he talked about Francis joy. And yet I think about our conversation with Dr. Fluker, which was such a high point for me in this last year of exploring the tiers of things. And wow, as Dr. Fluker reminds us, as Dr. B reminded us, wow, do we need joy right now? And not a joy that is naive, not a joy that is a numbing, but a joy that is a resistance and a joy that, as we were saying earlier, helps keep our heart coming back online. And once again, it reminds me of this amazing quote from Howard Thurman. Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. And while that can seem very hallmark when you first hear it, the Fact that it was Howard Thurman that said, it gives it so much gravitas. And this gets me thinking about a long series of conversations that we've been having with Richard behind the scenes that haven't made their way into the podcast broadcast, where Richard, at the end of his life, has been telling us about the importance of building a life founded on making what he calls erotic decisions. And this is a term that he borrowed from a substack author named Only Tamra. But this is something that Richard's really been keyed into. Decisions not based on logic, not based on probability or collective worldly wisdom, but decisions driven by arrows and driven by a deep inner knowing and compulsion. I know he shared a lot about this at our revision conference last fall when I asked him about the courage that we need to follow Jesus as prophet in walking out our own prophetic path. As the man. Richard Rohr, in your eight decades on this planet, personally, in your personal prayer life and your interior life, what has Jesus meant to you in your journey?
- [63:09]
Richard Rohr
Well, he's the one who makes my love life possible. This strange thing of celibacy that I committed myself to before I knew what I was doing, It's more or less work for me. I've had a wonderful life. And the glue that holds that together is a relationship with God, whom, as a Christian, I picture as Jesus. Not only, you know, my book on the Trinity. So Jesus grounds, solidifies, enlivens the whole faith journey. It isn't an abstraction. It isn't a boring commitment. Yeah, it's what I call an erotic decision. Isn't that a great term? It's not your practical decisions. It's not your functional decisions. It's your erotic decisions that change your life. Nothing else changes you. Nothing else changes you. Now, let me define erotic decision. I don't just mean, in fact, I do not mean sex. That's far too limited. I mean anything you do with what we call in philosophy the good and the true and the beautiful. When you make a decision based on the good, the true, and the beautiful, planting flowers, working with orphan children, that's an erotic decision. It changes you. It transforms you. It's not a transaction. We poor Catholics, we were given so much good mysticism, but, you know, we had all kind of transactions. This many prayers, this many days in purgatory, I mean, out of purgatory, it was such a waste of time. It was such a loss of grace, such a loss of ability to read the soul and to see what was happening in the soul.
- [65:49]
Mike Petro
This has Just been burning in Richard's imagination for the last few months. And he said to me in one of our conversations about it that the great tragedy of most folks lives is that they've been waiting until they die to enjoy the divine banquet. And when they die, they will realize that they had been surrounded by it all along. And he said, actually, for most people, that would be their hell was to realize that they could have been enjoying it all the time. Cassidy, when we wrestle always with this question of looking at all the suffering and the hurt in the world and asking, you know, what is mine to do? How can I contribute to putting my healing in the service of healing the world when the world is so broken? That is such a heavy question to wrestle with and such a heavy burden to carry. Does it seem counterintuitive to you that in point of fact, finding our own work to do might somehow be connected to what makes us come alive?
- [66:51]
Cassidy Hall
I love that question. And it's so important. I know so many of us are finding ourselves just weary and worn down by the news feeds, but yet we're also determined to stay informed. And Mike, I've found myself more and more drawn to people who don't take themselves too seriously. Yeah, and the creativity I've seen in my own community or other states or other cities have really deeply inspired me. And it's not because the work isn't serious. I think it's actually because the work is so serious. Sometimes we have to engage this almost like trickster image to subvert the norms or the expectations we need to stay sane and alive. And I think we keep asking ourselves, what is mine to do? What is ours to do? What is mine to do? I don't know what to do today. There's too much going on. I can't do something about everything. And I'm just more and more convinced that what is ours to do begins with letting go of what it looks like because we can get so distracted by our ego. And so I'm naming that because I think about that too. But I think what is ours to do again begins with letting go of what it looks like. And I think when we get distracted by our ego in that way, we detach ourselves from action and we get further from the action. That is the action that makes us come alive.
- [68:15]
Mike Petro
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. First, I want to resonate with what you said about. Well, the way I would put it is self seriousness. I've found that the spiritual teachers and the heroes of mine, the folks that I gravitate to the most are utterly devoid of self seriousness. They do not take themselves too seriously. And because they don't take themselves too seriously, they demand to be taken seriously. And I don't think we realize what a heavy burden it is to take yourself too seriously. I think constantly about this teaching from the desert fathers and mothers and I talk about it all the time. It's this concept they taught called apathea. It's a P A T H E A. It sounds like apathy, which is to not care about anything. But it's not not caring about anything. It's not caring about what doesn't matter. So you have more energy to care about what does. And to say it another way, coming from mystics who had to travel through the desert in the sand and the sun and survive, it's about not carrying what's not yours to carry. So you have more strength to carry what is yours. One of the things we need to let go of is self seriousness and feeling like we need to do everything. Because I think in the moment that we're in, there's so much suffering and there's so much injustice and that we can trick ourselves into feeling like the only appropriate response is performative misery and performative urgency. Like I'm only in solidarity with other folks if I make sure that I never let myself feel any shred of joy and I never let myself be at peace for a moment. I have to be rushing all the time because the world is on fire. And we need to take that very, very seriously. But we need to take it seriously in leaning into what is ours to do and what is ours to be and what is ours to feel. And I think that's what Howard Thurman is getting at when he says, don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. And because work that is driven by what makes you come alive is very often sustainable because it's work driven by the deep tap root of the spirit that's sinking into the ground of who we are and the ground of what is, and giving us the ability to show up in the face of so much hatred and fear and injustice in the world right now. What is mine to carry, what is mine to let go of, what is mine to give someone else to carry, what is mine to carry with others. And recognizing that I genuinely cannot save the world on my own, and I'm not being asked to.
- [71:03]
Cassidy Hall
Yeah, yeah. You know something else that Thurman says in that speech? He Reminds us you are the only you that has ever lived. Your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all of existence. And if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on ends of strings that somebody else pulls. And so, Mike, I think along with those questions, I think in staying true to the sound of the genuine, part of that work is knowing ourselves and knowing ourselves and learning to know each other so that we can truly be in solidarity. So I can honestly see you. So I can see you with the lens of truth and therefore the lens of love. If I don't fully see you, how can I really love you? I just wonder if that's also a part of the equation, is knowing ourselves more deeply and again, holding that lightly. One thing I always get frustrated with is always, never statements because they don't leave room for me to grow or change. I think there's something to the importance of knowing ourselves and moving with that, learning through that, growing through that. And this makes me so excited about this upcoming season.
- [72:16]
Mike Petro
It is a shock and a surprise to all of us that we are so excited to share with the rest of you that in wrestling with the question, what is each one of ours to do in the world to make love more real? We've decided that the next season of Everything Belongs. We're going to sit down with Richard and go back to his teachings on the Enneagram, which I know for a.
- [72:39]
Cassidy Hall
Lot of folks, I feel like I should have had a drum roll there.
- [72:43]
Mike Petro
A drum roll would have been great. I think the Enneagram is a way that a lot of folks first got to get to know Richard Cassidy. We've been talking about this for months, and we're. I'm not embarrassed to say we started out skeptical and then became super excited about it. Why do you think the Enneagram is such an interesting follow up to the tiers of Things?
- [73:05]
Cassidy Hall
Yeah, I mean, I think reflecting on the tiers of things, I'm seeing more and more that the Enneagram is a tool for solidarity. It's a tool for engaging the vastness of the human experience and to understand the vastness of the human experience in such a way that we can see each other and that we can understand each other and therefore truly love each other.
- [73:28]
Mike Petro
I think that's so well said. When I hear so many people asking, how do I know what is mine to do? There's so much hurt in the world. We can often feel like our best efforts are throwing water balloons at a wildfire. But in reality, we genuinely believe that when we figure out what is ours to do, what we're actually doing is we're just carrying our bucket in the bucket brigade. And it might be small, but it's one link in the chain. It's one step in the process. It's one massive contribution to healing. And I think the Enneagram is actually a tool, especially the way that we're gonna look at it in this upcoming season, that helps each of us look at our unique wounds and our unique wisdom and ask, what is my work to do in the world? Gosh, that's so exciting to me. I can't wait to learn from Richard. I've listened to his old teachings on the Enneagram, and they're so good. But now, on the other side of him writing everything from falling upward to the universal Christ to the tiers of things, it's so rich to get to hear him at this moment in his life, integrate all of that in how he uses the Enneagram as a tool for spiritual discernment and sort of charting our course.
- [74:39]
Cassidy Hall
What I've learned so far, and in my coming to learn about the Enneagram, it has been such a gift of understanding my inner world more and understanding what's going on inside me more clearly so that I can better understand, again, what is mine to do, why some things don't feel comfortable for me to do or to not do. And that being said, I think I also don't want that to limit us, because I think that it is important to be uncomfortable in some of the things that we do in life and the ways in which we take action, because we're not living in a comfortable time. And so I think understanding ourselves more doesn't mean creating an easy path or creating a way forward that simplifies something. I think this is really going to challenge us. I think it's really going to challenge me, to be honest.
- [75:31]
Mike Petro
My prayer for us going into this season is that it helps us to listen deeply to the wounds and the wisdom of everyone around us and to our own heart, and helps us, as Richard taught us, in the tears of things, to be with our anger, to be with our sadness, and to let those things lead us to how love wants to be made real in our own lives, uniquely. And we can be put in service of making it real in the world around us.
- [76:01]
Cassidy Hall
It's going to be great. I can't wait, folks.
- [76:04]
Mike Petro
You have spent months and months and months wandering with us through all the wisdom contained in the tears of things. We hope that you don't leave this season and leave this book feeling like you have all the answers. We hope that instead you've been equipped with good, good questions because the quest really is in the questions. We hope that when you feel anger, you are reminded that you are angry because something you love is at stake and that anger can be fuel to make change in the world. We hope that you soften your heart to feel the sadness of loving deeply in a world so broken. And we hope that you increasingly wrestle with how to grieve that and bring your heart back online day after day after day. Thank you for the opportunities you've given us to learn this season.
- [77:01]
Cassidy Hall
I just want to end with maybe the same thing I kind of said at the beginning, which is from Drew's blessing and just add a couple things to it. So my question and my blessing is can we go from wherever we are into the loving prophetic spirit to find ourselves in good and necessary trouble, stirring up chaotic love for the sake of the flourishing of ourselves, our neighbors, and our world?
- [77:31]
Mike Petro
Amen. Thank you Cassidy. Thank you listening family. Thanks Richard. It is such a gift to get to be with all of you in conversation. We'll see you again soon for the next season of Everything Belongs as we explore the Enneagram. 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 us@cac.org Everything belongs is made possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters and the shared work of Mike Petro, Paul.
- [78:19]
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
Swanson, Drew Jackson, Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Jenna.
- [78:23]
Cassidy Hall
Kuyper, Izzy Spitz, Megan Hare, Sarah Palmer, Dorothy Abrams, Brandon Strange, Vanessa Yee, Cassidy.
- [78:30]
Richard Rohr
Hall and me, Corey Wayne.
- [78:33]
Mike Petro
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.
- [79:09]
Richard Rohr
Foreign.
- [79:17]
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
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 prayer practice, and strengthen your compassionate engagement with the world. Learn more about our resources such as publications, podcasts, email series and events@www.cac.org.