Podcast Summary: "The Tears of Things with Pete Enns"
Everything Belongs: Living the Teachings of Richard Rohr Forward
Center for Action and Contemplation
Release Date: March 21, 2025
Episode Overview
Main Theme:
This opening episode of the season embarks on a contemplative journey through Richard Rohr’s newest and final book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage. The podcast explores Rohr’s foundational teaching that encountering anger in the face of injustice is a prophetic gateway—to sadness, empathy, and ultimately, to love. The conversation expands with guest Pete Enns, biblical scholar and co-host of “The Bible for Normal People,” who reframes scripture, prophecy, and faith as evolving, uncertain, and inherently multivocal. Listeners are invited to reconsider how they engage with outrage, scripture, and the emotional landscape of transformation.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Why Tears? The Book’s Title and Prophetic Wisdom
- Rohr’s inspiration for the title comes from Virgil’s Aeneid—the Latin phrase lacrimae rerum or “the tears of things.”
- “Everything is crying. Everything has tears, and everything deserves tears. Both are true.” (Richard Rohr, 05:20)
- The prophets lead us toward acknowledging suffering and tears as an essential part of spiritual and societal life: sadness and lament open the door to real transformation.
- In the “age of outrage,” anger at injustice is both valid and necessary, but must ultimately give way to grief and solidarity, not just perpetual outrage.
2. The Prophetic Pattern: Anger, Sadness, and Love
- Rohr maps an emotional and spiritual pattern, observed in the prophets:
- Witnessing injustice generates righteous anger.
- If anger is not suppressed or weaponized, it uncovers a deeper sadness.
- Underneath sadness is love—for neighbor, for the world, for that which is threatened.
- Quote: “If we don’t transform our pain and egoic anger, we transmit it in another form.” (Richard Rohr, 12:18)
- This movement is not only personal but collective, resonating across cultures and generations as “intergenerational grief.”
3. Growing Up in Faith and Scripture
- The journey is described as ‘growing up’:
- Maturing in how we read the Bible—from literalism and tribalism, through deconstruction, toward compassion and engagement.
- Owning collective sin and grief, rather than living out of righteousness or exclusion.
- “The only perfection available to us is our ability to accept our imperfection.” (Paraphrased by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, 27:48)
- Solidarity with sinners—rather than separation via purity codes or ‘cult of innocence’—is a radical and essential shift.
4. The Role of Tears and Weeping
- Weeping is framed as an act of embodied solidarity, dissolving the ego-driven stance of judgment.
- “Weeping is the visible physical act of solidarity where the body feels its helplessness... Hard to be on the attack when you are weeping.” (Richard Rohr, 29:01–29:35)
- Tears, both individual and collective, are not a weakness but the very means to genuine empathy and transformation.
- Prophets and mystics “recognize what most of us do not: that all things have tears and all things deserve tears... grief and sadness are doorways to understanding life in a non-egocentric way.” (Richard Rohr, 17:42 & 80:00)
5. Pete Enns: Uncertainty, Scripture as Dialogue, and Prophetic Imagination
- Enns discusses how the biblical pattern of order–disorder–reorder (from Walter Brueggemann and Rohr) mirrors both the journey of Israel and our personal faith evolution.
- Certainty, he argues, is not a requirement for faith; instead, embracing the questions and disruptions is integral:
- “Faith is evolving. It's not an extra thing that you add onto it. It is what faith does.” (Pete Enns, 38:55)
- The Hebrew Bible models spiritual crisis and transformation through both narrative and counter-narrative—the “gift” of its multivocality and genre diversity.
- Prophets are “crisis managers,” forcing needed disorder and disorientation upon a community attached to order, awakening them from complacency or complicity.
- “Prophets are good at forcing that period of disorientation on people because they don't see it. They don't have the pain yet. They're rich. That's the problem with Amos...” (Pete Enns, 50:43)
- Enns encourages seeing scripture as living tradition—a conversation, not a static code—requiring adaptation, interpretation, and participation.
- “If the Bible is not adapted, it ceases having any relevance.” (Pete Enns, 57:26)
6. Practical Invitations and Contemporary Prophets
- Listeners are encouraged to identify where compassion comes most easily ("Find your place where compassion comes naturally, easily. That's your beginning place."). (Richard Rohr, 32:58)
- Both Rohr and Enns point to examples of contemporary prophetic voices (MLK Jr., Lisa Sharon Harper, AOC, “those not on social media but doing the work”) as those who call attention to injustice and guide us toward restoration.
- The episode closes on framing love—not anger, nor sadness—as the destination; but those emotional states must be honored fully on the way.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On Prophetic Solidarity vs. Righteousness
“Solidarity with sinners is such a diametrically different approach to Christianity than pointing out sinners... Listen, I'm one of you.”
—Richard Rohr, 15:02 -
On Dealing with Our Tears
“We can't mandate tears. We can only allow... Weeping is the visible physical act of solidarity where the body feels its helplessness.”
—Richard Rohr, 28:47–29:35 -
On Scriptural Multivocality
“Ever since there's been a Bible... Judaism and Christianity have been highly creative in how they navigate the biblical tradition and adapt it for uses that were not on the minds of the biblical writers... That's the gift of Scripture.”
—Pete Enns, 55:20 -
On Certainty and Disruption
“The sin of certainty is my attempt to articulate... It's not sinful to feel certain about things. It's a shortcoming in Christian faith when we feel like that's the thing we have to keep coming back to.”
—Pete Enns, 40:25 -
On Tears as Essential
“Prophets and mystics recognize what most of us do not: that all things have tears and all things deserve tears. They know that grief and sadness are doorways to understanding life in a non-egocentric way.”
—Richard Rohr, 17:42; Repeated by Drew Jackson, 80:07
Timestamps for Important Segments
- 00:00–03:00 — Introduction to the podcast and new season; framing the journey.
- 05:20–08:42 — Rohr explains the title The Tears of Things and its dual meaning.
- 08:42–12:18 — On dealing with outrage, the dangers of staying in anger, and the movement toward compassion.
- 15:02–17:42 — Collective sin, solidarity with sinners, and reframing ‘original sin’ as shared woundedness.
- 17:42–22:14 — Prophets, mystics, and the relationship between grief, sadness, and non-egocentric living.
- 29:01–32:39 — The role and value of tears, weeping as embodied solidarity, and personal/communal transformation.
- 35:51–54:00 — The conversation with Pete Enns, focusing on the pattern of order–disorder–reorder in scripture and faith.
- 42:20–51:41 — Enns on the Hebrew Bible, disruption, the value of crisis, and prophetic function.
- 55:20–57:26 — The flexibility and evolving function of scripture, and the sacred responsibility to reinterpret tradition for today.
- 63:13–67:28 — Genre in scripture, the importance of reading the prophets as poetry, and the risks of literalism.
- 73:00–75:21 — On moving from anger and sadness to love, and the ultimate prophetic invitation.
- 75:56–81:06 — Closing reflections, invitations for listeners, and summary of the chapter’s impact.
Flow & Tone
The episode is warm, contemplative, deeply honest, and invitational. Rohr and his co-hosts speak candidly about anger, grief, and hope, always returning to the humility and gentleness that marks prophetic spirituality. Pete Enns brings scholarly depth and playful stories, removing fear from scripture and encouraging curiosity and participation.
Final Reflections
Listeners are invited into a year-long exploration—a “journey of growing up”—by leaning into difficult emotions, relinquishing certainty, and embracing tears as teachers. The prophets, as Rohr and Enns remind us, are not merely voices of critique but guides toward radical empathy, humility, and love.
“All things have tears and all things deserve tears” stands as a refrain—not only for reading prophets, but for living with depth and courage in an age of outrage.
Next Episode: Exploring Amos, the prophet of justice.
Resource Reminder: Listeners need not read the book to join the conversation but are encouraged to journey alongside the hosts.