The entire universe seems to be operating out of a chaos theory of one sort or another. And whatever made us think that we are different than that? Well, the thing that did it more than anything else was religion. It taught us that we could be perfect.
When I spiritually direct people I strongly counsel them to mistrust any heroic gestures. They are much more food for the ego than they are food for God. God does not need your heroics - God needs who you really are. That is all you can ever give to God, not an idealized or perfect self...
Once you know that God has loved you even in your unlovability - which is always the character of a vital spiritual experience - you can't be dualistic anymore, all quid pro quo thinking falls apart.
Now you're inside of mystery that holds imperfection. So now what does perfection become? Perfection becomes not the exclusion of the contaminating element, the enemy, but in fact perfection is precisely the ability to include imperfection. That's perfection!
Richard Rohr, from The Little Way
And that, my friends, is the final answer to all those who would, in our churches and elsewhere, who would discriminate against anyone on the grounds of race, income, background, appearance, sex, sexuality, or anything else. In Christ, "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of [us] are one."
1 comment:
"who we really are"--unfolding as we go along. I read somewhere that John O'Donahue said "spirituality is homecoming."
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