A core principle of the Center for Action and Contemplation is: The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Just go ahead and live positively "in God, through God, with God."
In the short run, you will hold the unresolved tension of the cross. In the long run, you will usher in something entirely new and healing.
This was the almost intuitive spiritual genius of Saint Francis. He wasted no time attacking the rich churches and pretentious clergymen; he just went to the side and did it differently.
Richard Rohr, from Hope Against Darkness, p. 15
How different this is from some of the writings of "church-leaving" Christians you find around the innertoobs! It seems to me that it's only in this "going to the side" that we make a way for grace to flow through our own lives, and through the laying-down of our lives.
2 comments:
Yes, and I could see that evidenced when I heard Fr. Richard talk in NM.
Oh, very fine.
We heard a lovely homily (preached without a note!) at Diocesan Convention liturgy yesterday by Bishop Nedi Rivera (our first Latina bishop - and she is the daughter of a bishop who for years opposed the ordination of women - but he was still alive at her consecration and was there) who wears as her pectoral cross a simple Tau cross given to her by the Franciscan sisters and brothers (of the Anglican variety) who live near the place where she used to be a parish priest. She spoke of Francis' way, not for the whole homily, but in the course of one of her sermon illustrations, and your quote here reminds me of the spirit in which she spoke and of what she said about the cross.
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