Speaker 1: Today's episode is brought to you by our newest Patreon
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Speaker 1: dot net slash joint Thanks. There has to be emptiness,
Speaker 1: Our fullness isn't very exciting. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true, and yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: It but it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.
Speaker 1: It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a
Speaker 1: life worth living. This podcast is about how other people
Speaker 1: keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed
Speaker 1: their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Richard Brewer, a globally recognized ecumenical teacher
Speaker 1: bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and
Speaker 1: the perennial tradition. He's a Franciscan priest of the New
Speaker 1: Mexico Province and a founder of the Center for Action
Speaker 1: and Contemplation. His new book is The Universal Christ, How
Speaker 1: I Forgotten Reality Can Change everything we see, hope for
Speaker 1: and believe. Hi, Father Richard, Welcome to the show. We
Speaker 1: are excited to have you on again and we are
Speaker 1: very happy to be here another time at your Center
Speaker 1: for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. It is lovely out here,
Speaker 1: and we had a lovely service that you did this
Speaker 1: morning that was really nice. Yes, So we are going
Speaker 1: to be talking about your book, The Universal Christ, How
Speaker 1: a Forgotten Reality can change everything we see, hope for,
Speaker 1: and believe. But before we do that, we are going
Speaker 1: to start like we always do, with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather
Speaker 1: and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start by asking you what that parable means to you
Speaker 1: in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: It really is a magnificently simple parable. Ah. And you
Speaker 1: know you might say, oh, yeah, of course, But I
Speaker 1: don't think most of our people, uh, in Western society
Speaker 1: have have been trained to see it that way. In
Speaker 1: other words, they thought they could entertain negativity, resentment, uh,
Speaker 1: even toward themselves and they wouldn't have a cost to
Speaker 1: pay for it. We didn't. We didn't really emphasize the
Speaker 1: interior life. For all the Christianity at least thinks that
Speaker 1: it did, it really didn't. And people, as long as
Speaker 1: they didn't act out externally, thought they could walk around
Speaker 1: with that bad wolf so called resentments, angers, fears, judgments.
Speaker 1: And we see it now in our politics and our
Speaker 1: whole our church, our whole country. How the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: if you want to call him that, his voice, her voice,
Speaker 1: whoever it is, is being um easily heard, too easily heard,
Speaker 1: which means we're we're feeding him. Well, yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: does seem to be the case in a lot of
Speaker 1: in a lot of situations. So let's move into the
Speaker 1: New book. Um, and you use the word the universal Christ.
Speaker 1: And usually when we hear Christ, we think Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: You're talking about something different. So tell me what is Christ?
Speaker 1: That word for you? What does it imply? What does
Speaker 1: it mean? Well, first of all, let me say so
Speaker 1: people don't think I'm taking him down to dead end.
Speaker 1: This is entirely orthodox, traditional and scriptural, but it was
Speaker 1: just never emphasized. And what happened, in effect was Christ
Speaker 1: became Jesus last name, as it were. Whereas if you
Speaker 1: read the New Testament, uh, particularly the first chapters of Colossians, Ephesians,
Speaker 1: John's Gospel, First Letter of John, first Letter of Hebrews,
Speaker 1: they all say very clearly the Christ existed from all eternity.
Speaker 1: Now we all know Jesus was born two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: but for convenience sake, it it just was not worth
Speaker 1: making that distinction. I'm trying to understand why that was
Speaker 1: so true, and I can't help but think it has
Speaker 1: something to do. I'm gonna say it just to make
Speaker 1: the point, with things like the Hubble telescope discovering in
Speaker 1: our lifetime the extent of the universe that it's still
Speaker 1: expanding and expanding at a faster pace. We're recognizing at
Speaker 1: a gut level, we have to have a God as
Speaker 1: big as all of this, and this God can't be
Speaker 1: limited to planet Earth, and Jesus can't be limited to
Speaker 1: a sin that was committed by Adam and e between
Speaker 1: the Tigris and Euphrates river. In other words, very limited
Speaker 1: in a certain space time, continual, and so thus far
Speaker 1: the book has received way more response positive response that
Speaker 1: I'm getting. I'm sure there's negative out there, uh than
Speaker 1: I ever expected. And I think it's because the mind
Speaker 1: and the accompanying heart is ready for it. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's not I'm not getting the hate letters I
Speaker 1: got on some of my past books. It's almost a relief,
Speaker 1: I think to some people. Yeah, and so what you're
Speaker 1: talking about when with Christ is this idea that um
Speaker 1: an incarnational world view, which is basically, you say, but
Speaker 1: God loves things by becoming them, God loves things by
Speaker 1: uniting with them, and so really what you're talking about
Speaker 1: is seeing Christ in everything you know? You know again
Speaker 1: that seems when you first heard, Oh, that's oversimplified because
Speaker 1: we haven't emphasized it or taught it even is why
Speaker 1: we have the social problems we have today and why Europe,
Speaker 1: at least in my opinion, which was once the totally
Speaker 1: Christian continent, isn't just post Christian in many ways, it's
Speaker 1: anti Christian. The big wars came from the Christian continent.
Speaker 1: In other words, we left Christians the freedom to decide
Speaker 1: where the sacred was and where the sacred wasn't, and
Speaker 1: we have done it NonStop, beginning with anti Semitism already incipient,
Speaker 1: and even the New Testament. Then we have heretics being
Speaker 1: worthy of being burned at the stake. We have women
Speaker 1: always remaining inferior. Every century has its chosen person, our
Speaker 1: persons where it doesn't have to see the sacred, which
Speaker 1: I'm calling the christ Uh. Once you put leave that
Speaker 1: free to the individual ego to decide, we now know
Speaker 1: after two thousand years is the results are tragic, really tragic.
Speaker 1: And then the earth itself are the animals. You know,
Speaker 1: nothing was sacred except my group, my Christian group, those
Speaker 1: who said it just like me and everybody else was
Speaker 1: worthy of disdain. Well, how can Jesus possibly be the
Speaker 1: savior of the world or the Lord of the universe,
Speaker 1: as John's Gospel begins to think of him if he's
Speaker 1: always just protecting a little tribe we we largely have.
Speaker 1: And I got to name it as such, tribal Christianity today.
Speaker 1: You know, Jesus was used as a way to hold
Speaker 1: my group together, not as a way to proclaim the
Speaker 1: divine presence in all things now, you know, just to
Speaker 1: add on the most conservative A little document that we
Speaker 1: Catholics grew up with in this country was called the
Speaker 1: Baltimore Catechism, and Question sixteen of the Baltimore Catechists we
Speaker 1: had to memorize question and answer. Sister would ask where
Speaker 1: is God? And we'd all say, God is everywhere. This
Speaker 1: is so basic we forget how basic it is. And
Speaker 1: then much of the rest of the Catechism pretended God
Speaker 1: well was not really everywhere, really only in the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church in our case. But then I found out after
Speaker 1: I started moving around the world, every other group did
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, yeah, you say that for you
Speaker 1: a mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else.
Speaker 1: And then you go also say that this incarnational view,
Speaker 1: this seeing Christ in everything, is the key to mental
Speaker 1: and spiritual health as well as the basic contentment and happiness,
Speaker 1: because if the whole thing is beloved, if the whole
Speaker 1: thing is good, as Genesis one says five times in
Speaker 1: a row, it was good, it was good, it was good,
Speaker 1: it was good, it was good. It was very good.
Speaker 1: And it's really pernicious that with that as the starting
Speaker 1: of the narrative we chose to start with the problem
Speaker 1: Genesis three. Uh you know why, Well, I think man
Speaker 1: in particular, if you'll allow me to say so, tend
Speaker 1: to be problem solvers. If you create a problem, I'm
Speaker 1: here to solve it. To believe that there was no
Speaker 1: problem problem to begin with, that it's all good, it's
Speaker 1: all the child of God, it's all beloved. Now let
Speaker 1: me throw in quickly because I know what some of
Speaker 1: our listeners are thinking. Well, he sounds like a pantheist
Speaker 1: to me. Now, my opinion is not pantheism. Pantheism means
Speaker 1: God equals all things. God and all things are the same.
Speaker 1: There's no distinction between creator and creature. The authentic belief
Speaker 1: of Orthodox Christianity, although most of us were never taught
Speaker 1: this word is pan and theism to use the Greek
Speaker 1: word God in all things, God revealed through all things. Ever,
Speaker 1: the divine DNA is inserted insight of all of reality.
Speaker 1: And let me just add to that, how could it
Speaker 1: not be if there's one creator who created all things,
Speaker 1: how could the divine imprint not be in a tree
Speaker 1: and a dog, and the sky and the entire universe. Well,
Speaker 1: that really is a basis for mental health. You live
Speaker 1: in a world that is good, and let's say it,
Speaker 1: that isn't the perception of most people today. They seem
Speaker 1: to feel that evil is even winning. And I can
Speaker 1: see they're good evidence for that. But when we don't
Speaker 1: contrary that with h the Gospel, um, people are left
Speaker 1: with a double whammy. It seems to me they're intuitive
Speaker 1: observation of how much is going wrong. And then well,
Speaker 1: even the Christian Church as it's all going to hell
Speaker 1: in a handbag all the recent and it is recent,
Speaker 1: you know, teaching on arm again and apocalypse. Now the
Speaker 1: rapture uh left behind the first Church would not the
Speaker 1: early church. Let's take the well, really, the first thousand
Speaker 1: years wouldn't have known what you were talking about. This
Speaker 1: is a very recent version of the Gospel that ends
Speaker 1: with a whimper and not a bang um, and yet
Speaker 1: many Christians take that as our narrative. We're in trouble
Speaker 1: when that happens, because a little kid growing up looking
Speaker 1: for a vision, a positive vision of meaning, direction, hope, purpose,
Speaker 1: won't find it there. If you only read one chapter
Speaker 1: in the book, just read the one on resurrection, be
Speaker 1: because that is the Christian statement about the final end
Speaker 1: of history summarized in the body of Jesus. Capitulated in
Speaker 1: the body of Jesus. But Jesus is a stand in
Speaker 1: for everything. Jesus Christ is a stand in for everything.
Speaker 1: But again, most of us weren't weren't taught to see
Speaker 1: it that way, right, I think for most versions of Christianity,
Speaker 1: what's important about Jesus is that he died for our
Speaker 1: sins his death, but focusing solely on that, we missed
Speaker 1: his whole life. It's true, it sounds too oversimplified, but
Speaker 1: it's true. We really didn't need his life. His sermon
Speaker 1: on the Mount, his humility, his tenderness, his compassion all
Speaker 1: we needed. If you'll allow me to say it was
Speaker 1: some warm blood at the end of his life inside
Speaker 1: a whole frame of retributive justice, which isn't the only
Speaker 1: definition of justice, but I must say in history it's
Speaker 1: been the most common one tip for tap quid pro quo,
Speaker 1: this much sin, this much atonement, are this much retribution?
Speaker 1: So we settled for what I call a transactional understanding
Speaker 1: of Jesus, where I believe the full meaning of Jesus.
Speaker 1: And by the way, this book will not lessen your
Speaker 1: lover or appreciation for Jesus. I would hold at least
Speaker 1: quite the contrary. He gives us a transformational understanding of history,
Speaker 1: and his own transformation is the pattern of ours. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say through the whole book. So
Speaker 1: I want to change gears a little bit and talk
Speaker 1: about something that you wrote in the book. And you
Speaker 1: were sort of talking about when God sort of pulls
Speaker 1: back or hides his face, right, Um, But you said,
Speaker 1: I must be honest with you here about my own life.
Speaker 1: For the last ten years, I have had little spiritual
Speaker 1: feeling either consolation nor desolation. Talk to me about that
Speaker 1: experience and how you frame it within your faith and
Speaker 1: I'd also be interested in how you've framed what I
Speaker 1: think might have been depressive episodes within your faith, because
Speaker 1: you talk about Mother Teresa had these periods of darkness
Speaker 1: that people said was depression, and you're saying that's not
Speaker 1: really what it was, So tell me more about all that.
Speaker 1: It's very funny you'd bring that up, because today has
Speaker 1: been one of those days. I from the moment I
Speaker 1: woke up this morning, I my feeling tone was flat line,
Speaker 1: just okay. I guess I love God. I want to
Speaker 1: love God. I guess I love life. I want to
Speaker 1: love life unless you have days like this, which among
Speaker 1: the Catholic mystics was called darkness, or it would be
Speaker 1: comparable to the Buddhist notion of emptiness. Only when you
Speaker 1: come to that flat line day do you go deeper
Speaker 1: and draw up on deeper resources. I'd be willing to
Speaker 1: bet I'm gonna have almost the opposite in the next
Speaker 1: few days, because today I'm drawing upon no. I hope
Speaker 1: it doesn't come through my talk. But no. Positive. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean negative because I'm having no positive feelings. It's
Speaker 1: what I call flat line, just okay. It is what
Speaker 1: it is. I believe that I don't feel so, as
Speaker 1: so many of the mystics put it, the feeling has
Speaker 1: to be taken away, so you choose, So you decide
Speaker 1: to love. I'm sure if you're married, you have to
Speaker 1: do that a hundred times in your lifetime with your
Speaker 1: partner a year. You you don't every day feel it.
Speaker 1: You have to decide for it, choose it, rely upon
Speaker 1: past moments of intimacy or communion, and that allows you
Speaker 1: to go I don't think there's any way to go
Speaker 1: deeper except the dance of emptiness and fullness. If every
Speaker 1: day that you love Jesus was just a gush of emotion,
Speaker 1: and I've had many of those wonderful days in my life.
Speaker 1: You know, there's too much payoff for the ego. You
Speaker 1: don't really love Jesus. You love the feelings Jesus gives
Speaker 1: you after a while. So that's what the saints meant
Speaker 1: by God withdrawing his face. There has to be emptiness.
Speaker 1: Our fullness isn't very exciting, to put it that way.
Speaker 1: We don't have much understanding of that. Uh, no offense.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what religious tradition you come from. It.
Speaker 1: The Protestant tradition had almost no teaching on darkness, almost none.
Speaker 1: They had sin. When I talk about darkness, I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about sin very yeah, and uh, without that, without
Speaker 1: any good teaching on spiritual darkness, you you don't grow
Speaker 1: very deep because you think you've lost faith, when in
Speaker 1: fact you're being taught faith out much. You're being taught love,
Speaker 1: and you're being taught hope. The Three Biggies. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes me think of a couple of things. One of
Speaker 1: the lines that I may have used on this show
Speaker 1: more than any other is this idea that sometimes you
Speaker 1: can't think your way into right action. You have to
Speaker 1: act your way into right thinking. It's one of our principles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's you know, that's kind of what you're
Speaker 1: You know, what you're talking about is very good. But
Speaker 1: help me understand. How do you delineate or is it
Speaker 1: not important to delineate this darkness, this spiritual darkness, from
Speaker 1: what we would call depression. It's a very worthy question.
Speaker 1: I've alluded to it in several of my books. I
Speaker 1: think it comes down to, uh, a kind of underlying
Speaker 1: positivity that you can still do what you have to do,
Speaker 1: treat people with love and respect, willingly put one foot
Speaker 1: in front of the other. It's just what's withdrawn is
Speaker 1: the enjoyment. The feeling of joy isn't there. It's it's
Speaker 1: constantly choice, choice, choice, whereas true depression. Uh. I'm told
Speaker 1: at least that you don't have those qualities that you
Speaker 1: really find it hard to love, hard to hope. You
Speaker 1: know you're being held like this morning. Uh. I would
Speaker 1: have to say I've prayed more. I was in the
Speaker 1: car a couple of times, had to run home for something. Uh.
Speaker 1: And most of my movements there's been a constant prayer, God,
Speaker 1: You're gonna help me. I don't know why I'm doing
Speaker 1: today now. I don't know if i'd offer those prayers
Speaker 1: if I was feeling it. Do you understand? So it is?
Speaker 1: It isn't a loss of faith in God. It's a
Speaker 1: loss of feeling faith in God. Yeah. Antedonia right, which
Speaker 1: is the word that people will use for lack of
Speaker 1: enjoyment and things. You normally get a lot of enjoyment.
Speaker 1: And this question is real near and dear to me
Speaker 1: because I have dealt with depression most of my adult life,
Speaker 1: and I've had a little bit of a flare up recently.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I'm always sort of
Speaker 1: trying to process through for myself. Is is this depression?
Speaker 1: Is this what you're referring to is sort of a
Speaker 1: spiritual darkness? Is this, um just my temperament to a
Speaker 1: certain degree, right, like a melancholy sort of sure. And
Speaker 1: so just I'm always interested when I read that in
Speaker 1: your book, and you're making some very good distinctions, because
Speaker 1: that has to be usually at least partially true that
Speaker 1: some personalities are more inclined to a a soberness. Let's
Speaker 1: just call it that. Yeah. Uh, in me, I've always
Speaker 1: been rather serious. Uh So, maybe I'm inclined to it more.
Speaker 1: But uh I always felt a basic underlying happiness. But
Speaker 1: but I'm not a giddy or joke telling person. I
Speaker 1: wished I were. I love our director and some of
Speaker 1: the staff here because they are and they balanced me out.
Speaker 1: I need people like that around me. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: so vulnerable, because you're ma can for one third the
Speaker 1: human race at least and probably two thirds of our listeners. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the other things that you talk about
Speaker 1: is that the experience of God, and we we referenced
Speaker 1: it a little bit seeing Christ and everything. You say
Speaker 1: that anything that draws you out of yourself in a
Speaker 1: positive way for all practical purposes, is operating as God
Speaker 1: for you at that moment. God experience always expands your
Speaker 1: scene and never constricts it. You know what to read?
Speaker 1: That's that's a jam packed line and every word is important.
Speaker 1: That see. The the boundaried self, the protected ego, or
Speaker 1: if you just want to call it, the ego doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to let the divine flow of grace, the
Speaker 1: trinitarian love that moves the whole universe is the sap
Speaker 1: of the universe. It doesn't know how to let that flow.
Speaker 1: It damns it up inside of you. And there have
Speaker 1: to be and God gives them constantly once you learn
Speaker 1: how to see. Since I've been talking to you, I'm
Speaker 1: looking out the window and noticing that the cherries are
Speaker 1: already coming out. They're the real tiny but on our
Speaker 1: little cherry tree out here. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: can see it. And that already made me happy. No,
Speaker 1: it takes a little to make you happy. And whatever
Speaker 1: is facilitating that flow, uh, you know, stopping the damned
Speaker 1: up you can almost understand. Damn. Either way, Um is
Speaker 1: operating as Christ and that's not being cutesy. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you don't find that, you really do stay inside of yourself.
Speaker 1: I think in in so many any movies and literature,
Speaker 1: the image of the Christian is often an anal retentive
Speaker 1: person who can't laugh. Now that isn't always true by
Speaker 1: any means, but I think we've projected that storyline that
Speaker 1: we aren't people who are inside the flow of love
Speaker 1: and life and joy, but we're primarily keeping the what
Speaker 1: we call the subject object split. I'm over here as
Speaker 1: a subject. That cherry tree is an object for my objectification.
Speaker 1: It's not something I can momentarily merge with and love
Speaker 1: and appreciate and overcome the split. So I'm knowing it
Speaker 1: subject to subject, delight to delight like nos like Once
Speaker 1: you can allow yourself to know things in that way,
Speaker 1: you're never far from contentment. I'm not even gonna call
Speaker 1: it always, you know, a leap of joy, but something
Speaker 1: even better, a deep satisfaction that life is okay. Why
Speaker 1: is God allowing those cherries to emerge again with no
Speaker 1: help from us? We just let it grow every year. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's so wonderful that unless you see it at that level,
Speaker 1: you don't draw life. It doesn't draw a life out
Speaker 1: of you. Let me put it that way, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a beautiful couple of lines. You say. God
Speaker 1: seems to have chosen to manifest the invisible in what
Speaker 1: we call the visible, so that all things visible are
Speaker 1: the revelation of And I love this phrase. God's endlessly
Speaker 1: diffusive spiritual energy. Once a person recognizes that, it is
Speaker 1: hard to ever be lonely in this world again. M hm,
Speaker 1: see if if the whole universe is subject to subject
Speaker 1: and like, and let me describe what I mean by that.
Speaker 1: I'm not just talking to it, but I'm giving it
Speaker 1: voice and letting it be a vow, as Martin Bouber
Speaker 1: would put it. I'm sure you're familiar with his eye
Speaker 1: vow relationship. But I let it, as it were, talk
Speaker 1: back to me and tell me about life, tell me
Speaker 1: about God, a lovely blooming tree. You're connected in such
Speaker 1: a way that you can never be lonely again. There's
Speaker 1: there's activity, there's agency, there's mutuality, there's giving and receiving.
Speaker 1: That's the only way a hermit can live alone for
Speaker 1: forty days. Whenever you see the re emergence of hermits
Speaker 1: and you we can go through Lee Catholic history and
Speaker 1: see the periods where they just multiply. You've always got
Speaker 1: a rebirth of the contemplative mind, where there's deep contentment
Speaker 1: inside of what's right in front of you, a tree,
Speaker 1: an animal. Everything gives you satisfaction, and everything gives you connection.
Speaker 1: When you live in a separate universe where that's just
Speaker 1: a tree, that's just a dog for my consumption or
Speaker 1: from my profit, when you're constantly cutting the link, of course,
Speaker 1: you're going to be lonely. Really, it's that simple. Of course,
Speaker 1: you're going to be lonely. And I think this is
Speaker 1: why we have so much sexual abuse, because I mean sex,
Speaker 1: false sex in particulars just looking for connection because I
Speaker 1: don't have it. Uh, someone who's universe personally connected, does
Speaker 1: not need to use or objectify other people, much less
Speaker 1: hurt them in any way. So it's all one. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's strange that we call the active
Speaker 1: intercourse making love. I don't know statistically how often it
Speaker 1: is making love or how often it's making lust. And
Speaker 1: making lust leaves you disconnected if you understand you're still
Speaker 1: over here and she or he is over there, doesn't
Speaker 1: satisfy the soul at all, but when you discovered the
Speaker 1: other as a fellow thou Martin Boober, the Jewish philosopher,
Speaker 1: he said, there's either the eye vow relationship or everything
Speaker 1: descends into the eye. It it's utilitarian, it's uh mercantile,
Speaker 1: but it's not meaningful. I was on a retreat recently
Speaker 1: with a spiritual teacher and he said something that really
Speaker 1: struck me, and it goes back to kind of what
Speaker 1: we were talking about about acting your way into right thinking.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, you're gonna have these spiritual experiences,
Speaker 1: and that experience is going to go, but the important
Speaker 1: thing is to devote yourself to what little bit of
Speaker 1: it remains perfect. So yeah, so it's this, okay, that
Speaker 1: experience is gone, but there's there's an underlying truth there
Speaker 1: that I saw, that you see, that people see, and
Speaker 1: how do you devote yourself to that devote That's a
Speaker 1: beautiful choice of words. And again, why you can't get
Speaker 1: tied to the feeling is the feeling goes, and it
Speaker 1: does in all of us, just like the honeymoon does.
Speaker 1: But there was something true there in the honeymoon experience,
Speaker 1: which is simply an experience of radical unity and that's
Speaker 1: what we were created for, that's what we live for.
Speaker 1: But then we can't experience them naturally easily. We try
Speaker 1: to manufacture them by what I'm gonna call high intensity
Speaker 1: events rock rock concerts. I'm not saying rock concerts are wrong,
Speaker 1: but don't spend too much time there are. What you
Speaker 1: do is you up your your anti of expectation. I
Speaker 1: need loud noise, I need lights to an unbelievable level,
Speaker 1: and now I'll be excited. I mean, you can't help.
Speaker 1: But when you watch TV, what are they going to
Speaker 1: do next to engage my imagination? How much light do
Speaker 1: we need on? What's the show idol? American Idol? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean, it is fascinating. It isn't many ways beautiful,
Speaker 1: but it's what the early desert fathers would have called,
Speaker 1: you know, the lust of the eyes. And they're not
Speaker 1: talking about naked women. They're talking about too much visual excitement,
Speaker 1: which makes you think I need that to be happy. No,
Speaker 1: you really don't need that to be happy. You need
Speaker 1: that to be diverted or distracted. Because after American Idol,
Speaker 1: I'm just picking on them. It's a wonderful show. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that you really won't be any happy, You really won't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: distraction does not make you happy. It has to touch
Speaker 1: the depths. Now, some of the beautiful stories of people
Speaker 1: who rose from nothing to becoming a great singer, maybe
Speaker 1: that can touch the soul. But lights and loud noise
Speaker 1: of themselves will always fail to do it. Or firework shows,
Speaker 1: you know with scare dogs. I know, like dogs never
Speaker 1: liked Fourth of July, So yeah, I think that's an
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting point. And you talked about this
Speaker 1: idea of anything that draws us out of ourselves, right,
Speaker 1: and you use the that God uses three things in particular, goodness, truth,
Speaker 1: and beauty. And it's interesting to me because when I
Speaker 1: watch TV there are certain shows and what I've realized
Speaker 1: is that I cry very easily good And what I
Speaker 1: what I realized is what usually gets me is scenes
Speaker 1: of deep goodness. Yeah right, there's like there's a kindness
Speaker 1: between two people that you're tuitous kindness. Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: it just brings it out. And the same spiritual teacher
Speaker 1: I was talking about in his book recently said, you know,
Speaker 1: not tears of joy, not tears of sadness, tears of depth,
Speaker 1: And that really hit me. Because I've never been able
Speaker 1: to put words on what it is. What it is? Wow,
Speaker 1: I totally agree with that. I always wish I could
Speaker 1: cry more easily. The moments that it does happen most
Speaker 1: easily for me. And I don't know why I've talked
Speaker 1: about this to therapists. Is moments of reunion someone who
Speaker 1: hasn't seen their mother for twenty years or anything. Oh,
Speaker 1: I just saw like a baby. I was never abandoned
Speaker 1: or you know, I h the usual psychological explanations don't
Speaker 1: make sense to me. But to see two people who
Speaker 1: have never known one another just clutch at one another
Speaker 1: and weep. I weep too. Yeah, it's beautiful. It is that.
Speaker 1: That's what people parting is another and people who are
Speaker 1: you know, And we were just talking about um the
Speaker 1: book Death of an Archbishop by WILLI Catherine, which takes
Speaker 1: place out here, and one of the beautiful parts of
Speaker 1: that book is, uh, Father la Tour, I think he
Speaker 1: would say, and Father Valiant and the love between those
Speaker 1: two and how Father la Tour would just how much
Speaker 1: he missed his friend when he went out to do
Speaker 1: the mission work. It's just a beautiful part of that book.
Speaker 1: You know, it would kind of get me because you
Speaker 1: could feel him his friend would leave, and it was
Speaker 1: this part of him that went with him. Oh, that
Speaker 1: says you are capable of the same thing. I have
Speaker 1: to say, of course, it's been twenty five years since
Speaker 1: I read Death Comes for the Archbishop. I remember it
Speaker 1: being a beautiful book about him Exico, but I didn't
Speaker 1: remember that friendship. You must be there inside. That's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a beautiful book. So you mentioned the
Speaker 1: cherry trees outside the window a minute ago, and but
Speaker 1: in your book you also mentioned this glorious tree over
Speaker 1: here to our right. Um. You say it's a massive,
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty year old rio grand cottonwood tree. And
Speaker 1: you know, you say it spreads its gnarled limbs over
Speaker 1: the lawn, which is true. The twists and turns in
Speaker 1: it are are are stunning. And you say, basically, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, it looks like an imperfect tree. Um.
Speaker 1: And you go on to say, divine perfection is precisely
Speaker 1: the ability to include what seems like imperfection. And you've
Speaker 1: got a sign in your office that says life does
Speaker 1: not have to be perfect to be wonderful. You can
Speaker 1: come back and read it. It's still there, the sign
Speaker 1: I mean, and the and the tree is gloriously still there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants to paint it or take a picture of it.
Speaker 1: They tell me. An arborist told me that he thinks
Speaker 1: it had a mutation which made it take the circuitous,
Speaker 1: unnatural bends in the even large trunk branches. In the
Speaker 1: rediscovery of the Gospel, we discovered nothing else but that
Speaker 1: that evil is not something you can ever totally eliminate, exclude, dismissed, discard.
Speaker 1: You have to forgive it. Forgiveness is different. It's still there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I call it the inclusion of the negative that's at
Speaker 1: the heart of the gospel. But I think the Western
Speaker 1: dualistic mind was just not capable of seeing that. You know,
Speaker 1: I was teaching my last time last summer in Germany
Speaker 1: and you're probably familiar, uh with the classic I can
Speaker 1: all GRIFFI of St. Michael. He's on a horse. George
Speaker 1: is more on a horse. Michael's more just standing there heroically,
Speaker 1: and he's stabbing a dragon or standing on the dragon.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much where we've been up to now, really
Speaker 1: assuming that the dragon can be killed, right. See, that's
Speaker 1: a lie. That's not true. God uses evil for your transformation.
Speaker 1: We now have words for it. We call it integration, reconciliation. Well,
Speaker 1: while I was there, they took me to uh several
Speaker 1: different churches and art museums where they had a pictures
Speaker 1: that only apparently were common for a certain period in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages of St. Martha. No, ide'm this is
Speaker 1: not biblical. I don't know where it comes from. But St.
Speaker 1: Martha is never pictured, uh stabbing our spearing the dragon.
Speaker 1: She's always feeding it. Here we go to the wolf
Speaker 1: again or petting it, and it's always a side picture.
Speaker 1: But it's and my friend who's fascinated by these same things,
Speaker 1: he took me to church after church in Nuremberg we
Speaker 1: were at that time, but then we went on to Munich,
Speaker 1: where there it is again. Martha is always off to
Speaker 1: the side. And isn't it interesting. There's the masculine approach
Speaker 1: to killing evil, and there's the feminine approach, and Martha
Speaker 1: tames the dragon. Now we'd call that restorative justice. It
Speaker 1: isn't It doesn't punish, it transforms yea. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: parents are already doing that with their little children. If
Speaker 1: you really want to help up your children, grow up.
Speaker 1: You don't just punish them, you teach them. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: why isn't that a good thing to do? Why would
Speaker 1: it be good to now apologize to your little sister
Speaker 1: for what you just did? Or it's it's we've already
Speaker 1: learned this at the human level. Where did we learn
Speaker 1: that from the way God operates? Jesus punishes nobody, check
Speaker 1: it out. He calls people to responsibility. But the real
Speaker 1: punishing notion of Christ came after he was gone, and
Speaker 1: we largely projected it onto him. In my opinion, I
Speaker 1: love that story about St. Martha and feeding the dragon.
Speaker 1: You know another thing that you know, these things I
Speaker 1: say over and over, One of the big ones is
Speaker 1: this idea that suffering equals pain times resistance, you know,
Speaker 1: the resistance to this. And I was in a in
Speaker 1: a workshop I was doing recently. I was talking about
Speaker 1: the story of Milarapa, a Buddhist. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you would call him. I'll just call him a sage
Speaker 1: where you know, he has a story where there's all
Speaker 1: these demons in his cave and he's chasing him around
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of him. Then he's trying to
Speaker 1: teach him the dharma trying, you know, he's doing everything
Speaker 1: he could do, and he finally says, fine, demons stay,
Speaker 1: and most of them disappear, and then there's one big
Speaker 1: demon remaining, just the you know, the big gnarly demon,
Speaker 1: and he finally just puts his head in its mouth.
Speaker 1: So it's speaking to this same idea, you know, St.
Speaker 1: Martha and the dragon. It sure is, thank you, I've
Speaker 1: never heard that before. Yeah, you see, well, you know this,
Speaker 1: it's a non violence training one oh one when you
Speaker 1: return and kind. Once Michael starts stabbing the dragon, he's
Speaker 1: become a dragon. He's not St. Michael anymore. War But
Speaker 1: it is the dualistic mind of earlier history just couldn't
Speaker 1: read things that way. Yeah, it's not their fault. It
Speaker 1: was all uh power and force, not love that change things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a beautiful quote that ties a few of
Speaker 1: the things we just talked about, the seeing things Buddhist perspective.
Speaker 1: You say, after all, there's not a native Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic,
Speaker 1: or Christian way of loving. There's not a Methodist, Lutheran
Speaker 1: or Orthodox way of running a soup kitchen. There's not
Speaker 1: a gay or straight way of being faithful, nor a
Speaker 1: black or occasion way of hoping. We all know positive
Speaker 1: flow and we see it, and we all know resistance
Speaker 1: and coldness when we feel it. All the rest your
Speaker 1: mere labels. Thank you. It's a beautiful I don't know
Speaker 1: someone did recently, but it must be ranking people. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that's hard to deny. It has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with me being Catholic or someone else being another denomination.
Speaker 1: That's just undeniable truth. If you can be honest, and
Speaker 1: you know, I've said others have said many times, the
Speaker 1: only the only two virtues you really need our humility
Speaker 1: and honesty two move forward on the spiritual life. If
Speaker 1: you lack humility to admit that. You know, if the
Speaker 1: Buddhist said it, and it's true, it's true. Thomas A.
Speaker 1: Quintas told us, who's of course, considered the great Catholic intellectual.
Speaker 1: The first question should not be who said it? The
Speaker 1: first question should be is it true? And if it's true,
Speaker 1: it's always from the Holy Spirit. I love that. Always
Speaker 1: from the Holy Spirit. So it doesn't matter Confucius said
Speaker 1: it or Mohammad said it. Uh, why can't we see that? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's revealed it reveals. It seems to me how
Speaker 1: tribal we are. We only believe truth from our tribe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all else's suspect. Well, you end up with very small truth,
Speaker 1: you do. And it's so interesting to me how you know,
Speaker 1: we can talk about how Christians do that, but I
Speaker 1: know some pretty strong non Christians to put it politely,
Speaker 1: and there's it's the same way if it speaks of
Speaker 1: a church or a god or anything, it's just it's nonsense, right,
Speaker 1: which is just is it's just as bad as the
Speaker 1: the opposite of that, which is, you know, if it's
Speaker 1: not said in the right way in my particular orthodoxy,
Speaker 1: it's not. I mean, it's but I agree with you,
Speaker 1: and that's why I loved going back to what we
Speaker 1: talked about that you said anything that draws you out
Speaker 1: of yourself in a positive way, And I think it's
Speaker 1: so easy to feel. And and people often say to me,
Speaker 1: how do you know if you're feeding the bad wolf?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, usually if you're quiet, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're quiet, you can feel it. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a constriction, it's a tightness, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a contraction. I keep referencing the same spiritual
Speaker 1: teacher Audio Shanti is who it is and who was
Speaker 1: also on Oprah and been on our show several times. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing he said that really hit me. He's talking
Speaker 1: about this the ego structure, and he said, all ego is,
Speaker 1: all it is is just a constriction. And and that's
Speaker 1: why I love that line of yours, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and whether it's exactly true or not, but
Speaker 1: it speaks to the same thing that you're saying. If
Speaker 1: it's if it's this outflowing a bigger fighter perspective, that's
Speaker 1: that's the spiritual impulse working through and this constriction, this
Speaker 1: tightness we feel it. I know it isn't a word,
Speaker 1: and it's somewhat crude, but I called it outflowing or
Speaker 1: in sucking. And after a while you can tell when
Speaker 1: you're in sucking. Yes, you're just pulling back, hardening your edges.
Speaker 1: It has the taste of fear to it. It, it's
Speaker 1: a coldness to it. Yeah, you've got to learn to
Speaker 1: recognize that in your own body. But because we didn't
Speaker 1: pay much attention to the body, we let it go unnoticed,
Speaker 1: literally unnoticed. Yeah. Yeah, well, I want to read another
Speaker 1: line of yours. You say, I have never been separate
Speaker 1: from God, nor can I be accept in my mind.
Speaker 1: It's your mind. It's the thought that you're separate from
Speaker 1: God that creates the separateness. It isn't objectively. So that's
Speaker 1: the other major piece of restoring the Gospel. Thinking that
Speaker 1: we earn divine union by moral behavior. You don't earn
Speaker 1: divine union. You are created out of infinite union with
Speaker 1: God from all eternity. God chose you in Christ from
Speaker 1: all eternity. Read Ephesians one. I think it says at
Speaker 1: three times, So you can't call this heresy. Are our unscriptural?
Speaker 1: But we the Western civilizations really idealized the mind, and
Speaker 1: so it had no critique, granted it. All we did
Speaker 1: was fight within the arena of the mind. Are different
Speaker 1: of different philosophies and so forth. But the only people
Speaker 1: who moved beyond the mind's dominance were people we would
Speaker 1: call mystics contemplatives. They didn't throughout the mind, but they
Speaker 1: gave it its due. But it didn't control the whole
Speaker 1: show because we let it control the whole show. I
Speaker 1: think therefore I am there. It is. That's Western philosophy,
Speaker 1: and in one sentence, are thinking defines us um gee
Speaker 1: because that it took on the mind, took on, if
Speaker 1: you'll allow me, an almost demonic character, that demanded total allegiance.
Speaker 1: And what it did was convict us of our unworthiness,
Speaker 1: of our shame. Uh. You know the word of of
Speaker 1: Yahweh to Adam and Eve after they leave the garden,
Speaker 1: who told you you were naked? As if to say
Speaker 1: I didn't. But once you leave the garden of Union,
Speaker 1: reality will tell you your naked. You know you're not
Speaker 1: smart enough, you're not good looking enough, You're not your
Speaker 1: body isn't perfect enough, You're not moral enough. Became the
Speaker 1: equation if you were raised religious, which didn't really mean
Speaker 1: that we loved God. It just meant a search for
Speaker 1: some kind of moral perfection. And the irony was that
Speaker 1: ledger of perfection or morality was different from culture to culture. Well,
Speaker 1: and that was the benefit of forty five years traveling
Speaker 1: around the world to see, well, this isn't considered sin here,
Speaker 1: or this is no one's shamed by it over here.
Speaker 1: It's it's not God's will. More often than not, it
Speaker 1: was our will to create taboos and things. Let's take
Speaker 1: the classic one for Catholics. I know you'd probably have
Speaker 1: different ones. Was eating meat on Friday? You know my
Speaker 1: parents and grandparents generations, that was a mortal sin. It
Speaker 1: isn't even in the realm of evil. And when you
Speaker 1: trivialize evil by calling eating meat on Friday a mortal sin,
Speaker 1: you know what happens. You miss the real evils that
Speaker 1: are all around you. As I said before, where did
Speaker 1: the first and Second World Wars come from? Christian Europe?
Speaker 1: Where are we? We wasted time not eating meat on Friday? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean it's a fine symbol, but it isn't evil.
Speaker 1: And we got away with world wars, we got away
Speaker 1: with Nazism. Ah, you just want to cry. God must
Speaker 1: be so patient, God must be so humble to let
Speaker 1: us go down all these dead ends and keep drawing
Speaker 1: us back. Because as you know from the book, I
Speaker 1: am absolutely convinced God is saving history and judging history,
Speaker 1: not individuals. We're all caught up in the divine sweep.
Speaker 1: If that seems like a new notion, Notice how he
Speaker 1: will condemn cities Jerusalem, Jerusalem our best saida cafarn Um. Uh, Corazon,
Speaker 1: where will you go up to having no down to hell?
Speaker 1: He damns the whole cultural milieude. You understand what we
Speaker 1: now call social sin, and most of us have no
Speaker 1: education in that. So I'm writing just a small follow
Speaker 1: up to the this book on the Christ because I
Speaker 1: only alluded to it and didn't develop it. I I
Speaker 1: believe salvation is a social, corporate, historical notion, but I
Speaker 1: believe sin is too. We are sinful, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm too fragile to bear the burden of sins, so
Speaker 1: I basically deny it. But once you know I'm carrying
Speaker 1: yours and you're carrying mine, you go back and read Romans,
Speaker 1: and I'd be willing to bet you'd see, my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is what Paul is saying. We just all have sinned.
Speaker 1: You know, we're all dying together on the vine, and
Speaker 1: we bear one another's goodness, and we bear one another's shame.
Speaker 1: That that I'm convinced is the God siful. It calls
Speaker 1: us much more to solidarity then private perfection. See, private
Speaker 1: perfection just is very well disguised egotism, very well disguised narcissism.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make you a loving person, as if I
Speaker 1: could be loving. Apart from loving, you are perfect apart
Speaker 1: from honoring your gifts. So for me, that's going to
Speaker 1: be the discovery of the next thousand years if we last.
Speaker 1: UH as the discovery of the social nature of the Gospel,
Speaker 1: which is there for everybody to see, but you have
Speaker 1: to be told it. You have to be told. Well,
Speaker 1: that is a beautiful place to wrap up. You and
Speaker 1: I are going to talk a little bit more in
Speaker 1: the post show conversation about the Voice of God Internal
Speaker 1: Joan of Arc lots of fun things. Listeners, you can
Speaker 1: get access to this post show conversation and all the others,
Speaker 1: as well as UH teaching song and a poem mini
Speaker 1: episode each week at when you Feed dot Net slash Support.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Father Richard. You're worth such a pleasure,
Speaker 1: such a pleasure. If what you just heard was helpful
Speaker 1: to you, please consider making a donation to The One
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