Father Richard Rohr on The Universal Christ

thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. It but it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a

life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Richard Brewer, a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the perennial tradition. He's a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and a founder of the Center for Action

and Contemplation. His new book is The Universal Christ, How I Forgotten Reality Can Change everything we see, hope for and believe. Hi, Father Richard, Welcome to the show. We are excited to have you on again and we are very happy to be here another time at your Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. It is lovely out here, and we had a lovely service that you did this

morning that was really nice. Yes, So we are going to be talking about your book, The Universal Christ, How a Forgotten Reality can change everything we see, hope for, and believe. But before we do that, we are going to start like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

It really is a magnificently simple parable. Ah. And you know you might say, oh, yeah, of course, But I don't think most of our people, uh, in Western society have have been trained to see it that way. In other words, they thought they could entertain negativity, resentment, uh, even toward themselves and they wouldn't have a cost to pay for it. We didn't. We didn't really emphasize the interior life. For all the Christianity at least thinks that

it did, it really didn't. And people, as long as they didn't act out externally, thought they could walk around with that bad wolf so called resentments, angers, fears, judgments. And we see it now in our politics and our whole our church, our whole country. How the bad wolf, if you want to call him that, his voice, her voice, whoever it is, is being um easily heard, too easily heard, which means we're we're feeding him. Well, yeah, yeah, it does seem to be the case in a lot of

in a lot of situations. So let's move into the New book. Um, and you use the word the universal Christ. And usually when we hear Christ, we think Jesus Christ. You're talking about something different. So tell me what is Christ? That word for you? What does it imply? What does it mean? Well, first of all, let me say so people don't think I'm taking him down to dead end. This is entirely orthodox, traditional and scriptural, but it was

just never emphasized. And what happened, in effect was Christ became Jesus last name, as it were. Whereas if you read the New Testament, uh, particularly the first chapters of Colossians, Ephesians, John's Gospel, First Letter of John, first Letter of Hebrews, they all say very clearly the Christ existed from all eternity. Now we all know Jesus was born two thousand years ago, but for convenience sake, it it just was not worth

making that distinction. I'm trying to understand why that was so true, and I can't help but think it has something to do. I'm gonna say it just to make the point, with things like the Hubble telescope discovering in our lifetime the extent of the universe that it's still

expanding and expanding at a faster pace. We're recognizing at a gut level, we have to have a God as big as all of this, and this God can't be limited to planet Earth, and Jesus can't be limited to a sin that was committed by Adam and e between the Tigris and Euphrates river. In other words, very limited in a certain space time, continual, and so thus far the book has received way more response positive response that I'm getting. I'm sure there's negative out there, uh than

I ever expected. And I think it's because the mind and the accompanying heart is ready for it. You know, there's there's not I'm not getting the hate letters I got on some of my past books. It's almost a relief, I think to some people. Yeah, and so what you're talking about when with Christ is this idea that um an incarnational world view, which is basically, you say, but God loves things by becoming them, God loves things by uniting with them, and so really what you're talking about

is seeing Christ in everything you know? You know again that seems when you first heard, Oh, that's oversimplified because we haven't emphasized it or taught it even is why we have the social problems we have today and why Europe, at least in my opinion, which was once the totally Christian continent, isn't just post Christian in many ways, it's anti Christian. The big wars came from the Christian continent.

In other words, we left Christians the freedom to decide where the sacred was and where the sacred wasn't, and we have done it NonStop, beginning with anti Semitism already incipient, and even the New Testament. Then we have heretics being worthy of being burned at the stake. We have women always remaining inferior. Every century has its chosen person, our persons where it doesn't have to see the sacred, which

I'm calling the christ Uh. Once you put leave that free to the individual ego to decide, we now know after two thousand years is the results are tragic, really tragic. And then the earth itself are the animals. You know, nothing was sacred except my group, my Christian group, those who said it just like me and everybody else was

worthy of disdain. Well, how can Jesus possibly be the savior of the world or the Lord of the universe, as John's Gospel begins to think of him if he's always just protecting a little tribe we we largely have. And I got to name it as such, tribal Christianity today.

You know, Jesus was used as a way to hold my group together, not as a way to proclaim the divine presence in all things now, you know, just to add on the most conservative A little document that we Catholics grew up with in this country was called the Baltimore Catechism, and Question sixteen of the Baltimore Catechists we had to memorize question and answer. Sister would ask where is God? And we'd all say, God is everywhere. This

is so basic we forget how basic it is. And then much of the rest of the Catechism pretended God well was not really everywhere, really only in the Catholic Church in our case. But then I found out after I started moving around the world, every other group did the same thing. Yeah, yeah, you say that for you a mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else.

And then you go also say that this incarnational view, this seeing Christ in everything, is the key to mental and spiritual health as well as the basic contentment and happiness, because if the whole thing is beloved, if the whole thing is good, as Genesis one says five times in a row, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good. It was very good. And it's really pernicious that with that as the starting of the narrative we chose to start with the problem

Genesis three. Uh you know why, Well, I think man in particular, if you'll allow me to say so, tend to be problem solvers. If you create a problem, I'm here to solve it. To believe that there was no problem problem to begin with, that it's all good, it's all the child of God, it's all beloved. Now let me throw in quickly because I know what some of our listeners are thinking. Well, he sounds like a pantheist to me. Now, my opinion is not pantheism. Pantheism means

God equals all things. God and all things are the same. There's no distinction between creator and creature. The authentic belief of Orthodox Christianity, although most of us were never taught this word is pan and theism to use the Greek word God in all things, God revealed through all things. Ever, the divine DNA is inserted insight of all of reality. And let me just add to that, how could it not be if there's one creator who created all things, how could the divine imprint not be in a tree

and a dog, and the sky and the entire universe. Well, that really is a basis for mental health. You live in a world that is good, and let's say it, that isn't the perception of most people today. They seem to feel that evil is even winning. And I can see they're good evidence for that. But when we don't contrary that with h the Gospel, um, people are left with a double whammy. It seems to me they're intuitive

observation of how much is going wrong. And then well, even the Christian Church as it's all going to hell in a handbag all the recent and it is recent, you know, teaching on arm again and apocalypse. Now the rapture uh left behind the first Church would not the early church. Let's take the well, really, the first thousand years wouldn't have known what you were talking about. This is a very recent version of the Gospel that ends with a whimper and not a bang um, and yet

many Christians take that as our narrative. We're in trouble when that happens, because a little kid growing up looking for a vision, a positive vision of meaning, direction, hope, purpose, won't find it there. If you only read one chapter in the book, just read the one on resurrection, be because that is the Christian statement about the final end of history summarized in the body of Jesus. Capitulated in the body of Jesus. But Jesus is a stand in

for everything. Jesus Christ is a stand in for everything. But again, most of us weren't weren't taught to see it that way, right, I think for most versions of Christianity, what's important about Jesus is that he died for our sins his death, but focusing solely on that, we missed his whole life. It's true, it sounds too oversimplified, but it's true. We really didn't need his life. His sermon on the Mount, his humility, his tenderness, his compassion all

we needed. If you'll allow me to say it was some warm blood at the end of his life inside a whole frame of retributive justice, which isn't the only definition of justice, but I must say in history it's been the most common one tip for tap quid pro quo, this much sin, this much atonement, are this much retribution? So we settled for what I call a transactional understanding of Jesus, where I believe the full meaning of Jesus. And by the way, this book will not lessen your

lover or appreciation for Jesus. I would hold at least quite the contrary. He gives us a transformational understanding of history, and his own transformation is the pattern of ours. That's what I'm trying to say through the whole book. So I want to change gears a little bit and talk about something that you wrote in the book. And you were sort of talking about when God sort of pulls back or hides his face, right, Um, But you said, I must be honest with you here about my own life.

For the last ten years, I have had little spiritual feeling either consolation nor desolation. Talk to me about that experience and how you frame it within your faith and I'd also be interested in how you've framed what I think might have been depressive episodes within your faith, because you talk about Mother Teresa had these periods of darkness that people said was depression, and you're saying that's not really what it was, So tell me more about all that.

It's very funny you'd bring that up, because today has been one of those days. I from the moment I woke up this morning, I my feeling tone was flat line, just okay. I guess I love God. I want to love God. I guess I love life. I want to love life unless you have days like this, which among the Catholic mystics was called darkness, or it would be comparable to the Buddhist notion of emptiness. Only when you come to that flat line day do you go deeper

and draw up on deeper resources. I'd be willing to bet I'm gonna have almost the opposite in the next few days, because today I'm drawing upon no. I hope it doesn't come through my talk. But no. Positive. It doesn't mean negative because I'm having no positive feelings. It's what I call flat line, just okay. It is what it is. I believe that I don't feel so, as so many of the mystics put it, the feeling has to be taken away, so you choose, So you decide

to love. I'm sure if you're married, you have to do that a hundred times in your lifetime with your partner a year. You you don't every day feel it. You have to decide for it, choose it, rely upon past moments of intimacy or communion, and that allows you to go I don't think there's any way to go deeper except the dance of emptiness and fullness. If every day that you love Jesus was just a gush of emotion, and I've had many of those wonderful days in my life.

You know, there's too much payoff for the ego. You don't really love Jesus. You love the feelings Jesus gives you after a while. So that's what the saints meant by God withdrawing his face. There has to be emptiness. Our fullness isn't very exciting, to put it that way. We don't have much understanding of that. Uh, no offense. I'm not sure what religious tradition you come from. It. The Protestant tradition had almost no teaching on darkness, almost none.

They had sin. When I talk about darkness, I'm not talking about sin very yeah, and uh, without that, without any good teaching on spiritual darkness, you you don't grow very deep because you think you've lost faith, when in fact you're being taught faith out much. You're being taught love, and you're being taught hope. The Three Biggies. Yeah, that makes me think of a couple of things. One of the lines that I may have used on this show more than any other is this idea that sometimes you

can't think your way into right action. You have to act your way into right thinking. It's one of our principles. Yeah, and so that's you know, that's kind of what you're You know, what you're talking about is very good. But help me understand. How do you delineate or is it not important to delineate this darkness, this spiritual darkness, from what we would call depression. It's a very worthy question.

I've alluded to it in several of my books. I think it comes down to, uh, a kind of underlying positivity that you can still do what you have to do, treat people with love and respect, willingly put one foot in front of the other. It's just what's withdrawn is the enjoyment. The feeling of joy isn't there. It's it's constantly choice, choice, choice, whereas true depression. Uh. I'm told at least that you don't have those qualities that you really find it hard to love, hard to hope. You

know you're being held like this morning. Uh. I would have to say I've prayed more. I was in the car a couple of times, had to run home for something. Uh. And most of my movements there's been a constant prayer, God, You're gonna help me. I don't know why I'm doing today now. I don't know if i'd offer those prayers if I was feeling it. Do you understand? So it is? It isn't a loss of faith in God. It's a

loss of feeling faith in God. Yeah. Antedonia right, which is the word that people will use for lack of enjoyment and things. You normally get a lot of enjoyment. And this question is real near and dear to me because I have dealt with depression most of my adult life, and I've had a little bit of a flare up recently. But one of the things that I'm always sort of trying to process through for myself. Is is this depression? Is this what you're referring to is sort of a

spiritual darkness? Is this, um just my temperament to a certain degree, right, like a melancholy sort of sure. And so just I'm always interested when I read that in your book, and you're making some very good distinctions, because that has to be usually at least partially true that some personalities are more inclined to a a soberness. Let's just call it that. Yeah. Uh, in me, I've always been rather serious. Uh So, maybe I'm inclined to it more.

But uh I always felt a basic underlying happiness. But but I'm not a giddy or joke telling person. I wished I were. I love our director and some of the staff here because they are and they balanced me out. I need people like that around me. Thanks for being so vulnerable, because you're ma can for one third the human race at least and probably two thirds of our listeners. Yeah. So one of the other things that you talk about is that the experience of God, and we we referenced

it a little bit seeing Christ and everything. You say that anything that draws you out of yourself in a positive way for all practical purposes, is operating as God for you at that moment. God experience always expands your scene and never constricts it. You know what to read? That's that's a jam packed line and every word is important.

That see. The the boundaried self, the protected ego, or if you just want to call it, the ego doesn't know how to let the divine flow of grace, the trinitarian love that moves the whole universe is the sap of the universe. It doesn't know how to let that flow. It damns it up inside of you. And there have to be and God gives them constantly once you learn how to see. Since I've been talking to you, I'm looking out the window and noticing that the cherries are

already coming out. They're the real tiny but on our little cherry tree out here. I don't know if you can see it. And that already made me happy. No, it takes a little to make you happy. And whatever is facilitating that flow, uh, you know, stopping the damned up you can almost understand. Damn. Either way, Um is operating as Christ and that's not being cutesy. Uh. If you don't find that, you really do stay inside of yourself.

I think in in so many any movies and literature, the image of the Christian is often an anal retentive person who can't laugh. Now that isn't always true by any means, but I think we've projected that storyline that we aren't people who are inside the flow of love and life and joy, but we're primarily keeping the what we call the subject object split. I'm over here as a subject. That cherry tree is an object for my objectification. It's not something I can momentarily merge with and love

and appreciate and overcome the split. So I'm knowing it subject to subject, delight to delight like nos like Once you can allow yourself to know things in that way, you're never far from contentment. I'm not even gonna call it always, you know, a leap of joy, but something even better, a deep satisfaction that life is okay. Why is God allowing those cherries to emerge again with no help from us? We just let it grow every year. Uh, It's so wonderful that unless you see it at that level,

you don't draw life. It doesn't draw a life out of you. Let me put it that way, right right, Yeah, you have a beautiful couple of lines. You say. God seems to have chosen to manifest the invisible in what we call the visible, so that all things visible are the revelation of And I love this phrase. God's endlessly diffusive spiritual energy. Once a person recognizes that, it is

hard to ever be lonely in this world again. M hm, see if if the whole universe is subject to subject and like, and let me describe what I mean by that. I'm not just talking to it, but I'm giving it voice and letting it be a vow, as Martin Bouber would put it. I'm sure you're familiar with his eye vow relationship. But I let it, as it were, talk back to me and tell me about life, tell me about God, a lovely blooming tree. You're connected in such

a way that you can never be lonely again. There's there's activity, there's agency, there's mutuality, there's giving and receiving. That's the only way a hermit can live alone for forty days. Whenever you see the re emergence of hermits and you we can go through Lee Catholic history and see the periods where they just multiply. You've always got a rebirth of the contemplative mind, where there's deep contentment inside of what's right in front of you, a tree,

an animal. Everything gives you satisfaction, and everything gives you connection. When you live in a separate universe where that's just a tree, that's just a dog for my consumption or from my profit, when you're constantly cutting the link, of course, you're going to be lonely. Really, it's that simple. Of course, you're going to be lonely. And I think this is why we have so much sexual abuse, because I mean sex, false sex in particulars just looking for connection because I

don't have it. Uh, someone who's universe personally connected, does not need to use or objectify other people, much less hurt them in any way. So it's all one. Um. So you know, it's strange that we call the active intercourse making love. I don't know statistically how often it

is making love or how often it's making lust. And making lust leaves you disconnected if you understand you're still over here and she or he is over there, doesn't satisfy the soul at all, but when you discovered the other as a fellow thou Martin Boober, the Jewish philosopher, he said, there's either the eye vow relationship or everything descends into the eye. It it's utilitarian, it's uh mercantile,

but it's not meaningful. I was on a retreat recently with a spiritual teacher and he said something that really struck me, and it goes back to kind of what we were talking about about acting your way into right thinking. He said, you know, you're gonna have these spiritual experiences, and that experience is going to go, but the important thing is to devote yourself to what little bit of

it remains perfect. So yeah, so it's this, okay, that experience is gone, but there's there's an underlying truth there that I saw, that you see, that people see, and how do you devote yourself to that devote That's a beautiful choice of words. And again, why you can't get tied to the feeling is the feeling goes, and it does in all of us, just like the honeymoon does.

But there was something true there in the honeymoon experience, which is simply an experience of radical unity and that's what we were created for, that's what we live for. But then we can't experience them naturally easily. We try to manufacture them by what I'm gonna call high intensity events rock rock concerts. I'm not saying rock concerts are wrong, but don't spend too much time there are. What you

do is you up your your anti of expectation. I need loud noise, I need lights to an unbelievable level, and now I'll be excited. I mean, you can't help. But when you watch TV, what are they going to do next to engage my imagination? How much light do we need on? What's the show idol? American Idol? You know? I mean, it is fascinating. It isn't many ways beautiful, but it's what the early desert fathers would have called, you know, the lust of the eyes. And they're not

talking about naked women. They're talking about too much visual excitement, which makes you think I need that to be happy. No, you really don't need that to be happy. You need that to be diverted or distracted. Because after American Idol, I'm just picking on them. It's a wonderful show. I'm sure that you really won't be any happy, You really won't. Yeah, distraction does not make you happy. It has to touch

the depths. Now, some of the beautiful stories of people who rose from nothing to becoming a great singer, maybe that can touch the soul. But lights and loud noise of themselves will always fail to do it. Or firework shows, you know with scare dogs. I know, like dogs never liked Fourth of July, So yeah, I think that's an

that's a really interesting point. And you talked about this idea of anything that draws us out of ourselves, right, and you use the that God uses three things in particular, goodness, truth, and beauty. And it's interesting to me because when I watch TV there are certain shows and what I've realized is that I cry very easily good And what I what I realized is what usually gets me is scenes of deep goodness. Yeah right, there's like there's a kindness

between two people that you're tuitous kindness. Yeah, it just it just brings it out. And the same spiritual teacher I was talking about in his book recently said, you know, not tears of joy, not tears of sadness, tears of depth, And that really hit me. Because I've never been able to put words on what it is. What it is? Wow, I totally agree with that. I always wish I could cry more easily. The moments that it does happen most easily for me. And I don't know why I've talked

about this to therapists. Is moments of reunion someone who hasn't seen their mother for twenty years or anything. Oh, I just saw like a baby. I was never abandoned or you know, I h the usual psychological explanations don't make sense to me. But to see two people who have never known one another just clutch at one another and weep. I weep too. Yeah, it's beautiful. It is that.

That's what people parting is another and people who are you know, And we were just talking about um the book Death of an Archbishop by WILLI Catherine, which takes place out here, and one of the beautiful parts of that book is, uh, Father la Tour, I think he would say, and Father Valiant and the love between those two and how Father la Tour would just how much he missed his friend when he went out to do the mission work. It's just a beautiful part of that book.

You know, it would kind of get me because you could feel him his friend would leave, and it was this part of him that went with him. Oh, that says you are capable of the same thing. I have to say, of course, it's been twenty five years since I read Death Comes for the Archbishop. I remember it being a beautiful book about him Exico, but I didn't remember that friendship. You must be there inside. That's great. Yeah,

it's a it's a beautiful book. So you mentioned the cherry trees outside the window a minute ago, and but in your book you also mentioned this glorious tree over here to our right. Um. You say it's a massive, hundred and fifty year old rio grand cottonwood tree. And you know, you say it spreads its gnarled limbs over the lawn, which is true. The twists and turns in it are are are stunning. And you say, basically, in

a lot of ways, it looks like an imperfect tree. Um. And you go on to say, divine perfection is precisely the ability to include what seems like imperfection. And you've got a sign in your office that says life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful. You can come back and read it. It's still there, the sign I mean, and the and the tree is gloriously still there. Yeah. Everybody wants to paint it or take a picture of it.

They tell me. An arborist told me that he thinks it had a mutation which made it take the circuitous, unnatural bends in the even large trunk branches. In the rediscovery of the Gospel, we discovered nothing else but that that evil is not something you can ever totally eliminate, exclude, dismissed, discard. You have to forgive it. Forgiveness is different. It's still there. Yeah. I call it the inclusion of the negative that's at the heart of the gospel. But I think the Western

dualistic mind was just not capable of seeing that. You know, I was teaching my last time last summer in Germany and you're probably familiar, uh with the classic I can all GRIFFI of St. Michael. He's on a horse. George is more on a horse. Michael's more just standing there heroically, and he's stabbing a dragon or standing on the dragon. That's pretty much where we've been up to now, really assuming that the dragon can be killed, right. See, that's

a lie. That's not true. God uses evil for your transformation. We now have words for it. We call it integration, reconciliation. Well, while I was there, they took me to uh several different churches and art museums where they had a pictures that only apparently were common for a certain period in the Middle Ages of St. Martha. No, ide'm this is not biblical. I don't know where it comes from. But St. Martha is never pictured, uh stabbing our spearing the dragon.

She's always feeding it. Here we go to the wolf again or petting it, and it's always a side picture. But it's and my friend who's fascinated by these same things, he took me to church after church in Nuremberg we were at that time, but then we went on to Munich, where there it is again. Martha is always off to the side. And isn't it interesting. There's the masculine approach to killing evil, and there's the feminine approach, and Martha

tames the dragon. Now we'd call that restorative justice. It isn't It doesn't punish, it transforms yea. Yeah, you know parents are already doing that with their little children. If you really want to help up your children, grow up. You don't just punish them, you teach them. Okay, now, why isn't that a good thing to do? Why would it be good to now apologize to your little sister for what you just did? Or it's it's we've already learned this at the human level. Where did we learn

that from the way God operates? Jesus punishes nobody, check it out. He calls people to responsibility. But the real punishing notion of Christ came after he was gone, and we largely projected it onto him. In my opinion, I love that story about St. Martha and feeding the dragon. You know another thing that you know, these things I say over and over, One of the big ones is this idea that suffering equals pain times resistance, you know, the resistance to this. And I was in a in

a workshop I was doing recently. I was talking about the story of Milarapa, a Buddhist. I don't know what you would call him. I'll just call him a sage where you know, he has a story where there's all these demons in his cave and he's chasing him around

trying to get rid of him. Then he's trying to teach him the dharma trying, you know, he's doing everything he could do, and he finally says, fine, demons stay, and most of them disappear, and then there's one big demon remaining, just the you know, the big gnarly demon, and he finally just puts his head in its mouth. So it's speaking to this same idea, you know, St. Martha and the dragon. It sure is, thank you, I've

never heard that before. Yeah, you see, well, you know this, it's a non violence training one oh one when you return and kind. Once Michael starts stabbing the dragon, he's become a dragon. He's not St. Michael anymore. War But it is the dualistic mind of earlier history just couldn't read things that way. Yeah, it's not their fault. It

was all uh power and force, not love that change things. Yeah, you have a beautiful quote that ties a few of the things we just talked about, the seeing things Buddhist perspective. You say, after all, there's not a native Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic, or Christian way of loving. There's not a Methodist, Lutheran or Orthodox way of running a soup kitchen. There's not a gay or straight way of being faithful, nor a

black or occasion way of hoping. We all know positive flow and we see it, and we all know resistance and coldness when we feel it. All the rest your mere labels. Thank you. It's a beautiful I don't know someone did recently, but it must be ranking people. Uh. Yeah, you know that's hard to deny. It has nothing to do with me being Catholic or someone else being another denomination.

That's just undeniable truth. If you can be honest, and you know, I've said others have said many times, the only the only two virtues you really need our humility and honesty two move forward on the spiritual life. If you lack humility to admit that. You know, if the Buddhist said it, and it's true, it's true. Thomas A. Quintas told us, who's of course, considered the great Catholic intellectual. The first question should not be who said it? The

first question should be is it true? And if it's true, it's always from the Holy Spirit. I love that. Always from the Holy Spirit. So it doesn't matter Confucius said it or Mohammad said it. Uh, why can't we see that? Well, it's it's revealed it reveals. It seems to me how tribal we are. We only believe truth from our tribe. Yeah, all else's suspect. Well, you end up with very small truth,

you do. And it's so interesting to me how you know, we can talk about how Christians do that, but I know some pretty strong non Christians to put it politely, and there's it's the same way if it speaks of a church or a god or anything, it's just it's nonsense, right, which is just is it's just as bad as the the opposite of that, which is, you know, if it's not said in the right way in my particular orthodoxy,

it's not. I mean, it's but I agree with you, and that's why I loved going back to what we talked about that you said anything that draws you out of yourself in a positive way, And I think it's so easy to feel. And and people often say to me, how do you know if you're feeding the bad wolf? And I said, well, usually if you're quiet, you know, if you're if you're quiet, you can feel it. It's a it's a it's a constriction, it's a tightness, it's

a it's a contraction. I keep referencing the same spiritual teacher Audio Shanti is who it is and who was also on Oprah and been on our show several times. Um. One thing he said that really hit me. He's talking about this the ego structure, and he said, all ego is, all it is is just a constriction. And and that's why I love that line of yours, you know. Yeah, I mean, and whether it's exactly true or not, but

it speaks to the same thing that you're saying. If it's if it's this outflowing a bigger fighter perspective, that's that's the spiritual impulse working through and this constriction, this tightness we feel it. I know it isn't a word, and it's somewhat crude, but I called it outflowing or in sucking. And after a while you can tell when you're in sucking. Yes, you're just pulling back, hardening your edges. It has the taste of fear to it. It, it's a coldness to it. Yeah, you've got to learn to

recognize that in your own body. But because we didn't pay much attention to the body, we let it go unnoticed, literally unnoticed. Yeah. Yeah, well, I want to read another line of yours. You say, I have never been separate from God, nor can I be accept in my mind. It's your mind. It's the thought that you're separate from God that creates the separateness. It isn't objectively. So that's the other major piece of restoring the Gospel. Thinking that

we earn divine union by moral behavior. You don't earn divine union. You are created out of infinite union with God from all eternity. God chose you in Christ from all eternity. Read Ephesians one. I think it says at three times, So you can't call this heresy. Are our unscriptural? But we the Western civilizations really idealized the mind, and so it had no critique, granted it. All we did was fight within the arena of the mind. Are different

of different philosophies and so forth. But the only people who moved beyond the mind's dominance were people we would call mystics contemplatives. They didn't throughout the mind, but they gave it its due. But it didn't control the whole show because we let it control the whole show. I

think therefore I am there. It is. That's Western philosophy, and in one sentence, are thinking defines us um gee because that it took on the mind, took on, if you'll allow me, an almost demonic character, that demanded total allegiance. And what it did was convict us of our unworthiness, of our shame. Uh. You know the word of of Yahweh to Adam and Eve after they leave the garden, who told you you were naked? As if to say I didn't. But once you leave the garden of Union,

reality will tell you your naked. You know you're not smart enough, you're not good looking enough, You're not your body isn't perfect enough, You're not moral enough. Became the equation if you were raised religious, which didn't really mean that we loved God. It just meant a search for some kind of moral perfection. And the irony was that

ledger of perfection or morality was different from culture to culture. Well, and that was the benefit of forty five years traveling around the world to see, well, this isn't considered sin here, or this is no one's shamed by it over here. It's it's not God's will. More often than not, it was our will to create taboos and things. Let's take the classic one for Catholics. I know you'd probably have different ones. Was eating meat on Friday? You know my

parents and grandparents generations, that was a mortal sin. It isn't even in the realm of evil. And when you trivialize evil by calling eating meat on Friday a mortal sin, you know what happens. You miss the real evils that are all around you. As I said before, where did the first and Second World Wars come from? Christian Europe? Where are we? We wasted time not eating meat on Friday? Yeah? I mean it's a fine symbol, but it isn't evil. And we got away with world wars, we got away

with Nazism. Ah, you just want to cry. God must be so patient, God must be so humble to let us go down all these dead ends and keep drawing us back. Because as you know from the book, I am absolutely convinced God is saving history and judging history, not individuals. We're all caught up in the divine sweep. If that seems like a new notion, Notice how he will condemn cities Jerusalem, Jerusalem our best saida cafarn Um. Uh, Corazon, where will you go up to having no down to hell?

He damns the whole cultural milieude. You understand what we now call social sin, and most of us have no education in that. So I'm writing just a small follow up to the this book on the Christ because I only alluded to it and didn't develop it. I I believe salvation is a social, corporate, historical notion, but I believe sin is too. We are sinful, you know, I'm I'm too fragile to bear the burden of sins, so

I basically deny it. But once you know I'm carrying yours and you're carrying mine, you go back and read Romans, and I'd be willing to bet you'd see, my gosh, this is what Paul is saying. We just all have sinned. You know, we're all dying together on the vine, and we bear one another's goodness, and we bear one another's shame. That that I'm convinced is the God siful. It calls

us much more to solidarity then private perfection. See, private perfection just is very well disguised egotism, very well disguised narcissism. It doesn't make you a loving person, as if I could be loving. Apart from loving, you are perfect apart from honoring your gifts. So for me, that's going to be the discovery of the next thousand years if we last. UH as the discovery of the social nature of the Gospel, which is there for everybody to see, but you have

to be told it. You have to be told. Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up. You and I are going to talk a little bit more in the post show conversation about the Voice of God Internal Joan of Arc lots of fun things. Listeners, you can get access to this post show conversation and all the others, as well as UH teaching song and a poem mini episode each week at when you Feed dot Net slash Support. Thank you so much, Father Richard. You're worth such a pleasure,

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