Just as we have learned that the eye-witness account is the least reliable of all testimony, we are beginning to learn that the literal mindset is one of the least fruitful levels of meaning, according to Fr. Richard Rohr. Which reminds me of the point made by an unknown 14th century monk, in The Cloud of Unknowing, to "be wary of the overly scrupulous."
It's like Thaddeus Golas taught in his Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment: We must go beyond reason to love. We must go beyond our literal sense of right and wrong, of black and white really, to find God, love...to be made whole, One.
This is a whole 'nother state of mind. It has a name, and its name is the fourth dimension. It is real, and it exists within us. As Eknath Easwaran puts it, "[W]e have discovered another dimension to life, another realm -- changeless, eternal, beyond cause and effect -- on which the entire physical universe rests."
It is that fourth dimension that allows us to accept the difficulties of life, the errors of our own making, and, more importantly, those that are visited upon us as if gifts of gold when they appear to be dross. We get to exchange our mind.
Those who are stuck in the literal world, the secure world of the reasoning mind, will never experience the peace of being wrongly accused...without any need to respond in kind, to justify, excuse or defend our self in any way. Then, too, they will not think that's a bad thing.
That's why we can't explain it...it does not make reasoning-mind sense. But then neither does God.
Thank you.
Father, thank you for blessing Pope Francis today, for helping him to know your will for him and for giving him the power to carry that out. Amen.
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