My spiritual growth seems to be based on the bass-ackward mode. I've often thought if there wasn't a backdoor to spiritual growth, I'd still be wondering who God's mother was...my first spiritual question in Sunday school, age six.
I'm guessing that's why I love paradox and parables...I was blessed when I heard and accepted that a spiritual paradox is not an intellectual exercise. It is faith-based thus faith-realized.
Fr. Richard Rohr recently wrote: Yet all spiritual traditions *** teach that the soul must be receptive before God and simply accept love, without heroic effort. It is a path of descent more than ascent, unlearning more than learning, letting go more than any performance principle.
Now that is the essence of paradoxical truth. Apart from the descent, unlearning, and letting go, the particularly meaningful words to me are "without heroic effort." Heroic effort is going all up in our head...examining, analyzing, dissecting. Repeatedly. We become addicted to our own thinking that way...which way does not lead to God. It leads to more thinking.
Which isn't to say we must stay away from our reasoning mind altogether...we were given it for a purpose. The purpose is just not the final word; it's maybe the cane we lean on in trudging the path we need take to get to God.
That is a path of silence. Peace, be still...and know that I am God.
Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment