Richard Rohr: Returning to Enduring Wisdom
Soon after the dualistic fights of the Reformation, and after the over-rationalization of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Christians took on a more rational form of thinking and covered it with churchy or pious words. Our own doctrines were henceforth presented in an all-or- nothing, argumentative, and apologetic way rather than through a contemplative, mystical knowing. Almost all Catholic priests and Protestant ministers were educated in their own version of this headiness until it began to fall apart in the mid-1960s.
In the 1950s and 60s, Thomas Merton almost single-handedly pulled back the veil and revealed the contemplative mind that had largely been lost for five centuries.
.. They told me then that Merton was not very popular with many of the older monks in those early days, and was considered a rebel because “he told us that we were not contemplatives. We were just introverts saying prayers all day”—but still with the dualistic and judgmental mind fully in charge.
.. Without a contemplative life, poverty, chastity, obedience, and community itself do not work or even make sense. And ministry becomes another way of running away or trying to find yourself instead of real service for others.
Contemplation is a positive choosing of the deep, shining, and enduring divine mysteries that are hidden beneath the too-easy formulas. It is not fast-food religion, but slow and healthy nutrition.