Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

I started this book back in June on my way to Costa Rica and just finished it on the way home from London. I found many insightful pages and have decided to list some of the excerpts here for future reference.

"True prayer is usually experienced as tears, surrender, and forgiveness." (p.16) - this is something that I first began to realize as I read through the Philokalia. I was surprised at how often tears were mentioned in a book about prayer and how so many of the instructions regarding Jesus Prayer included notations about tears. Ever since I've been introduced to these concepts I've been paying a lot more attention to my own tears and the things that move me emotionally.

"...seeing is the heart of spirituality today." (p.17) - a lot of times we pray for God to be present with us, but I feel that's probably not good theology. God is always present we just don't see Him because we are blinded by what Rohr calls "affluenza".

"It seems that we Christians have been worshiping Jesus' journey instead of doing his journey. The first feels very religious; the second just feels human, and not glorious at all." (p. 20)

"We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is awareness." (p.29)

Luke 11:34 - If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light.

"We have to learn to see what is there."

"Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a stance. It's a way of living in the presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence." (p. 31)

"All spiritual disciplines have one purpose: to get rid of the illusions so we can be present. These disciplines exist so that we can see what is, see who we are, and see what is happening. On the contrary, our mass cultural trance is like scales over our eyes. We see only with the material eye."

"If we are to believe Jesus, nothing is more dangerous than people who presume they already see. God can most easily be lost by being thought found." (p. 31)

There's a section in the book called "Cultivating the Beginners Mind". Rohr likens the concept to the frequent illustration chosen by Jesus, that of the little child. He goes so far as to say that what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption that we already know or that we don't need to know. As a teacher myself, I can't tell you how true that is in the classroom. Oh, that more of my students came in with a beginners mind. When I first read this I thought to myself, I'll bet God wishes the same for me at times. I was about to lead a mission trip with 13 of my students and so I tried to adopt the beginners mind. It was a humbling experience.

"Spirituality is about seeing. We need to learn to say with the blind man, 'I want to see.'" (p.33)

After speaking of the Zen concept of koan, Rohr says this... "If the great mystery is indeed the Great Mystery, it will lead us into paradox, into darkness, and into journeys that never cease. That is what prayer is about." (p.36)

"In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us... We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the path, the perilous dark path of true prayer... We avoid God who works in the darkness - where we are not in control! Maybe that is the secret: relinquishing control." (p.43-47)

We must learn the way of descent, the way of tears, and how to learn to let go.

I was surprised how often Rohr used the words "letting go". And it made me rethink how significant those two words have been to me over the past year, since YS.

"The contemplative secret is to learn to live in the now... Know that things are okay as they are. This moment is as perfect as it can be. The saints called this 'the sacrament of the present moment'." (p. 61)

"Be not afraid" is the most common single line in the Bible. (p.69)

"We will not recognize God later if we do not recognize him now." (p. 90)

"St. Francis said, 'I have done what was mine to do; now you must do what is yours to do.' We must find out what part of the mystery is ours to reflect. There is a unique truth that our lives alone can reflect. Our first job is to see correctly who we are, and then to act on it. That will probably take more courage than to be Mother Teresa... The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly they mystery of our own reality. That is everybody's greatest cross." (p. 97)

"When religion becomes an organizational system, it will reward fear because it offers control to those in management." (p.108)

"Prayer and suffering are probably the two primary paths of transformation." (p.115)

"People who know God well, always meet a lover not a dictator." (p.131)

"Two-thirds of Jesus' teaching is on forgiveness." (p.133)

"Church only "works" with people who have some real life with God; otherwise it's all smoke and mirrors." (p.150)