I am taking a week to read and wonder, pray and ponder, plan and dream.

One of the books I’m exploring is The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See by Richard Rohr.  This book is currently being read by the small Christian Community Group in which I participated in Minnesota.  Richard Rohr is a Catholic priest and the founder for the Center of Action and Contemplation.  This book encourages Christians to discover the lost tradition of Mystical Christianity.  Jim Wallis writes, “Richard Rohr invites us, all of us, to slow down and to find God, or be found by God, in all the places we never thought to look.”

I’m pondering many quotes from the book.  Here are a couple:

“The most amazing fact about Jesus,

unlike almost any other religious founder,

is that he found God in disorder and imperfection.”

“{Through contemplative prayer}…

God becomes more a verb than a noun,

more a process than a conclusion,

more an experience than a dogma,

more a personal relationship than an idea….

We do not pray to Christ; we pray through Christ.

Or even more precisely, Christ prays through us.

We are always and forever the conduits,

the instruments, the tuning forks, the receiver stations.

We slowly learn the right frequencies that pick up the signal.

The core task of good spirituality is to teach us to cooperate

with what God already wants to do

and has already begun to do.”

These are some of the ideas I’m pondering when away and wonder as I think about engaging others in conversations about Jesus, faith and being  Christian in a world of religious pluralism.  Hmmmm…..  What do you think?

Gently,

Pr. Elaine