A Crash Course in Catholic Mysticism
So I’m reading Richard Rohr’s new book, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. Many of you have experienced a taste of Rohr by participating in our “book” club (in quotes, because the book in this case was a two-part lecture) a few months back. (And can I remind you that our current book club will focus on the easy-reading abridgment of Thomas a’Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ that you can find in a book called Christian Classics in Modern English. We’ll discuss it in about a month, so you still have time to get in on the conversation—and you owe it to yourself to consider what a’Kempis is trying to tell you that no one else will ever tell you, at least this forcefully.) I like Rohr a lot and have been helped by him just a ton, even though he often seems a little elusive to me.
But, for me, Rohr most certainly does capture a part of the conversation we engage in on this blog about as eloquently as anyone. What we call “Stage 4,” you’ll remember, is characterized as “mystical.” (For a primer on these stages for those of you following this conversation on Facebook, please visit the buttons at the top of the notreligious.org blog.) But that forces us to think a bit more deeply about historic mysticism, which Rohr very much does. He talks about things in ways that Otto, on our blog, has often championed (Rohr, for instance, talks about the problems of the ego—which he asserts equates to what Paul calls “the flesh”).
So, all to say, I’d love to give you a taste of his take on mysticism in The Naked Now. It might not work. Maybe you’d have to have read his whole book to understand the snippets I’ll throw your way (these quotes start at page 99). But the book has made an impression on me. A good chunk of one of my recent dates with Grace was taken up by processing his arguments (showing what a fun and romantic date I can be—in my defense the evening ended with us seeing the outstanding touring Broadway musical In the Heights).
As we said before, the human mind prefers to think by comparison and differentiation-from. It starts as a binary system, something like a computer. Polarity thinking is unfortunately a self-canceling system, a form of argumentation that merely lets both sides more deeply invest in and identify with their position. Words can always be fashioned to make our point, and even we know that it is not necessarily objectively or totally true. Ask any lawyer or judge, or honest husband or wife, if that is not the case.
…Thus most groups divide into liberals and conservatives of some sort, thinking that by defeating the other, they will win. This appeals to our competitive nature. The truth, however, is always something other than what one side says about the other.
The creating of false alternatives to force a person into an either-or choice, which can occur even with well-intentioned people, is even more characteristic of hostile or insincere opponents, as we see the enemies of Jesus exemplify. “Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Polarity thinking avoids all subtlety and discrimination and creates false dichotomies. If you fight dualistic thinkers directly, you are forced to become dualistic yourself. This is why, classically, Jesus sidesteps the two alternatives by telling a story, keeping silent, or sometimes presenting a third alternative that utterly reframes the false dilemma.Rohr goes on to talk about how the alternative to dualistic thinking is prayer (of a certain sort), and prayer as a way of life. What prayer—as he defines it (and, as I’ve said, he and I wouldn’t see eye to eye on this definition, but it doesn’t take away from his upshot)—does for us is it frees us to receive whatever God is giving us in the present moment, in our actual circumstances right now, which is what he calls “the naked now.” The way we dodge whatever God is trying to teach is in this moment is by living in our heads and fighting our imagined enemies.
I call contemplation the tree of life, as compared to… “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (the latter of which) represents “either-or” dualism, which we are strictly warned against and warned not to eat. The tree of life promises access to eternal things, grows “crops twelve times a year,” and sprouts “leaves that are for the healing of the nations.”
But living in the full experience of this present moment, as God interprets it (Rohr’s take on contemplation) will leave us in a welter of paradox and inconsistencies in a way that we can dodge by rushing to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life, like actual life, calls us to hold tensions, which people hate to do.
It is agreeing to live without resolution, at least for awhile. This is very difficult… largely because we have not been taught how to do this mentally or emotionally. …I think this… is the very definition of faith. But faith in Christianity largely became believing things to be true or false (faith as intellectual assent) instead of giving people concrete practices so they could themselves know how to open up (faith), hold on (hope), and allow an infilling from another source (Iove). …We must move from a belief-based religion to a practice-based religion, or little will change. We will merely continue to argue about what we are supposed to believe and who the unbelievers are. …When you are concerned with either attacking or defending, manipulating or resisting, pushing or pulling, you cannot be contemplative. When you are preoccupied with enemies, you are always dualistic. …In most cases, you become a mirror image of both what you oppose and what you love (see Ephesians 5:14).
So. This may be abstract. But for those of you who’ve made it this far, I’m very interested in your reactions to what you pick up from these thoughts from Rohr. At the risk of suppressing discussion, one pushback I’d like to forestall is a pushback that he’s anti-intellectual (because we can’t imagine a thinking person that doesn’t spend their whole life marshaling arguments). He’s not. He’s the very picture of an intellectual, in many ways, for better or worse.
That said, how do you respond to this? Is this appealing? Is this unappealing? How so?
