Mike Petrow:

Friends, welcome back to another episode of the Everything Belongs podcast, a podcast where we explore the teachings of Father Richard Rohr and we live them forward. We ask new questions in an ever-evolving world and invite you as our listeners to apply them to your own life. This season, we’ve been looking at Father Richard’s latest and he claims his last book, The Tears of Things.

It’s interesting to reflect on the fact that not too long ago, in failing health, Father Richard had retired, told the world that he was stepping back from his work at the Center for Action and Contemplation and his public teaching. Father Richard was unexpectedly graced with an invitation to fly to the Vatican and have a private conversation with Pope Francis. And there, being wheeled back to a private room for a private audience with one of his greatest heroes, who Richard considered one of the greatest prophetic voices in the Christian world today and in history, Father Richard was shocked to learn that Pope Francis knew him and knew his books. Father Richard brought him a copy of The Universal Christ, and Pope Francis waved his hand and said, “Ah, I’ve already read that! I have my own copy.” And he looked at Richard and told him, “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

As I’m recording this, it’s just a few days past the passing of Pope Francis, and we so appreciate the gift and the source of wisdom that he was to all of us and to the world. And as we explore Richard’s latest, and what he says will be his last book, it’s worth offering a moment of deep appreciation that it was that visit to Pope Francis that caused Richard to come home to Albuquerque, and sit down and write The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage.

In our fifth episode, we explore chapter four, Welcoming Holy Disorder: How the Prophets Carry Us Through. Those of us who’ve listened to Richard for a long time know that he teaches what he often refers to as the Wisdom Pattern; that we go through three big seasons cyclically in our life. First, we experience order, where we construct a map of how reality is, a GPS, if you will, ideas, a theology, an ideology of how things are, and we create a sense of structure and safety in our life. But as Richard tells us in Falling Upwards, sooner or later, if we’re on any kind of a classical spiritual schedule, we will fail at something, or something will fail us, and then we find ourselves in a season of disorder, where our ideas and our ideologies stop working. And in order for us to keep growing, we have to keep moving into these seasons of disorder, which eventually allow us to move into the third season, which is reorder, where we sort of put it all back together again.

But it’s here in The Tears of Things that Richard tells us that disorder is holy. It is a sacred time that is taking apart the old to make room for the new. Richard tells us that it is in this season that the old order has to somehow show its disorder, its shadow self, its injustices, and its wrongness. And he reminds us that every group, even the ones that we love so preciously, has its shadow side, even as each and every one of us have our own shadow side. The things about ourselves that we’d love not to see, the things about our countries and our religions and our communities and our group identities that we’d love not to see. But friends, it’s the prophetic voice that shines a light on a shadow, and shows us where we need to grow and outgrow, so we can make room for the new and more love.

After Paul Swanson and I get a chance to unpack this idea of holy disorder with Richard, there is no one I would rather learn from about the shadow than the Jungian psychologist Connie Zweig, who’s written multiple books on the topic, and Carmen Acevedo Butcher and I get a chance to talk to Connie. Connie shows us that when we face the things that we would like not to see, there’s very often gold hidden in the shadow. I am so excited for you to get to hear these conversations. And once again, I’m so excited that we are getting to learn from Father Richard’s book, The Tears of Things. Without further ado, let’s join Paul Swanson, head over to Richard’s house, and learn about the importance of seasons of holy disorder.

From the Center for Action and Contemplation, I’m Mike Petrow.

Paul Swanson:

I’m Paul Swanson.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I’m Carmen Acevedo Butcher.

Drew Jackson:

And I’m Drew Jackson.

Mike Petrow:

And this is Everything Belongs.

The book is out in the world after all these years of hard work. Richard, how are you feeling at exactly this moment?

Paul Swanson:

Do you think it had to be in this season of life for you to write this book? Do you think you had to go-

Richard Rohr:

Oh, yeah.

Paul Swanson:

Yeah.

Richard Rohr:

I’ve been reading it over, and I see this is the fruit of all my books, where it’s bringing into completion so many ideas that I introduced but didn’t develop, and the denouement of major theme of my life and Jesus’ teaching, which is grace, why and how it’s all grace, so stop fighting it. I was just telling somebody how I discovered this passage in the Book of Jeremiah, where Jeremiah is teaching the New Covenant of total grace, no dependence about law whatsoever. And what’s the response of the king? To cut it all up. He literally physically, with a scissor or a knife, cuts it up. That’s been the response of most of Christian history, and Jewish, I have to be fair, to the notion of the New Covenant, because it looks, first of all, and this will lead us into the fourth chapter, it looks like too much disorder. And what we’re in love with is order. What we priests, clergy saw ourselves as was the defenders of order, not the introducers of grace as the grand disorder.

Mike Petrow:

Wow.

Richard Rohr:

The breaking down of human logic. That God is allowed to not punish the bad people and not reward the good people. That just undoes our worldview if we’ve bought into Christianity or Judaism at the purity code level, which I’m afraid most people start there. They accept the purity code, it feels like what religion is supposed to feel like. We really, if we’d be honest, don’t like disorder if it undoes our legalism.

Mike Petrow:

Goodness gracious.

Richard Rohr:

Which we don’t recognize as legalism. Our reliance upon doing it right to win God’s love, we all start there.

Paul Swanson:

It is so much of our culture. You think about earning good grades, being good for Santa, which you’ve talked about often being translated over to God, it’s just so much in the waters we swim where we earn affection, we earn goodness, we earn grace. And that is antithetical to the gospel.

Richard Rohr:

And to make it even harder, we need morality 101-

Paul Swanson:

Sure.

Richard Rohr:

… to live in society.

Paul Swanson:

It’s a foundation.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah.

Richard Rohr:

You understand that you’re doing your kids a favor to say, “We don’t steal, we don’t tell lies.” Okay, I’m not throwing that out, but neither am I basing salvation on that.

Paul Swanson:

Yes.

Mike Petrow:

Wow.

Richard Rohr:

That’s why I say at the beginning of the book, we need to say two things at once in that poem.

Paul Swanson:

That poem says it all.

Richard Rohr:

The poem says it all.

Mike Petrow:

Going back to the second or the third century, Origen pitched this idea that there were three seasons that we go through in our spiritual walk and three seasons of learning, and he equated them to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. And so he started with Proverbs as a book that was written for children, that basically is a teaching of if you do this good behavior, you will get this good result.

Richard Rohr:

That’s order.

Mike Petrow:

That’s order, that’s what we need, right?

Richard Rohr:

And that’s what we like.

Mike Petrow:

And that’s what we like and that’s foundational.

Richard Rohr:

We want pastors as policemen.

Mike Petrow:

Absolutely.

Richard Rohr:

Not policemen, not pastors.

Mike Petrow:

And it was all about ethics, but then we moved to the Ecclesiastes when we grow up a little bit, and wisdom takes us deeper.

Richard Rohr:

Origen said that?

Mike Petrow:

Yeah.

Richard Rohr:

I can’t wait to meet him.

Mike Petrow:

Tell him I said hi.

Richard Rohr:

He’s my brother.

Mike Petrow:

I think y’all are going to have a lot to talk about. Tell him I said hi, because when he gets to Ecclesiastes, Richard, he says, “And then we interrogate everything with lived experience. We look at the seasons, we ask why do bad people become wealthy and powerful while good people suffer?” And he asks these hard questions that takes this deeper, which sounds a whole lot like-

Richard Rohr:

Disorder.

Mike Petrow:

Disorder. And then in the very end-

Richard Rohr:

This is brilliant. Finish, finish.

Mike Petrow:

Well, in the end, he takes us to Song of Songs-

Richard Rohr:

Song of Songs.

Mike Petrow:

… where we learn to live in the ambiguity that is love.

Richard Rohr:

Of intimate, passionate love, which has no logic to it.

Mike Petrow:

Has no logic to it at all.

Richard Rohr:

And almost appears like sexual sin.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. Yeah. The very thing that we’re scandalized by when we’re in order is actually the revelation of the divine when we’re in reorder.

Richard Rohr:

Did he do a commentary on Song of Songs? Yeah.

Mike Petrow:

It’s his most famous work.

Richard Rohr:

See? Of course.

Mike Petrow:

And my favorite book of all time.

Richard Rohr:

Of course. Wow.

Paul Swanson:

Wow.

Richard Rohr:

Thank you, that was a great starter.

Mike Petrow:

And Richard, I feel like we’re here today to talk about chapter four, Welcoming Holy Disorder and How the Prophets Carry Us Through, and I feel like this chapter is the beating heart of the book in a lot of ways.

Richard Rohr:

Do you? Tell me why.

Mike Petrow:

I do, and I feel like it’s the beating heart of your teaching. Here, let me tell you why. So, if we go back to the first season of this podcast, or we go back in time about 10 years, in your book Falling Upward, you tell us that sooner or later, if we’re on any kind of a classic spiritual schedule, we need to fail at something, or something needs to fail us. And that drops us into what you have now famously referred to as deconstruction or disorder. And in this book you warn us that during this season, I love this sentence, “Without education in the history of wisdom, we will have only our own temperament and culture to guide us.” Elsewhere, you talked about this as the Wisdom Pattern, which has changed my life, really; the rhythm of order, disorder, and reorder that shows up, I think, in Scripture, in our lives, and mystical teachers like Origen and so many others have talked about it for the last 1,800 years, and they’ve pointed this out as a reliable roadmap.

And in this book, you’re telling us that the prophet is our guide through the failure, the deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, or the disorder. You say, “The old order has to somehow show its disorder, its shadow self, its injustice, its wrongness. Then there must be a period of disorder, a fertile time of searching before a new order can be found.” And what I love in this chapter is that you throw the word “holy” in there.

Richard Rohr:

Yes.

Mike Petrow:

We’re welcoming holy disorder now. So, first thing, let’s jump right into it. What is the value of disorder and what makes it holy?

Richard Rohr:

It keeps us from the idolatry that order normally becomes, almost always becomes, in any institution holding it together, worshiping the structure in itself. That is a good step one, but this is why we distinguished education from wisdom. Wisdom is referring to reorder, and a lot of people get so invested in holding their system together, whatever it is, whatever corporation they work for, even working for the CAC, that becomes an end in itself. It’s so easy to idolize your country, your church, your way of doing things, and it always has to show its shadow side, that, “Okay, okay, okay, you’re right, but admit that you’re wrong once in a while.” As we have often said, I’m told in most languages, the exception proves the rule. If you didn’t have the exception, you wouldn’t recognize how tied you are to the rule. Why does that bother me? Why did it bother some members of Congress, to use a yesterday example, that the president of Ukraine wasn’t wearing a suit when he came to talk in the White House? You’d never make it there, Michael.

Mike Petrow:

I would not make it there. I don’t think I own a suit.

Richard Rohr:

Why was that so upsetting, that he doesn’t have a… You don’t recognize what a rule it’s become, a law. You wear a suit to join this men’s club.

Mike Petrow:

Well, and I just want to quick pull a thread that you let slip there when you said wisdom is reorder; do you think the movement from order to disorder to reorder is a movement from knowledge to wisdom?

Richard Rohr:

Sure.

Mike Petrow:

Okay.

Richard Rohr:

That’s a better way to say it.

Mike Petrow:

That’s really helpful.

Paul Swanson:

To personalize in the way of going from knowledge to wisdom, if order predominantly happens in the West in our mind, where we try to create order in our mind, it takes the limitations of that capacity of knowledge not fulfilling our needs, and then we trip into disorder, where it lands in the heart, which is more of the place of reorder. So, it’s the mind and heart. Would you say that’s a fair way of-

Richard Rohr:

That’s very good. That’s what’s happened. And the heart isn’t guided by logic.

Paul Swanson:

Yes, but it doesn’t deny logic either.

Richard Rohr:

It doesn’t deny logic.

Paul Swanson:

It’s still in conversation with it.

Richard Rohr:

That’s right.

Paul Swanson:

It holds it. It’s the container for it.

Mike Petrow:

Well, and I think that’s why so much of Eastern Orthodox contemplative practice focuses on sinking the mind into the heart, which you reference in the book, yeah.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah.

Paul Swanson:

And I think we think about this is the necessity of the contemplative practice for being able to see rightly, to being able to see from both the conversation of reality and the mind and heart as the vehicle for the prophet to see and speak from that place.

Mike Petrow:

I think what really hit me about this book is I’ve been so grateful to have you as a guide in processing my own deconstruction, but I think we typically think of deconstruction as something we do alone.

Paul Swanson:

Right.

Mike Petrow:

Right? And Dr. B. would always say deconstruction is a crowded path, and you’re showing us in this book-

Richard Rohr:

Oh, yes, thank you.

Mike Petrow:

… we don’t have to do it alone.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah, that’s helpful.

Paul Swanson:

That’s a great tip, because you write in the book, Richard, you say, “There must be those who make us lovingly aware of what we cannot see… True prophets will guide us into, hold us inside of, then pull us through to the other side of what will always seem like disorder.” What you’re saying is the prophet is the guide through disorder, that the prophet shows us this isn’t a departure from the spiritual path; rather, this is where the spiritual path leads. What’s in the way is the way. So, how do prophets guide us to and through disorder?

Richard Rohr:

By teaching the primacy of love. Now, you can’t teach that to someone who’s never experienced love. That’s the trouble. And why, as Jesus said, you kill all the prophets. Because people who are still living under the law, to use Paul’s phrase, they just look at love language as soft, rebellious, sexual, and therefore dangerous, because intimate love is not guided by law.

Paul Swanson:

You can’t raise a child in a courtroom or in a candy store.

Richard Rohr:

Very good.

Paul Swanson:

You can’t do either one. You’ve got to hold this, again, the multiplicity.

Richard Rohr:

Hold both. Hold the boundaries and enter into the love chamber.

Mike Petrow:

Well, and it seems like so many spiritual teachers and religious leaders do try to steer us away from disorder and the dark night of the soul.

Richard Rohr:

They think that’s their job.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. And you’re telling us, the prophet steers us into it.

Richard Rohr:

Into it.

Mike Petrow:

And shows us how to get out the other side.

Richard Rohr:

Into the very thing that the order person says is bad, don’t go there.

Paul Swanson:

It’s like Jesus, He’s brought into the desert, right?

Richard Rohr:

Or Jesus deconstructing the temple. “This very thing you call the Holy of Holies, I’m willing to come in and tear it down.” Scandalous.

Mike Petrow:

I haven’t thought enough about Jesus as a teacher of deconstruction.

Richard Rohr:

Oh yeah.

Mike Petrow:

You’re right.

Richard Rohr:

Well, that’s because you weren’t taught, nor was I, to read Jesus in the lineage of a prophet.

Mike Petrow:

Correct.

Richard Rohr:

We thought He was walking around trying to prove He was God, which is, I don’t think, His interest. Those of you who walk the journey will come to that conclusion yourself.

Mike Petrow:

Well, and I think sometimes when we read a teacher in a vacuum, and we don’t know enough about their context, we don’t realize the problems that they’re trying to solve, the things that they’re pushing back against.

Richard Rohr:

Yes, yes.

Mike Petrow:

That’s helpful and insightful.

Paul Swanson:

Yeah, we bring the assumptions of our own context instead.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah. Well, in speaking of a sort of cultural context, another thing you say in the book is, “Every group, every movement has its shadow side, and always will. There must be those who make us lovingly aware of what we cannot see. The prophet can best be heard in times of holy disorder, which mystics have called ‘darkness’,” which you call-

Richard Rohr:

That’s right.

Mike Petrow:

“… ‘liminal space’. When sure things fall apart, the prophets show how they were built on illusion and power to begin with, and not finally real.” Because things are always falling apart.

Richard Rohr:

Always.

Mike Petrow:

And the prophet’s job is to illustrate that the catastrophes eventually have to happen and we must allow them to happen.

Richard Rohr:

[Sanskrit 00:20:25]. The Buddhists are speaking that to everything. Everything is passing away, so don’t try to hold onto the first stage, which is what so many of us thought was salvation.

Mike Petrow:

Well, what’s particularly scary, to be honest, to me, but also intriguing is it sounds like you’re telling us in this that there are moments where entire cultures, and maybe even entire religious systems, go through a collective deconstruction, and that’s when we need the prophet the most. Does that sound accurate?

Richard Rohr:

That’s true, yes.

Mike Petrow:

Do you think we’re going through one right now?

Richard Rohr:

Definitely. So much is falling apart right now. So much that appeared unquestionable, democracy, truth, love, hate is being rewarded and congratulated. How could that happen?

Mike Petrow:

And the very things that were supposed to prevent this, the ability to communicate virtually all across the world should be bringing us together and instead it’s tearing us apart.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah.

Mike Petrow:

Democracy gives us the option to choose not to have democracy? It’s wild. It’s wild-

Richard Rohr:

It’s wild.

Mike Petrow:

… to be alive right now.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah. Well, a good example, good way to say it.

Paul Swanson:

I do love that you list the qualities of prophet in this chapter, because I think it helps folks look for that too in this time as there’s so much falling apart. Who are the voices that you can trust? How is that being embodied? I think no list is ever perfect, but it sparks the imagination for milestones-

Richard Rohr:

I hope so.

Paul Swanson:

… to look out for.

Richard Rohr:

Thank you.

Paul Swanson:

You begin this chapter talking about the Second Vatican Council, which was a time of stability in the Catholic Church.

Richard Rohr:

Early ’60s.

Paul Swanson:

And yet it was a series of self-instigated reform from within. That wasn’t that long ago, historically.

Richard Rohr:

No.

Paul Swanson:

The ’60s was only 60 years ago. What was Vatican II responding to in that cultural moment of holy disorder? What caused it? Were they just anticipating it? What can we learn about this connection between reform and learning how to die early, in both collective and personal experiences?

Richard Rohr:

There were enough teachers of the law who were mature, second half of life, even mystical, to deconstruct what looked like it didn’t need deconstruction. It was the European theologians who were struggling with the Bible and with Catholic history for decades that won the day. They were the minority and they won. It still defies description. And that’s why we see such a pushback. I think it’s fair to say half of the American bishops, if they be honest, have not bought into Vatican II because it doesn’t build on scapegoating Protestants, or idealizing celibacy, or all the things that easily create community in the first half of life, where all the celibate club of men that holds together. Once we have women who are priests… I don’t know how long that’s going to take, but it’s going to happen. But it undoes the old boy’s club.

Mike Petrow:

You reference Steven Charleston’s definition of a prophet, which is the early warning system that alerts-

Richard Rohr:

Early warning.

Mike Petrow:

… the culture that something’s about to happen, goes back to ancient wisdom that’s going to support us through what’s coming next. And I think about how Vatican II did go back to the early church and the scripture.

Richard Rohr:

It really did.

Mike Petrow:

And some people have said that Vatican II threw the Catholic Church into disorder. I’m shocked by how much Vatican II anticipated the turbulence of the ’60s and the ’70s and the world that we stepped into. It’s almost like they were in tune and they got ahead of where the world was going.

Richard Rohr:

Five years ahead of time, before everybody started saying the same thing about civil rights, about war. We would’ve been incapable of conversation with the modern world if Vatican II had not happened. We would’ve remained a closed little church talking to itself.

Mike Petrow:

Well, and I think about Vatican II, in my experience, I’m not Catholic, so there’s limited perspective on it, but just having finished our season on Eager to Love, I think about Vatican II as this sort of standing between the two Francises: Francis of Assisi-

Richard Rohr:

Wow.

Mike Petrow:

… your great spiritual father, and sort of him being the minority report in Catholicism, and now having Pope Francis-

Richard Rohr:

Pope Francis.

Mike Petrow:

… and the work that he’s done, and how Vatican II set up giving even more of a platform to the minority voices within the church.

Richard Rohr:

I was able to tell him that personally when I was invited into his office. I said, “You’re now enforcing the documents” or teaching, I don’t know what I said, I was too excited “the documents of Vatican II. And to many people, you look like a heretic.” 60 years later, they still haven’t figured it out.

Mike Petrow:

I have to ask. I know when you met with Pope Francis, he told you to keep doing what you were doing.

Richard Rohr:

Three times he stopped me. He said, “Keep doing it. Keep…”

Mike Petrow:

So Richard, you were telling us you were retired. You were telling us that if you met Pope Francis, you’d be good to just call it a life and go home.

Richard Rohr:

Yes.

Mike Petrow:

And then I noticed he told you to keep doing what you’re doing, and now we’ve got a new book. Is there a connection between those two things?

Richard Rohr:

I suspect so. That was wonderful. I floated for weeks afterwards.

Paul Swanson:

I know we live in a different time, economic times, than Jesus and Francis, but economic power and systems still have a heavy hand on dictating and driving and influence our lives.

Richard Rohr:

It feels heavier than ever. Yeah.

Paul Swanson:

Do you feel that way?

Richard Rohr:

Because it’s possible for people to become billionaires. And it’s possible for a billionaire to get into the White House without being elected.

Paul Swanson:

How do we best employ this prophetic freedom that we saw in Francis, in Jesus? And do you even think it’s possible in this kind of economic system? I know I’m putting a lot of skin on this chapter for this current cultural moment, but do you think it’s possible that we can employ this sort of prophetic freedom, de-idolizing the supposed inside?

Richard Rohr:

It’s fortunate that Paul and Corinthians and Ephesians list prophecy as a charism. That lets you know that it’s a free gift. That’s the meaning of the word charism. In other words, it’s got to be possible, but don’t think you’re going to come to it by taking a course on prophecy. Might help a little bit by clearing away some of the debris, but it will always be received as a gift, a [Latin 00:28:17]. I don’t even know myself why I can see this way when it’s so against the tide, so against the grain, so against the culture, and still love the culture. It’s holding together so many contraries. That’s why, in the early years of the school here, I really found myself teaching mysticism, because without mysticism you can’t live with paradox. Not just competing ideas but competing feelings. And that’s why I use that poem at the beginning. Rosemerry Trommer is saying you can feel two opposing things at the same time. You married men must appreciate it, how you could be angry at your wife and love her desperately in the same moment.

Mike Petrow:

I’m single, but I feel that way about my cat.

Richard Rohr:

Your cat? Yeah. “And you, Opie, I love you.”

Mike Petrow:

At one point in this chapter you really take a stick to paid clergy.

Richard Rohr:

Oh, I do. That’s my Franciscanism.

Mike Petrow:

I know, I know. And I have to point out you were a priest the majority of your career, and we’re sitting here having this conversation with you.

Richard Rohr:

It’s interesting you used past tense.

Mike Petrow:

Well, I mean, you are a priest. My bad.

Richard Rohr:

I’m fine. I’m fine with that.

Mike Petrow:

Thinking like a Protestant here. And all of us in this room are getting paid for the work that we’re doing. How do you hold that tension of we know there’s good clergy and good people doing spiritual work who are getting paid for it-

Richard Rohr:

Yes, we sure do.

Mike Petrow:

… the spirit of the critique with the reality of taking payment for the work?

Richard Rohr:

You just have set before you what Jesus calls a prophet’s reward. If there is a way of teaching the gospel that doesn’t need reward, unless I have that in the schema, there will be no corrective to clergy life as paid salary, promoted, rewarded position. Is there anything you do, good minister, for pro bono, just because you’re supposed to do it, and you don’t charge anybody for any… Is there anything? I’ve had to ask that of people, and they’re afraid to answer.

Paul Swanson:

The taboo-ness of it is really interesting, about… That’s a sense of clinging to something. There’s no detachment. If there’s this expectation that any sort of work that one does that is more in the prophetic lane or spiritual lane or pastoral lane has to be compensated, it just, at least, should raise the conversation.

Richard Rohr:

That’s why it has to be modeled somewhere in the Christian schema, even if from another denomination or another ministry, that he goes to the prison. Normally there’s no money for prison ministry. There have to be some of those kind of people around. When I came here 40 years ago, the only people who were working here at the local prison were two wonderful nuns. And they said, “Richard, we need help.” Now, I was free to do that, ended up doing it for 14 years, but in part it’s because I belong to the Franciscans and they take care of my retirement. I didn’t have to worry about putting away money. Like even you do, you have to. The only way out of it is some form of community. The Mennonites saw it that way, I think, to some form of serious community, which includes an economic element. And that’s why Jesus makes His strong statement about the rich man.

Mike Petrow:

It’s a whole different way of being in the world.

Richard Rohr:

Whole different way.

Mike Petrow:

And it seems like only the path of deconstruction and holy disorder is going to get us there, because we have to take apart the rules that are programmed in us from the culture. Richard, and I think about the work that you’ve done to help us do this, reading this prophetic message in The Tears of Things here at, dare I say, towards the end of your career, it’s got to feel like a full circle moment. Yeah. I was really touched by you saying, you say, “Few cultures have had training for crucial dissenters, apart from the Jewish people” in their schools for prophets. “If such internal, legitimated critics are not allowed, let alone encouraged and trained, history will only move forward at the cost of blood and heartbreak.” Powerful statement.

And then I love this part. “I founded the Center for Action and Contemplation” the CAC “here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1987 because of a growing sense that we needed to educate people to be truth-tellers who are inside and effective critics of religious institutions, without becoming negative or cynical themselves. A loyal opposition, you would call it today. We knew there must be a way to make room for prophecy, what Paul called the second most important spiritual gift. Prophets move us beyond uncritical groupthink. Every group and every movement have their shadow sides. We need trained seers who are neither codependent on the religious system… Nor seeking to make a good name for themselves. The CAC’s message became a balancing act between action and contemplation, forming contemplative activists and engaged contemplatives, in the lineage of the mature Hebrew prophets we are also discussing.”

Richard, all these years later-

Richard Rohr:

Yeah, isn’t it?

Mike Petrow:

All these years later, one-

Richard Rohr:

Amazing.

Mike Petrow:

… how does it feel to have founded the center, and where do you hope all of this keeps going, in training folks to be the guides through the holy disorder that we are clearly going through as a culture?

Richard Rohr:

We’ve got to first recognize how debilitating and blinding this search that we Catholics started by seeking out and wanting to be the one true church, “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic”. Our Orthodox brothers and sisters name themselves, you know what Orthodox means? Right. It was the wrong goal, no offense, it was no worse than we Catholics. “We’re the right ones.”

I had a humble Orthodox bishop visit me last week. He came in full robes and he said, “I had to sneak in though. If any Orthodox priests or bishop would see me coming here to talk to you, I would be persona non grata.”

Paul Swanson:

Wow.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah.

Richard Rohr:

He was the most beautiful, humble man. But you would know Protestant history better than I. Every one wanted to be the new saved group. So, we had a wrong goal to begin with, which set us on the wrong course, guided by ego instead of the wonderful course guided by Spirit. It’s nobody’s fault. When you look at the timeline of cosmological universal history, 2,000 years is a drop in the bucket.

Mike Petrow:

Sure.

Richard Rohr:

It’s a grain of sand. So, it really isn’t that long that we’re getting it now. And I’m sure in the next decade, teachers will come who will take this to greater clarity, but I still know they won’t surpass the notion of grace. [Latin 00:37:04]. Creation out of nothing. [Latin 00:37:08] means nothing. We want to make it [Latin 00:37:11]… I don’t know how to say “something” in Latin. We always want to create a something. Correct baptism, correct moral behavior, correct belonging. Nope, nope, nope. It’s nothing we can create. That is such good news! But we still don’t want to appreciate that even, because it looks too free, and even the sinners will get in. Damn it.

Mike Petrow:

How dare they?

Paul Swanson:

Yes.

Richard Rohr:

Even the bad people will get to the banquet table. I don’t want them at the banquet table! I just want other white Catholics with an American flag on their lapel.

Mike Petrow:

You’re saving that seat for Origen. That’s right.

Richard Rohr:

Origen.

Mike Petrow:

That’s right.

Richard Rohr:

Can’t wait to meet him, thanks to you, Michael.

Mike Petrow:

Tell him I said hi. I think you’re going to have a lot to talk about. Well, and I hear you saying that even in our great work at the CAC to attempt to be guides through disorder and train folks to be that, we can’t turn around and think we have the new tricks-

Richard Rohr:

There you go.

Mike Petrow:

… when we haven’t figured out.

Richard Rohr:

Right. There you go.

Mike Petrow:

We have the skeleton key to the whole thing.

Richard Rohr:

If we become smug, we’re victims ourselves of stupidity, evil, darkness, use whatever word you want. But then God understands that. Does it never stop? Infinite mercy never stops.

Mike Petrow:

Next chapter, we’ll talk about Jeremiah. And in one translation-

Richard Rohr:

Oh, I can’t wait.

Mike Petrow:

… of Jeremiah, yeah, there’s a great line where he says to God, “You tricked me and I was tricked.” And I think part of that is God just doesn’t play… We want to create the rules for God to play by and for humanity to play by.

Richard Rohr:

Yeah, well played. Well played.

Mike Petrow:

And they just won’t do it.

Paul Swanson:

Mercy upon mercy all the way to the end.

Mike Petrow:

As we bring this one on home, would you give a blessing to our listeners for how they themselves can listen to prophets and themselves be guides through the holy disorder that we all seem to be going through right now?

Richard Rohr:

Lord, give us the grace, and I do mean grace, to know how to love what’s happening in the world today, in our country today, and the people who are making it happen with weapons or with lies. And yet don’t let us feel superior because we see the untruth of these weapons and these lies. We’ve used them too, maybe just in a lesser form. So, may we live under the waterfall of mercy and live there permanently and gratefully forever. Amen.

Mike Petrow:

Everything Belongs will continue in a moment.

Connie Zweig, PhD is a retired Jungian therapist and author of many books, including Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow. Her award-winning book, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul extends shadow work into midlife and beyond, and explores aging as a spiritual practice. And honestly, friends, you could read The Inner Work of Age as a sequel to Falling Upward. It’s so good. Her book, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: The Dance of Darkness and Light in Our Search for Awakening is one of my top five favorite books. It looks at shadow work in religion and spirituality. Her new podcast, Dr. Neil’s Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality, posts on all podcast platforms. You can also find her Substack for live streams and new writings at www.shadowworkawareness.com/about. Connie is a friend. Connie is a fellow graduate of my alma mater. Connie is a teacher. Connie is one of my favorite people, and I’m so glad she’s joining us on Everything Belongs.

Connie Zweig, Carmen Acevedo Butcher, it is so great to get to sit down with the two of you on this episode of Everything Belongs. Thank you so much for being here today.

Connie Zweig:

Thank you, Mike, I really am honored by the invitation.

Mike Petrow:

As we jump into it, would you mind if I read a passage from Richard’s chapter just to sort of set the context? So, Richard writes, and I really love this, he’s talking about changing from the old order to the new order, and the necessary growth that needs to happen in us individually and in us as a society and culturally. And he says, “The old order has to somehow show its disorder, its shadow self, its injustices, its wrongness. Then there must be a period of disorder, a fertile time of searching, before a new order can be found.” Where I sit, Connie, as a huge fan of your work on the shadow, especially the shadow on the spiritual path, I experience you, really, as a prophet for our time. So Connie, let’s start here. First question, really, really simple, and really huge, do you think things need to fall apart to make room for growth and the new?

Connie Zweig:

When you just kind of called me a prophet, I was shocked. And what came to me was Cassandra, who is a Greek legendary archetype who spoke the truth and was never heard. And so part of being a messenger of the shadow, I think, is to face a lot of denial and a lot of defenses. Why? Because people don’t want things to fall apart. There’s no framework for looking at disorder as holy. So, when we meet the shadow, and this can be individually within ourselves, we encounter a part of us that’s ugly or uncomfortable or taboo or unwelcome, a stranger, or it can be interpersonally, when we encounter that in a projection on someone else, or witnessing the collective, because all of these systems at every level all experience this process of breaking down and breaking through and that liminal period in between, or the order, what Richard called the priestly order, the status quo, and then the encounter with the dark side and the liminal space that comes with that. And then the reorder, what he called the reorder, what I would call the emergence of something new.

And that’s happening at every level. There was a physicist, Ilya Prigogine, who spoke about this in the micro world, that there needs to be disorganization for systems to reorganize at a higher level. I mean, when I read that, I think it was in the ’80s, it was so shocking to me. But when you start to see it, live with it as a principle, you start to see it everywhere, at every single level. You see it in a marriage; the marriage can only break through to another developmental stage with different communication style, different rules. Prophecy, somebody speaking out the truth that’s been hidden. That’s the only way that the couple can actually evolve, otherwise they’re static or they break down. So, I think this is a profound principle, and once we begin to use it as a lens on what’s happening in our world and in the larger world, it can be really helpful.

Mike Petrow:

Gosh, that’s so good, Connie, and you sort of just did what I’m about to ask you to do, which is you explained what the shadow is and why it’s so relevant to the sort of voice that points out the disorder. For folks who are brand new to the concept of the shadow, how would you give them a fast flyover understanding of what it is, and then again, connect it to this disorder that you’re talking about and that Richard talks about?

Connie Zweig:

Well, if you self-reflect for just a moment on a part of you that you can’t tame, that feels out of your ego’s control, that maybe even feels repulsive to you. Or you went into a gathering, a party, a protest, whatever it is, and you saw someone, and you had an exaggerated emotional response. And you said to yourself, “That person is so loud, seductive, aggressive.” Then you’re meeting a shadow in a projection. You’re meeting a part of yourself that you don’t want to look at. And so your psyche attributes it to somebody else and you can see it outside of yourself. Or you have a dream in which you do something that you would never do in waking life, but it’s your dream and you’re doing it. So, that’s a part of you that we would call a shadow in the dream. Or you’re struggling with an addiction. Who is that addict in you? It’s not who you are, it’s not your spiritual nature, but it’s a part of you that has a need that can’t be met in another way, and so it’s acting out in this compulsive or addictive behavior.

So, with shadow work, we begin to explore those parts, whether they’re internal, whether they’re in a projection, a dream. They could be in a spiritual community, where you believe that your clergy person is more advanced, more spiritually advanced than you, and you’re projecting your light, you’re projecting your own spiritual potential. And then that person begins to act out destructively. Maybe he says a cruel thing, or she does a mean thing, or they get caught up in the power or the money. And we can go into that in more detail.

When we meet a shadow, there’s a disruption that happens. And most of us will quickly shut it down. “No, that’s not me. I won’t do it again. I’ll never say that again. That’s just a dream, it doesn’t matter.” And so we shut it down. And what happens then? We lose the connection to the gold in that shadow. We lose the message that’s encoded in that relationship, in that dynamic. And there’s tremendous power, intelligence, information in these experiences. So, we begin to change our relationship to the shadow and allow it some space, and there’s a disruption. There’s a moment in which I don’t like myself, or I feel ashamed, or I become self-critical, or, “Oh, my partner has this issue. I didn’t know that when we got married. He hid it from me.”

And so there’s a disruption. And I love that Richard called it holy, because it is, it’s a sacred encounter with the hidden part of ourselves or with the other person or with the, we could say right now, with the politicians, all that we’re seeing on the national and global stage. And so that disorder or that breakdown can only lead to a breakthrough if we do something with this information, if we have some tools, some practices to work with the encounter, with the shadow in ourselves and others.

Mike Petrow:

In line with what you’re saying, how does this happen collectively? And you are welcome to be specific if you like about the collective shadow in the moment that we’re in right now.

Connie Zweig:

Well, sometimes I think about the shadow as nested dolls. So, our personal shadow is nested in the family shadow. That’s where it forms, when we get all these verbal and nonverbal messages as kids of what’s good and what’s bad, and what’s bad goes into that dark room. And it might be anger, it might be tears, it might be creativity, it might be a talent. But no, that cannot be expressed in this house, or that’s not Christian, or that’s not kind. And so there’s a lot of material that gets stuffed into the shadow as a result of this group shadow, the family. And this is all unconscious. It’s not like the parents get together and say, “Okay, this is our persona and this is our shadow. We’re a good Christian family, we’re a good Jewish family, so everything else gets hidden.” It’s not a conscious process.

But that family is nested in a community. It may be a church, it may be a different community, it may be a political community, it may be a charity, it may be a school system. The school is also part of the community shadow, and the messages that we get there about what’s okay and what’s not okay. And then that community is nested in larger tribal shadows like religion or the state. “I’m a Californian.” The race, “I’m a white person.” “I’m a Black person.” Age, or all of these kind of local identities carry their own shadows. And then they’re nested in this national shadow. What is it to be un-American? What is un-American? That’s the forbidden, the message that we get about what’s forbidden if we want to be patriotic and loyal to the country. And then America is nested in the global shadow, which is very split now and divided into different sort of tribal entities, right? Democracies and autocracies, pluralistic societies, and all different kinds of ways.

So, if we look at only what’s happening in the political sphere, we’re kind of missing out on the roots of that. The roots of that are in individual messaging during child-rearing and education. For me as a psychologist, that’s how I see it. I see the politicians’ psychology when I listen to them and watch them. I’m calling for shadow awareness. I’m asking people to begin to kind of look through this lens and do your shadow work so that you’re not adding to the darkness, so that you’re not adding to all the collective projection that’s happening now.

Mike Petrow:

The call of holy disorder, to look at our own shadows so that we can combat the shadow projection, is… Wow.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I appreciate how you make it so accessible, and you make shadow work a part of interconnectedness with all the processes that are alive. Like butterflies go through the cocoon and get disordered.

Connie Zweig:

Yes, they’re turned to mush!

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

That still remembers, then becomes a butterfly and it’s all still there, but reorganized. We sometimes think shadow work is only heavy lifting. Can you talk a little bit about humor and the many facets of engaging with humor, reflecting on humor, our own and others, and what makes us laugh, and how that relates to shadow work?

Connie Zweig:

Oh, nobody’s ever asked me that, Carmen. A hundred years ago at the founding of psychoanalysis, Freud realized that shadow, what he would call id, showed up in humor, because dirty jokes, shaming jokes, somebody slips and falls, people laugh; or somebody makes a sarcastic remark that’s really not politically correct, and people laugh. And Jung kind of continued to explore that. It wasn’t a main part of his writing about the shadow, but he acknowledged that that is one way we meet it, just like the other ways that I mentioned earlier. And you’ll notice if you go to a comedy club, a lot of what people are joking about and laughing at is uncomfortable. Why is it uncomfortable? It’s taboo, or it’s racist, or it’s sexist, or it’s ageist, or it’s homophobic. And they kind of bring it out of the closet for a moment to release that energy in a laugh, and then it goes back down in again, because nobody really stays with it to work it consciously.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I appreciate that you brought my attention to this some years ago because it made me really think, what do I laugh about? And sometimes I realized I didn’t really want to be that person. I mean, to be honest, it’s like I wanted to be a freer, happier, kinder person, in other words. And so it was super, I think, useful.

Mike Petrow:

If I remember correctly, there’s a point where Jung says that we can’t integrate the collective shadow, right? It’s too big. And yet we still have to face it. So, you have the nihilistic danger of it’s so big that you just say it’s pointless, there’s nothing I can do, you roll over and die and you give into hopelessness, and we call that burnout today. But the flip side of that is the narcissism, where when you face the shadow, you’re so sure that you’ve got it figured out, that you get self-righteous and arrogant. As individuals looking at the collective shadow of our culture and our country and our community and our family, how can we do so without being gobbled up by hopelessness or arrogant fury?

Connie Zweig:

So, both of those responses, hopelessness, powerlessness, depression, and ego inflation, grandiosity, are extreme responses. Neither one of them emerges with a stable, consolidated ego. A healthy ego isn’t going to collapse under the weight of it all, and isn’t going to say, “I’m the expert, I know it all.” So, from my point of view, shadow work is spiritual work, and everyone who wants to take this on needs to have a spiritual practice in which they can center themselves, find their breath, connect with their bodies, quiet their minds, calm their nervous system, and whether it’s prayer or meditation or chanting, whatever it is, to be able to have that internal refuge for renewal.

When I was in clinical practice, I would have people meditate every day. I would teach them how, and I would ask them to do it every day. Some people did it twice a day. And then they have a platform from which to meet the shadow. Then they can kind of read the news and know when to stop reading the news, and come back to their refuge and sit down in their center and say, “Okay, now I’m informed, and I can let it go.” Or, “I had this fight with my wife or my husband. Okay, I need to meditate and let it go. Then I can do my shadow work. What was I accountable for in this fight? What shadow part of me came up that was mean or angry?” But you can’t do that if you don’t sort of have a home base from which to operate.

When my husband and I got married 30 years ago, we had a shadow marriage. As part of our ceremony, we made vows to each other’s shadow characters because by then we knew them. But we also have had a daily meditation practice, both of us, so that we’ve been able to kind of wrestle these parts of ourselves and each other and not be destroyed by it. It’s still a moment of disorder, it’s still a moment of breakdown before the breakthrough, and it enables us to come back to center and then move toward the breakthrough. “Oh my God, I see what I did. I can work on that. I’m finding this new part of myself. Let’s stay with it a while and see what it really needs.” Because there’s a deeper need inside of every shadow character that’s valid. These are not random parts of us that have meaning and messages for us.

Mike Petrow:

What’s interesting is what I don’t hear you saying is, like you’re saying there, you do the work, but then you still show up for the relationship. My caution with some shadow work that I’ve encountered some places is it only becomes inner work. And so when a moment where people are like, “Oh my God, I feel so overwhelmed by what’s going on in the world.” We still want to show up and carry our bucket in the bucket brigade, find what is our work to do, put our healing in the service of the world, speak truth to power. We can’t do that outer work without doing the inner work. Could I ask you to say one more little bit on how does that inner work then inform that outer work, how we show up in the world, in relationships, in the activism that each one of us is individually called to, and we’re called to collectively together?

Connie Zweig:

When you begin to carry shadow awareness, you begin to communicate differently, and you begin to act differently. How do we then act upon all this new awareness? And what I’m finding for myself, I was an activist in Berkeley in the late ’60s and ’70s, and so much of my politics was fueled by rage. And after I became a psychologist, I began to realize how much of it was psychodynamic rage rooted in my family issues that I was unconscious of in my twenties. And now what I find, a lot of my activism is fueled from grief as an elder. And so I think what we can do is we can ask ourselves, “What’s motivating me?” I think Richard spoke about purified motives, purified motivation. How do we purify our motivation for activism? And there’s a whole chapter on this in Inner Work of Age. When I was in Berkeley in the ’60s, all the police were bad. So, now you have shadow awareness, you don’t want to do that. You want to humanize everyone, and recognize everyone has a limitation, and everyone has unconscious process, is unaware of the impact that they’re having.

Mike Petrow:

When we face folks who are enacting dehumanizing policies and actions, the quick response is to dehumanize the dehumanizer. And it feels justified. But in a sense, we play into the game when we do it. I so appreciate that, because I got to be honest with you, it sounds almost impossible and it also sounds so crucial.

Connie Zweig:

It does sound hard, and I love what you just said. So, someone who is in an alligator primitive stage and reacting like an animal cannot see the spiritual interconnectedness of all humanity. You can’t convince that person of that reality. For people who might be interested in this, Ken Wilber has been really helpful to me, explaining how the stage we’re in shapes our experience. It shapes the reality of our lives. And we can move to the next stage, we can evolve.

And part of what we’re seeing now on the planet is this giant paradox in which there are all these people who appear to be in very early stages of development, and all these people who appear to be spiritually waking up. I’m talking to people all the time now who claim that they’re living in non-duality, or awakening, or enlightenment, or whatever we call it. Most people on the planet are in the stages in between. Like rationality, it’s a very clear stage. So, if you speak to somebody who’s a scientist, and everything is about data and stats, they can’t get outside that box. They can’t see things differently until they move through that stage to the next one.

All of us have been in every stage, so we can see someone who we want to condescend to, and then we can stop and take a breath and, “I was there. I remember that. I remember that thought, or I remember that opinion or that feeling.” Okay, so how do I want to relate to this person? And it, just in a nanosecond… Because that person is stuck. They’re in the limitations of their worldview at that stage. And for me, that gives me compassion. So, I think you raise a really beautiful point that the condescension, the dehumanizing the dehumanizers isn’t going to get us anywhere. It’s going to get us to more polarization.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I want to say again, Connie, how much I appreciate that you make shadow work normal. In other words, to be human is to be a shadow worker. And Richard talks about this in another way. At the end of the Holy Disorder chapter, he says, “Encouraging holy disorder”, it’s a whole subsection at the very end. So, the prophets from within bring up the shadow parts of the community. Can you talk a little bit more about how community is important for us as we do shadow work?

Connie Zweig:

I think the isolation, Carmen, that people feel, people of all ages, during and after COVID, this epidemic of isolation that people feel, makes it difficult to feel motivated to do the hard inner work because the lack of support, if your family doesn’t understand, if your friends don’t understand… And by the way, you don’t have to use the word shadow or the term shadow work. If you’re not in a community where that language is familiar or it’s too threatening, you don’t have to use that. But my sense is that the lack of belonging is such an epidemic now.

One result of that is people are joining groups just for belonging. And it can be the wrong group, but the longing is such a driven motivation that people stay anyway, because the fear of being without a community again is greater than their ability to tolerate what’s happening. So, they stay and they tolerate, and they don’t become a whistleblower. So, this is happening in conventional religious communities, in alternative spiritual communities all over the world. That need to belong drives people. And in some cases it’s a good thing, because it drives them into the arms of loving, supportive people. But in some cases, it drives them into the arms of potentially abusive situations.

So, what am I suggesting? I think we need to be conscious that there are constructive ways to heal our loneliness. And at the same time, we need to maintain our shadow awareness so that if it’s no longer constructive, we’re free to go, or we’re free to speak up and reimagine it, move it toward a breakthrough. Because as we said in the beginning, systems tend to break down at some point. We meet the shadow, they break down, they reorganize. Now, they can reorganize in the status quo, tuck it away, nothing ever happened, which is what happens initially. Or they can allow it to break down and totally reimagine it in a breakthrough. It’s important for people to even know that that’s possible, that it doesn’t have to be hidden and stuffed away and then continued in the old order. Something else can happen.

Mike Petrow:

So many of our listeners have come through the Christian system, and a lot of them have been burned by the abuse of power and spiritual communities going sideways. And we can assume that that’s a uniquely Christian experience. And you remind us that it’s a fundamentally human experience, right? It’s a fundamentally communal experience that the shadow will show up.

Connie Zweig:

That’s important, you know? Yeah, I’m here to tell you, man, whenever there’s people, there’s shadow. But it’s in every single denomination. I’m not saying that we stop practicing our religion because it’s all abusive. And I’m not saying there isn’t a place for faith. What I’m trying to share with people is that we’re built this way, the human psyche is made this way. We are little sponges when we’re born. Pre-verbally, we get these messages not to touch our bodies, not to cry, not to scream. And with each passing day, from parents, grandparents, teachers, peers, our peers teach us what’s okay and what’s not okay in middle school. I’m watching that with my grandkids now. This is not something we can avoid through faith or any other way. This is something that we’ve been given.

And unfortunately, we haven’t been given the tools to work with it, to learn from it. We haven’t been taught the practices that are there. I mean, they’re there in every contemplative… Contemplative Christianity has tools for working with the psyche, all kinds of tools. And a lot of that has been repressed in the churches, I would say. In not just the Christian churches, but in religion, a lot of that has been repressed, because there’s a splitting that happens. God and the devil, good and evil. And nobody wants to be on the side of the devil. So, we bury it. Not only what’s okay with me and what’s not okay with me, but what’s not okay with “them”. What is it about them? The non-believers, the infidels, they’re all going to hell. And so fear is used, threat is used, shaming is used to create shadow content. And as we begin to excavate that, I’ll tell you a story of how I worked with that with a client.

This man came to see me who was a Buddhist practitioner, and he was very identified with being a Buddhist. And he was gay and he was very ashamed of being gay, and he couldn’t figure out why. And we just began to kind of go through the layers of his psyche, uncovering the different layers of messaging. And he finally was able to admit that a Catholic, I think it was an early school teacher, had talked to them about what it means to be gay, and how those people were going to go to hell, and it was a sin. And he had no conscious memory of that message. He said it may have only happened one time. But that was underneath all these Buddhist meditation practices and his parents’ acceptance of him. But that was that root message, was that he was bad and he was a sinner. That’s who he is at the level of identity.

So, he needed to do shadow work with that. And what does that mean? That means he needs to kind of uncover that, begin to feel it, begin to locate where it’s hidden in his body, begin to identify the messages that come up when he’s aware of that, of feeling like a sinner, feeling bad about himself, feeling shame. What is he telling himself? And as he did that over the months, this part of him, he named it the sinner, and it began to become more and more conscious. And what happens when you do that is it loses charge in the unconscious because it’s not being stuffed down. It starts to emerge into the light of awareness and it starts to lose its charge. Earlier we talked about the addict. So, you would do the same method with the addict. Or whatever your shadow is. It could be a tyrant, it could be a crybaby, it could be an abandoned child, whatever that is.

And then you can have a relationship with it. It’s not only that you remember it, you start to have a conscious dialogue with it. And what is the deeper need of that shadow character? What do I need now, in this moment, to take care of that part of me? How can I reparent it, or reclaim it, or re-embrace it now, accept it now? And it’s also not who I am. So, we break the identification with the shadow character. It’s not who I am, my spiritual nature. So, for him, he said, “I am Buddha nature.” But you could say, “I am Christ nature.” “I am Christ consciousness.” Or, “I am Spirit.” Whatever it is that works for you and for him. So, he practiced, “I am not the sinner. I am Buddha nature.” And he began to shift his identification, and get free of all those terrible feelings that he carried with him.

Mike Petrow:

Over here taking notes, not participating in the conversation. Connie, this has been… Oh my God. Every time we talk, you give us so much more than we ask for. I’m so grateful.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Yeah.

Connie Zweig:

Me too.

Mike Petrow:

Thank you. Oh my gosh.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

I have goosebumps.

Mike Petrow:

Yeah.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Seriously, thank you so much, Connie.

Connie Zweig:

Thank you both for your love and support. I’m sending love back and gratitude to you for all that you’re doing.

Mike Petrow:

Oh my gosh, Carmen, what a conversation with Richard, and then what a conversation with Connie Zweig, huh?

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

It was awesome.

Mike Petrow:

On page 47, Richard says, “Prophets move us beyond uncritical groupthink. Every group and every movement have their shadow sides. We need trained seers who are neither codependent on the religious system for their identity… Nor seeking to make a good name for themselves.” And I think Connie was giving us some of those practical tips to be those trained seers. And it starts by looking at our shadows, and then looking at the collective shadows of our communities and our churches and our institutions and our political parties and our cultures. Just, oh my gosh.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

She makes it so ordinary and normal and fruitful. I love how she says, “Wherever you find humans, you find shadows.” And isn’t it sad, or frightening, the fact that whenever we do have those people who rise up, as Richard writes about, and we, in effect, exile them, just as we’ve exiled parts of ourselves? I think of, for example, Origen. I think of Marguerite Porete, who was actually someone who wrote this beautiful book, and talked about arrogance in the church, and she was burned at the stake. And later they said, “No, no, she really wasn’t a heretic.” But you cannot unburn someone, do you know? And so we haven’t been kind to people like that. And Richard writes about this at the end of the chapter on holy disorder. He says, and it’s that subsection I just love Mike, where it says, “Encouraging holy disorder”.

He says, “It is counterproductive to our own gospel message to keep excommunicating and dismissing our would-be reformers: people like Origen of Alexandria… The Beguines,” and he lists several others. “Someone must be trained and blessed for the prophetic role of official devil’s advocate from inside the community. Then they no longer work for the” quote “‘devil’, but for the angels of light,” Richard says, “and cannot easily be dismissed. Then holy disorder can bear fruit and become a new source of an order founded on God’s love for everyone. No exceptions.” And that tenor is also what I hear in everything Connie says, that we be compassionate.

Mike Petrow:

It’s so good, and it’s such a gift to be taking this journey that Richard’s taking us on. In our last chapter, in our last episode, we talked about the calling to be the remnant, and now we’re talking about the importance of holy disorder, using that voice to criticize the existing order. And Connie’s reminding us that if we’re going to do that, we also need to be willing to turn that lens around and look at ourselves, to look at the disorder that’s taking place inside of us, to look at our own shadows when we look at the shadow of culture. I will think for a long, long time about the struggle of not dehumanizing the dehumanizers. That’s going to stay with me for weeks and months to come.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Well, it’s because it’s so easy to do. I mean like, “I would never do that,” one says, and then points that finger. My mother used to say, “You’re pointing one finger out and several pointing back at you.” And that’s what Connie, in essence, says, right?

Mike Petrow:

Yeah.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

That whatever sets us off in someone else, we would do well to take a pause and look at that and go, “What is it in me that I haven’t accepted also?” Which is super helpful.

Mike Petrow:

What practical invitation and challenge would you invite to our listeners in the next month as they sit with all the wisdom in this chapter and all the wisdom that Connie shared with us?

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

What I keep hearing Connie say is to embrace the parts of ourselves we’ve exiled, because in that descent, in that befriending is where we get self-explodes, she says in one place. And we level up, as the young people say, and we grow in kindness. So, for me, what I would want to do, and hope to invite others to do, is when we do find someone that sets us off, a piece of news, another person waiting in line in front of us at the post office, or some memory, that we pause, because that’s another thing she says, pause and sit with that. Really, it’s a lonely part within us, I think, that wants our attention and wants us to listen to it. So, that’s what I would say. Sit with it, and become your own friend, really.

Mike Petrow:

I so appreciate that. And that, gosh, that reminder that we have to do our inner work so that we can turn around and do the outer work. And as Richard’s telling us in this book, to do it from a place not of just rage, although it’s so appropriate to be angry. And not just grief, although God’s… The injustice and the suffering of the world, and a deep look at our own shadow and the shadow of our culture leads us to so much sadness, but to continually find the compassion underneath it all for the parts of ourselves that have gotten lost, or the parts of our culture that we don’t want to look at because they’re ugly and challenging. To instead bring that love and be willing to challenge all of it, to make love more real than the world around us. What a gift.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

And I love too that she says that’s where we find the gold, the parts of ourselves that we haven’t given voice to yet, that are worthwhile, that maybe no one has ever told us are worthwhile. I want to read a poem that she includes in, I think it’s Meeting Shadow on the Spiritual Path. She quotes Wendell Berry, because one of the things that I think Connie does so well is that she helps shadow work seem beautiful and human. And here’s the quote from Wendell Berry. “To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.” That seems one of Connie’s main messages.

Mike Petrow:

So beautiful. What a beautiful way to close out this episode and encourage all our listeners to be willing to go into their own dark, and the gold that they find there, to be willing to turn around and shine a light of truth and love on the world around us.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Yes. So grateful.

Mike Petrow:

Oh, thank you so much, Carmen.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Yep, thank you, Mike.

Mike Petrow:

Thanks everyone for listening. We look forward to joining you again in just a few weeks to talk about our next chapter, chapter five, Jeremiah: The Patterns That Carry Us Across.

Corey Wayne:

Thanks for listening to this podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation, an educational nonprofit that introduces seekers to the contemplative Christian path of transformation. To learn more about our work, visit us at CAC.org. Everything Belongs is made possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters and the shared work of-

Mike Petrow:

Mike Petrow.

Paul Swanson:

Paul Swanson.

Drew Jackson:

Drew Jackson.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Carmen Acevedo Butcher.

Jenna Keiper:

Jenna Kuiper.

Izzy Spitz:

Izzy Spitz.

Megan Hare:

Megan Hare.

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Sara Palmer.

Dorothy Abrahams:

Dorothy Abrams.

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Brandon Strange.

Vanessa Yee:

Vanessa Yee.

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Cassidy Hall.

Corey Wayne:

And me, Corey Wayne. The music you hear is composed and provided by our friends Hammock, and we’d also like to thank Sound On Studios for all of their work in post-production. From the high desert of New Mexico, we wish you peace and every good.