Honoring Three Wheels of Wisdom
Scripture as validated by experience, and experience as validated by Tradition, are good scales for one’s spiritual worldview.
—Richard Rohr
This week we highlight a central theme of Father Richard Rohr’s teaching philosophy in CAC’s Living School. Our personal experience is the filter through which we understand both Christian Scripture and Tradition.
No matter the religion or denomination in which we are raised, our spirituality still comes through the first filter of our own life experience. We must begin to be honest about this instead of pretending that any of us are formed exclusively by scriptures or our churches or religious traditions. There is no such thing as an entirely unbiased position. The best we can do is own and be honest about our own filters. God allows and invites us to trust our own experience. Then Scripture and Tradition hopefully keep our personal experiences both critical and compassionate. These three components—Scripture, Tradition, and experience—make up the three wheels of what we at the CAC call the learning “tricycle” of spiritual growth. [1]
Historically, Catholics loved to say we relied upon the great Tradition, but this frequently meant “the way it’s been done for the last hundred years.” What we usually consider “official teaching” changes every century or so. In all honesty, most of our operative images of God come primarily from our early experiences of authority in family and culture, while we interpret those teachings from more recent traditions and Scripture reading to validate them!
If we try to use “only Scripture” as a source of spiritual wisdom, we get stuck, because many passages give very conflicting and even opposite images of God. I believe that Jesus only quoted those Scriptures that he could validate by his own inner experience. At the same time, if we humans trust only our own experiences, we will be trapped in subjective moods and personal preferences. It helps when we can verify that at least some holy people and orthodox teachers (Tradition) and solid Scripture also validate our own experiences.
Jesus and Paul clearly use and build on their own Jewish Scriptures and traditions, yet they both courageously interpret them through the lens of their unique personal experiences of God. This is undeniable! We would do well to follow their examples. [2]
In CAC’s Living School: Essentials of Engaged Contemplation course, Brian McLaren teaches:
If we only had our own experiences to go by, every generation would have to start from scratch…. But if Tradition and Scripture are used to silence our own ongoing experience—our learnings, discoveries, thinkings and rethinkings, and quests—then … Tradition and Scripture become not the foundation on which we build, but the ceiling above which we cannot grow.
When we hold all three elements in creative tension, we’re part of an ongoing story, a multi-generational conversation, bringing together the experiences of everyone everywhere, through time, so they can be shared, reflected upon, and reevaluated in community, as a growing bank of wisdom resources for us and for future generations. [3]
References:
[1] Richard credits spiritual director Rev. Carolyn Metzler for this helpful “tricycle” analogy. He considers it a dynamic improvement upon the traditional Wesleyan “quadrilateral,” or four-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, experience, and reason.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And…: Daily Meditations (Franciscan Media, 2013, 2019), 5; and “The Sacred Importance of Our Own Experiences,” Daily Meditations, June 20, 2021.
[3] Adapted from Brian McLaren, “Commentary on the Tricycle Metaphor,” CAC’s Living School: Essentials of Engaged Contemplation, Center for Action and Contemplation, February 2024.
Image credit and inspiration: Taylor Heery, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Dynamic movement requires balance and respect, guided by ever-shifting balance points—like riding a tricycle—through a process of constant learning and continual growth.
Story from Our Community:
The Daily Meditations have been a constant presence in my life as I walk through the crumbling of my 30-year marriage. I’ve felt consoled in my anger and sadness at the loss of my past, present, and future life. I am beginning to embrace that I am more than my marriage, and I have so much to give others and myself. The anger and sadness still lurk in the shadows of my life, but acceptance and grace continue to sustain me.
—Tom C.