By embracing the gifts and limitations of our growth, Father Richard believes we can face reality with greater integrity and wisdom:
When history evolves and embraces a new idea, cultural mood, or consciousness, we need not (we dare not, actually!) completely exclude the previous idea, mood, or consciousness. We grow best by including what was good and lasting in the previous stage and avoiding the overreaction and rebellious spirit that have characterized most revolutions up to now. This demands both humility and the capacity for nondual thinking. Either/or thinking immediately creates disjunction and mistrust. Both/and thinking creates continuity and trust over time. This nonviolent compromise can most simply be stated as include and transcend. It is at the core of what we mean by wisdom and by nonviolence.
We can trust and even need certain kinds of disorder to clarify what our original Order meant, lacked, or intended. There are always a few needed correctives to every new proposition, and those correctives only appear over time and with practice.
If we can rightly achieve an integration of original plan plus correctives, rule plus “the exception that proves the rule,” Order plus Disorder, we have what I am calling Reorder. Reorder moves us forward in a positive way, but then sets the stage for the pattern to continue all over again. Even good Reorder, in time, becomes its own faulty Order and its own cracks will begin to show. The need for humility and creativity never stops.
ORDER, by itself, normally wants to eliminate any disorder and diversity, creating a narrow and cognitive rigidity in both people and systems.
DISORDER, by itself, closes us off from any primal union, meaning, and eventually even sanity in both people and systems.
REORDER, or transformation of people and systems, happens when both are seen to work together.
Given the prevalence of this pattern, it must now be considered culpable ignorance that most people still consider Disorder somewhat of a surprise, a scandal, a mystery, or something to be avoided or overcome by an easy jump from Order to Reorder. This is human hubris and illusion. Progress is never a straight and uninterrupted line, but we have all been formed by the Western philosophy of progress that tells us it is, leaving us despairing and cynical.
So, what does this demand of humanity, especially those who are leaders and teachers? More than anything else—humility and creativity! These virtues offer the detachment and patience that allow history to move forward because they keep our absolutes, our certitudes, and our obstinacy out of the way. Even God submits to mercy and forgiveness toward “what used to be.” Apparently, God enjoys doing this because it never stops happening: Every original Order learns to include an initially threatening Disorder, which morphs into and creates a new Reordering, and we begin all over again.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Include and Transcend,” Oneing 8, no. 2, Order, Disorder, Reorder (Fall 2020): 21–25. Available in print and as PDF download.
Image credit and inspiration: Jenna Keiper, cracked stained glass (detail), 2020, photo, Albuquerque. Click here to enlarge image. Like this cracked stained glass, sometimes we have to let the old structures deconstruct in order to make room for the new.
Story from Our Community:
As I learn about the effects and aftercare of childhood trauma, I am beginning to understand there are many stages between reading the wise words of the mystics and fully living in a state of peace. I know that trauma has fragmented my mind. This fragmentation helped me survive back then—but now my work is to gently gather and reunite each of those fragments. My journey has very much been an example of Order, Disorder and Reorder.
—Jean S.