Father Richard considers the transformative impact of people who live within the cosmic egg:
The person who lives within the total cosmic egg is the mystic, the prophet, the universal human, the saint, the whole one. These are people like Mahatma Gandhi, St. Bonaventure, Martin Luther King Jr., St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John Henry Newman, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Julian of Norwich (my favorite mystic). These are the people who look out—with eyes wide as saucers—at the smaller pictures because they observe from the utterly big picture. These are the ones who can both honor and listen to smaller, personal stories, and also live in the final state of affairs, already, now. They are often called seers because their perspective contains many eyes, even, somehow, the eyes of God.
Great “seers” operate beyond mere group loyalties; beyond any simple, dualistic thinking that always puts them on the “right” side; beyond winners and losers, good and bad. They are somehow able to live by universal principles while still caring for the specific; honoring cultural norms, yet making room for the exceptions. They have seen in a contemplative way, beyond the shadow and the disguise, beyond the suffocating skin of the private self and the self-serving egotisms of group. The contemplative mind integrates and gives focus to all our calculating and controlling. Without it, there is only civil and self-serving religion.
True reconstruction will be led by those who can engage reality at all four levels simultaneously. They can honor the divine level and live ultimately inside of a great big story line. They appreciate the needs and context of our story and other stories and don’t dismiss them as mere cultural trappings or meaningless traditions. They won’t say that my story is not important, either. They won’t demean or dismiss people who are working on personal issues or addressing the important identity concerns of the first half of life.
Most importantly, we cannot separate personal healing from societal healing. It’s not sequential, but simultaneous. Many in our therapeutically focused society think they first must find healing and integration personally and then they will be free to serve groups or search for God. Yet it seems to me that it all happens in a spiral. In fact, there is a natural ecology of checks and balances between the four domes of meaning. I was lucky and blessed enough to have good family, religion, community, helpful therapy, and time for self-knowledge—overlapping one another like waves from an endless sea. Most people emphasize only one or the other, but those who honor all four levels have transcended the limitations of a single story. True transcendence frees us from the tyranny of I am, the idolatry of we are, and the scapegoating of they are. When all four stories are taken seriously, as the Bible shows us very well, we have a full life—fully human and fully divine.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder (Franciscan Media, 2001, 2020), 114–115, 113.
Image credit and inspiration: Priscilla Du Preez, Untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. With our energy and effort, we treat the stories of others as sacred and worthy of our time and attention, like our own.
Story from Our Community:
I’m currently experiencing “a dark night of the soul.” I was recently diagnosed with ADHD/ADD, and I am processing what this means for my life. I’m grateful to Fr. Richard and CAC staff for the wealth of wisdom and teaching I’ve gained through CAC podcasts and the Daily Meditations. It’s helped me—and I’m sure others who are neurodiverse—because we’re reminded that we’re all walking the path together. CAC’s teachers and message have also encouraged me to turn to the divine wisdom that I carry within myself.
—Shona C.
