News From New Mexico
The Mendicant
Spring 2025 Mendicant Introduction
April 1st, 2025
Since Fr. Richard published The Universal Christ in 2019, many of us on the CAC team heard him say, “If I ever wrote another book, which I assuredly don’t have the energy to do, it would be on the way of the prophet, and what the prophetic lineage has to teach us.”
I must have heard Richard say that a dozen
“The Tears of Things”
April 1st, 2025
In the first book of Virgil’s Aeneid (line 462), the hero Aeneas gazes at a mural that depicts a battle of the Trojan War and the deaths of his friends and countrymen. He is so moved with sorrow at the tragedy of it all that he speaks of “the tears of things” (lacrimae rerum). As Seamus Heaney translates it
Dancing with the Divine Fire
April 1st, 2025
Beloved CAC faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes, known to her students affectionately as “Dr. B.,” passed away in late 2024. A giant in our contemplative community, she embodied a rare wisdom and impacted countless people. In a video recorded for Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations shortly before her death, Dr. B.
Inconsolable: The Path of the Prophet-Mystic
April 1st, 2025
Our religious conditioning has carved a gulf between the prophet and the mystic, just as we have between action and contemplation and between transcendence and immanence. It’s easy to buy into the illusion that these two spiritual orientations are fundamentally and mutually exclusive. But you can, of course, be both
A Parenting Approach
November 22nd, 2024
The irony for me is that despite years of sincere seeking and a commitment to CAC teachings, grace was forced on me by my strong-willed, verbally advanced child. She broke me in early, triumphantly proclaiming, “Mommy, I will always win against you because I have more energy to fight until the end!” She was
From Duality to Acceptance Through Contemplation
November 22nd, 2024
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living; we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”—Richard Rohr
Quotes from philosophers, psychologists, and contemplatives hold such beautiful truths that have helped me through a journey of trying to make sense of myself. Studying the concept of
Graced Metamorphosis
November 22nd, 2024
Growing up in a Southern Baptist family on the Texas Gulf Coast, I was taught to be kind, helpful, and always willing to lend a hand. My family insisted that our religion stressed obedience, good manners, and putting others first. While I loved my family and wanted to please God, I sometimes felt like I had to do
Thinking It Through
November 22nd, 2024
NIt seems to me that “Graced Metamorphosis” is a significant request from the challenges in life.
Life is abundant in its evolutions and transitions, from birth to death. These organic changes may be graced, but there are also times when we feel stuck in transitions, and the transformative power of unalterable
The Graced Metamorphosis of CAC and This Expanding Community of Support
November 22nd, 2024
Nearly five years ago, in January 2020, Fr. Richard Rohr wrote the following in anticipation of transitioning from his day-to-day leadership role with the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC).
As I happily enter my final years, the CAC continues to grow. We realize it is our responsibility to offer something
From Martyrdom to Mutuality
August 30th, 2024
As an Asian-American woman raised in the evangelical Christian tradition, I have been culturally and religiously conditioned to be a martyr. I received praise when I sacrificed my time, energy, and wellbeing for the people around me. My bend toward martyrdom was reinforced (I thought) by the teachings of Jesus. A