Letting Go of Our Innocence

In this talk, Richard shares about the freedom we gain from “letting go” of any false images of ourselves as totally innocent or pure. We find the courage to be who we are in God and to join God in the flow of grace:

We come to God not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. And yet the great forgiveness is to forgive ourselves for doing it wrong. That’s probably the hardest forgiveness of all: that I’m not perfect, that I’m not unwounded, I’m not innocent. “One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.” [1] If I want to maintain an image of myself as innocent, superior, righteous, or saved, I can only do that at the cost of truth. I have to reject the mysterious side, the shadow side, the broken side, the unconscious side of almost everything.

The art of letting go really is the way to heaven because when we fall down there to the bottom, we fall on solid ground, the great foundation. . . . On that foundation where we have nothing to prove, nothing to protect, we have met the enemy and the enemy is us. I am who I am who I am, and for some unbelievable reason, that’s what God has chosen to love. . . .

Letting go is different than denying or repressing. To let go of it, we have to admit it. We have to own it. Letting go is different than turning it against our self. Letting go is different than projecting onto others. Letting go means that the denied, repressed, rejected parts of our own self which are nonetheless true are seen for what they are, but not turned against self or against others, so letting go is not denial. It’s not pretend. The religious word for letting go is the word “forgiveness.” This is the positive way to deal with our own woundedness. We see it and we hand it over to God. We hand it over to history. . . .

The mode of weeping, of crying, is different than fixing. It’s different than understanding. That’s why we often cry when we forgive. . . . When we can’t fix it, when we can’t explain it, when we can’t control it, when we can’t even understand it, we can only forgive it. Let go of it, weep over it. It’s a different mode of being. . . .

I can see why forgiveness is almost the heart of the matter, and Jesus’ prerequisite for being forgiven by God is simply to forgive one another. . . . Jesus said we will receive the forgiveness of God to the degree that we can be conduits of forgiveness for one another. In other words, forgiveness is of one piece. Those who give it can receive it. Those who receive it can give it. If we’re in the conduit of love, if we’re in the ocean of mercy, frankly, it’s the only thing that makes sense.

References:

[1] Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (Toronto, ON: Macmillan, 1970), 305.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2010), CD.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on Francis of Assisi and letting go as a way of life.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image credit: Claudia Retter, Lily Pond (detail), photograph, used with permission. Arthur Allen, Untitled 10 (detail), 2022, photograph, France, used with permission. Claudia Retter, Lake Wale’s Pond (detail), photograph, used with permission. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: We see the simplicity of these black and white photos: the lines of the leaves, the focus on just one flower, one stem, one patch of grass. Innocence, in its state of simplicity and grace, is not deluded by a desire for more; it accepts what is.

Story from Our Community:

I listen to children describe their hopes, dreams, and concerns for our Earth and their desire to be part of the change needed for a society of inclusion and love for all. I listen to their aching hearts while breathing in and taking in their worries, and breathing out and handing it all to a God. —Teresita L.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough, because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

Contemplation Reveals Our Wounds

Benedictine sister Joan Chittister reflects on a wisdom teaching from the Desert Fathers. We encourage you to read this teaching from Abba Moses on the illusion of innocence and the humbling truth that we all are wounded:

Once a brother committed a sin in Scetis, and the elders assembled and sent for Abba Moses. He, however, did not want to go. Then the priest sent a message to him, saying: “Come, everybody is waiting for you.” So he finally got up to go. And he took a worn-out basket with holes, filled it with sand, and carried it along. The people who came to meet him said: “What is this?” Then the old man said: “My sins are running out behind me, yet I do not see them. And today I have come to judge the sins of someone else.” When they heard this, they said nothing to the brother and pardoned him.

Sister Joan describes how contemplation helps us to recognize and to accept ourselves, and others, as we truly are:

The desert monastics are clear: Self-righteousness is cruelty done in the name of justice. It is conceivable, of course, that we might find a self-righteous religious. . . . It is probable that I might very well find myself dealing with a self-righteous friend or neighbor or even family member. But it is not possible to find a self-righteous contemplative. Not a real contemplative.

Contemplation breaks us open to ourselves. The fruit of contemplation is self-knowledge, not self-justification. “The nearer we draw to God,” Abba Mateos said, “the more we see ourselves as sinners.” We see ourselves as we really are, and knowing ourselves we cannot condemn the other. We remember with a blush the public sin that made us mortal. We recognize with dismay the private sin that curls within us in fear of exposure. Then the whole world changes when we know ourselves. We gentle it. The fruit of self-knowledge is kindness. Broken ourselves, we bind tenderly the wounds of the other. . . .

Cruelty is not the fruit of contemplation. Those who have touched the God who lives within themselves, with all their struggles, all their lack, see God everywhere and, most of all, in the helpless, fragile, pleading, frightened other. Contemplatives do not judge the heart of another by a scale on which they themselves could not be vindicated.

The pitfall of the religion of perfection is self-righteousness, that cancer of the soul that requires more of others than it demands of itself and so erodes its own fibre even more. It is an inner blindness that counts the sins of others but has no eye for itself. . . .

Real contemplatives receive the other with the open arms of God because they have come to know that for all their emptiness God has received them.

To be a contemplative it is necessary to take in without reservation those whom the world casts out because it is they who show us most clearly the face of the waiting God.

Reference:

Joan Chittister, Illuminated Life: Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 70–71, 72–73.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on “The Sacred Wound.”
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

God Alone Is Good

In the latest season of the podcast Learning How to See, Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr, and CAC staff member Paul Swanson discuss the ways a dangerous façade or “cult of innocence” can be used to claim superiority over others and even deny reality:

Brian: We’d like to talk about innocence. . . . We’re trying to help people get an assessment of our Christian faith that in no way minimizes or negates the beauty and the wisdom and the depth and the insight, but also in no way minimizes the horrors that have been done in the name of our religion, in the name of our Church, in the name of Jesus, in the name of the Trinity, in the name of God. One of the things we want to talk about is this idea of Christianity as a cult of innocence. [1]

Richard: Seldom have I evoked so many implications and ramifications by one phrase, at least in the realm of theology, then when you gave me this phrase “cult of innocence.” I said, before even you explained it to me, “That’s it. That’s what Christianity allowed itself to become.” And it’s so triply ironic, because the Latin word innocens means “unwounded.” Here we worship a wounded man, and we said, “in his wounds are our salvation,” and yet much of our moral concentration is on proving we’re not wounded, we’re not wrong, we’re not at all bad, we’re not unworthy. Whereas Jesus, in utter freedom, says to the rich young man, “Why do you call me good? God alone is good” (Luke 18:19). That is such a line of inner freedom, where there is no need to be thought of as good. . . .

Brian: One of my friends years ago said to me (we were both pastors), “Brian, I think the biggest challenge that we pastors [face] is whether we want to be better than we appear or appear better than we are.” He said, “I’m really trying to make it my goal to be better than I appear, but it’s such a temptation.” . . . But [the way Jesus just dismisses it] is for him to say it’s a game I don’t even want to play. . . .

Paul: Richard, what you just said reminded me of something you had taught on a while ago about Christianity being a religion that has this amazing medicine called grace, but the way to succeed in the church is to say that you don’t need that medicine. That you can survive without it.

Richard: Yes, you can put in the word mercy, or unconditional love, all the things we’re supposed to be about. We convince people that we don’t really need it, because we’re not sinners. Oh, come on! Pope Francis’ first public talk when he was elected, this strange bishop from Argentina, they said, “Who are you?” The first words out of his mouth were, “I’m a sinner.” What liberation, my goodness! [2]

References:

[1] The phrase “cult of innocence” is inspired by a tweet from Nadia Bolz-Weber and explored in chapter 16 of Brian McLaren’s new book Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned.

[2] Adapted from Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr, and Paul Swanson, “Christianity and the Cult of Innocence,” June 17, 2022, in Learning How to See, season 3, episode 5 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2022), podcast.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on grace and the twelve steps.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Story from Our Community:

In Minnesota, the large flocks of geese heading south, tells us winter is coming. My grandson misses the geese and whenever and wherever he hears their honking on a fall day, he rushes to find them in the sky and waves “goodbye.” It is a privilege to share nature with children. —Irene M.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Like a Child

“Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” –Matthew 18:3

Therapist and spiritual director Fiona Gardner draws a deeper understanding of the value of our lost innocence from the writings of Thomas Merton:

One of the characteristics of infants is that they are often seen, especially in the spiritual sense, as innocent. . . . In his essay “The Recovery of Paradise” Thomas Merton writes of the Desert Fathers and their search for “lost innocence,” which they saw as [the] emptiness and purity of heart “which had belonged to Adam and Eve in Eden. . . . They sought paradise in the recovery of that ‘unity’ which had been shattered by the ‘knowledge of good and evil.’” [1] . . . This unity that had been lost was, as the Desert Fathers saw it, the unity of being one with Christ. . . .

Jesus’ teaching tells us that the gift of being like a child is vital and necessary for entry to the kingdom—it is a command: “unless.” This extraordinary teaching is consistent in the three synoptic gospels but the meaning of the teaching is less clear. In fact the mystery of what it might all mean is revealed only to babies and toddlers, in other words those who are not yet able to speak: “At that time, Jesus said, ‘I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants’” (Matthew 11:25). The message is that for us to see and to be close to God we have to relinquish the part of us that feels important and knowledgeable as a grown-up and turn in a state of not-knowing to God. . . .

Moving from knowledge to innocence regained is a way of temptation and struggle; “it is a matter of wrestling with supreme difficulties and overcoming obstacles that seem, and indeed are, beyond human strength.” [2]

Gardner compares Jesus’ teaching in Matthew to a Zen koan, which invites listeners to hold two contradictory statements together until a new awareness arises:

If we consider Jesus’ command to the would-be adult disciples to become as small children as equivalent to a koan, then the work is to hold the lost innocence and the knowledge until the breakthrough can emerge. . . . As Merton knew from his reading on the Desert Fathers and his own spiritual practice it is not possible as an adult to regain innocence without knowledge. . . .

Purity of heart is the recovery of divine likeness where the true self is lost in God. . . . This as Merton writes is “only a return to the true beginning.” [3] For this is where Christ is—in the beginning and in the becoming. This is the rebirth or a fresh start where Merton believed the preparation took place “for the real work of God which is revealed in the Bible: the work of the new creation, the resurrection from the dead, the resurrection of all things in Christ.” [4]

References:

[1] Thomas Merton, “The Recovery of Paradise,” in Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), 117.

[2] Merton, “The Recovery of Paradise,” 124.

[3] “The Recovery of Paradise,” 131.

[4] “The Recovery of Paradise,” 132.

Fiona Gardner, The Only Mind Worth Having: Thomas Merton and the Child Mind (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 16, 17, 24–25, 26, 27.

Explore Further. . .

Engage in a mindful breathing practice on “Loving Our Inner Child.”
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves

“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” –Matthew 10:16

The late author and preacher Peter J. Gomes (1942–2011) considers the type of seasoned innocence to which Jesus calls his disciples:

You need both innocence and experience, both the serpent and the dove, if you have any chance of making it as a Christian in this world. Innocence without experience eventually becomes a state of pure illusion, and experience without vision deteriorates into cynical despair. . . .

When Jesus speaks of the wisdom of the serpent he is not giving us an invitation to cynicism; he wants us, like the serpent, always to know what is going on. Of all creatures, the serpent is the one most aware of his environment, most sensitive to his surroundings, most in touch with his circumstances, for his entire body is a live wire of sensation. We are meant to be aware, heads up, eyes open, mind on full throttle, not easily fooled or seduced by the blandishments of this life. . . .

To be innocent as a dove is an exercise neither in naïveté nor in deception. The dove is the symbol of the spirit of God, and where the dove is, there is to be found serenity, reconciliation, and peace. When Noah wanted to know if it was all right to go back into the world, he didn’t ask for a weather report; he sent out for the dove. When Jesus was baptized, God’s favor was shown in the descent of the dove; and the Holy Spirit, the present tense of God, is represented in Christian art by the dove. Give me the dove any day; the dove is no dumb bird.

In other words, Jesus tells us that to survive in this world . . . we need to know what is going on and not be overwhelmed by it; and to do that we need to live all of the time in a divine and creative dialogue between innocence, the first and last love of our faith, and experience, by which we learn what we need to know. [1]

Father Richard describes these deeper stages of spiritual maturity as a “regained innocence”:

There is a regained innocence, which could also refer to the highest states of enlightenment. This is the clarity and freedom found in a person who has been deeply wounded but, after passing through a healing purification, comes out the other side with the best of both worlds; they are cleverly wise and yet not overly defended or guarded. I suspect this is exactly what Jesus represents and what he describes when he tells his disciples to “Go forth wise as serpents but innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). This would be those who have left the Garden, eaten a few more apples, and returned again because they now know how to live and love both inside and outside of the Garden. [2]

References:

[1] Peter J. Gomes, “Innocence and Experience,” Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living: A New Collection of Sermons (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), 102, 103, 104.

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, introduction to Oneing 3, no. 2, Innocence (Fall 2015): 12. Available in print or PDF download.

Explore Further. . .

Read Howard Thurman on innocence and knowledge.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Story from Our Community:

Last year when I was hanging by the tatters of my faith, a friend sent me the link to the CAC daily readings after a chance conversation. At the same time I had started meeting with someone to help me through a stressful and frightening family situation. It was extraordinary how the two worked hand in hand and over the course of 12 months, I’ve rediscovered my true self and slowly found new healthier ways of being. Non-dual thinking and knowing that I am fully known and fully loved has been such bedrock. This afternoon I had a beautiful, real and free conversation with my daughter who was almost estranged 18 months ago. My heart is full of gratitude. —Jackie B.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Leaving the Garden

Richard Rohr begins this week’s meditations by reflecting on our “fall from innocence” as a necessary part of the process of transformation:

The word “innocent” from its Latin root means “not wounded.” That’s how we all start life. We’re all innocent. It doesn’t have anything to do with morally right or wrong. It has to do with not yet being wounded. We start unwounded. We start innocent, but the killing of our holy innocence (as in Herod’s command to kill the Holy Innocents [Matthew 2:16–18]) is an archetypal image of what eventually happens to all of us. Probably it has to happen for us to grow up. We have to leave the garden. This movement of leaving and returning, forward and back, is the process of transformation. It’s the way we increase the spaciousness of freedom in our lives, so that we have the capacity for true relatedness.

Jesus tells three parables about losing and finding: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (Luke 15:4–32). In each case, we think we have it, we lose it, we rediscover it, and then we throw a party. The party only happens after the rediscovery because we don’t really “have it” until we’ve lost it and choose it consciously again. That’s the human journey, the movement from first naiveté or false innocence to the chosen and conscious freedom that God is calling us toward.

The Christ child is the image of the unwounded one. Our inner Christ child is the part of us that is not wounded. In our own way, we each have to rediscover, honor, recognize, and own that inner Christ child. We may have lost the vision of innocence, but the Christ child is that part of us that has always said “yes” to God and always will.

Jesus said, “I will not leave you orphaned” (John 14:18). Faith is trusting that an intrinsic union exists between us and God. Contemplation is to experience this union. The path of fall and return is how we experience this union as pure grace and free gift.

There is a necessary movement between the two ends of the divine/human axis, between one’s core and the core of God. The only real sin is to doubt, deny, or fail to experience this basic foundational connection. If we don’t have some small mirrors (partners, friends, lovers) that tell us we are good, it’s very hard to believe in the Big Goodness.

We need at least an experiential glimpse of this True Self before we start talking about being rid of the “false” or separate self. I think the only and single purpose of religion is to lead us to an experience of the True Self. Every sacrament, every Bible reading, every church service, every song, every bit of priesthood, ceremony, or liturgy, as far as I’m concerned, is to allow us to experience our True Self: who we are in God and who God is in us.

Reference:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, True Self, False Self (Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2003), CD.

Explore Further. . .

Read writer Joyce Rupp on the True Self.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Letting Go of Our Innocence

Contemplation Reveals Our Wounds

God Alone Is Good

Like a Child

Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves

Leaving the Garden

Category Archive

come visit

Stay connected

explore more

Letting Go of Our Innocence

Contemplation Reveals Our Wounds

God Alone Is Good

Like a Child

Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves

Leaving the Garden

Category Archive

Join our email community

Sign-up to receive the Daily Meditations, featuring reflections on the wisdom and practices of the Christian contemplative tradition.

come visit

Stay connected

explore more