It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of Christian maturity, because once you know that your “I” is great and one with God, you can ironically be quite content with a small and ordinary “I.” No grandstanding is necessary. Any question of your own importance or dignity has already been resolved once and for all and forever.
Interpretation
Embracing our modesty allows us to focus on inner peace instead of external validation.
In this quote, Richard Rohr emphasizes the value of acknowledging our own smallness and ordinariness as a pathway to freedom. He suggests that when we accept our humble nature without striving for recognition or validation, we attain a state of contentment and maturity that connects us more profoundly with the divine, allowing us to live authentically without the burden of proving ourselves to others.
In practice
This quote can inspire a personal reflection in a group discussion about self-acceptance.
My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.
The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
Much of the Christian religion has largely become “holding on” instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
Don't leave a 'good time' to chance. Experiences have to be woven with care and planning, like a tapestry.
Choosing to take responsibility for ourselves and for the consequences our choices create looks like hard work, but it really sets us free.
Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind.
In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty...in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.
Being in humaneness is good. If we select other goodness and thus are far apart from humaneness, how can we be the wise?
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