Communio . . .

“Reviving Our Spirits, Transforming Our Politics” was advertised as a weekend of speaking, teaching and learning.  It fulfilled its promise.  Fr. Richard Rohr, the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, N. Mexico is a Franciscan priest who saw the need for a place where activists could come, be still, and learn how to integrate a contemplative life style and compassionate service, which he calls social spirituality.  He travels widely spreading the message.
The ecumenical event also featured Jim Wallis, a founder of Sojourners, a movement whose mission is to articulate the biblical call to social justice.  They bring together people from various faith traditions and publish the respected Sojourners magazine.  Jim Wallis’s recent book “God’s Politics:  How the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” has been a best seller. Both men are riveting speakers.
Richard Rohr provided insights that have to be taken seriously in today’s fractured political environment.  He stressed the need for spirituality in politics.  Activists need a spiritual grounding to save them from becoming cynics.  We can’t carry around anger and addictions. The soul must be kept free.  It requires a “beginner’s mind” which looks at things like a child does.  It enters a situation with no preconceptions and is free to receive the truth that can be found there.
We want to make the world better but you can lead people only as far as you yourself can go.  Jesus healed the spirit.  In order to transform people we have to do the right thing with the right spirit.
We have to accept things that we cannot change.  One thing that doesn’t change is the empirical fact that everything changes.  Nothing is permanent except God.  Religion is not about protecting the status quo. Everything eventually dies.  Life is not perfectly fair or just.  We shouldn’t obsess about things that we can’t change.  Pain is a part of life.  What you do with your pain is what religion is all about.  Jesus never promised a life without pain.  People do not and will not always love each other.  Religion has given us too much opportunity to feel superior.  True religion lets us accept the brokenness of things. Perfection is not a human trait. 
Politics operate within a duality. The art of the possible.   The original meaning of politics is to seek the common good, which is the mark of a mature society.
Fr. Rohr sees signs of an emerging church which is ecumenical. There is not so much interest in eliminating the opposition.  There is something rich and wonderful that can be learned in many Christian churches.  Christ enlightens the mind everywhere.  The Gospels are about peace and justice, not about religions. There is a kind of globalization happening in religion.  Jesus scholarship is no longer denominational.
The contemplative mind is open to a more heightened awareness. It is not dualistic.  Wisdom has a gradation of perception which tolerates ambiguity.
We are in an age of information now, but information doesn’t transform people.  It makes them arrogant rather than wise.   Christianity has failed in Europe. The Church was usually on the side of the upper classes.  Clergymen were sin managers.  We haven’t prepared for wisdom which tolerates ambiguity and withholds judgment.  We are a people of hope.  Hope is a decision which is made and is rooted in faith.
Jim Wallis, an evangelical preacher, writer, organizer, said much the same thing but with more of a political slant.  He said that church people are often rigid.  There is an arrogance of knowing, a lust for certitude.  We all can see sins easier in someone else.  It would be better if we would look for what is good and true in each other’s faith traditions.
He charged that politics is not solving, or even addressing the big problems of our time—poverty, HIV/AIDS, genocide, racism, climate change, the growing gap between the rich and the poor.  Politicians hold up a wet finger to see which way the wind is blowing.  We have to change the wind.  We must build a social movement that will force elected officials to do what is morally right, not what is politically expedient. It has been done before, e.g. the abolition movement, women’s suffrage, civil rights.
Religion should make us peaceful persons.  We should listen to stories so that we can understand.  We should touch the pain.  Healing transforms, punishing does not.  If you don’t transform your own pain you will transmit it.
Christians must be the conscience of the state.  God judges nations not by their power or prosperity but how they treat the poor and the powerless.