Putting Action Before Contemplation (Richard Rohr)

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There’s a part of me that still can’t believe I went to Albuquerque and got to sit down with Father Richard Rohr. This was on the calendar for a year—and in that time, his work has come to mean even so much more to me.

Richard is a Franciscan friar and teacher of Christian mysticism and tradition. He founded the Center for Action and Contemplation. It is incredible to me that he has never taken a salary, he lives in a little cottage on-site, and he devotes his life to this center, which essentially is trying to expand compassionate engagement in the world.

He has written some of the most beautiful books, including his latest, out this week, called The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage.

This conversation with Richard did not disappoint. I was on the verge of tears at times, but I also laughed out loud often. Richard told me about the difference between a priest and a prophet—and how a prophet is powerfully, and vulnerably, speaking against their own group—not against an “other.”

We talked about the process of moving from order, to disorder, to reorder—and back around all again. We talked about why the ego loves to think it has dismissed evil, but usually this is a sign that we’ve just continued evil in a different form. We talked about feeling it all—anger, grief, and so on. And how this can be a fulcrum to growth. We talked about why it’s so important to critique systems instead of just accusing individuals. And why Richard puts action before contemplation—because you do not have anything to contemplate until you have acted in the world, as he says.

I’m so grateful for this conversation with Richard Rohr.

MORE FROM FATHER RICHARD ROHR:

The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage

Center for Action and Contemplation

The Wisdom Pattern

The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

So speaking of the timing of things and The Tears of Things, this book feels prescient, prophetic, and like an essential balm or guide for this moment in time, and I wish it weren't to be honest.

RICHARD:

Yes.

ELISE:

Yeah,

RICHARD:

I wish it weren't. I know. Good way to say it.

ELISE:

Yeah.

RICHARD:

Thank you for your trust and forgive my gravelly voice. Oh, you brought the kombucha. Let's see if that helps. Okay. Take me wherever you want to go.

ELISE:

All right, let's talk about the timing and the need for this book at this moment in time and the focus on the prophets. People think of prophets right as oracles, not so much as

RICHARD:

That's a good word. Yeah,

ELISE:

Truth tellers. So why did you want to bring them back to light now?

RICHARD:

Well, what got me attuned was the teaching here at the center for 38 years. Now people, first of all in a number of national articles called this Place a School for Prophets, and I always thought, well, why and if so, how is it true? So I kept teaching the prophets to each group of interns and students and more and more pieces fit together. So I saved it, I guess not intentionally, but until the end of my life because I wanted to get it right. What is unique about these guys and gals? None of the gals write, so most of them we quote a prophet, we quote a male women, well, I don't know all the reasons, but weren't allowed to write or whatever. So the writing prophets appear to be all male Jewish prophets.

ELISE:

And then can you talk a little bit about the distinguishment between a priest and a prophet? This to me was such an unlock.

RICHARD:

If you look at archeology and history at art at the Bible, you see those who have become the defenders and protectors of God always become the power group because how can you have more power than speak for God odd, and so it's highly open to corruption and to an in-group. In fact, our word clergy means from the Greek, the separated one, and we usually dressed different to emphasize that we were a separate class. So it's rare to find a priest who is a prophet. I mentioned in the book, and I'm not trying to be super Catholic, but Pope Francis is an amazing example to emerge in our time as in the Catholic world, the high priest as it were, and yet the very real prophet, he did it again this week and challenging America on its attitude toward immigrants.

ELISE:

And didn't he say something about USAID to

RICHARD:

Oh yes,

ELISE:

It

RICHARD:

Was clearly directed. Well, it was written, addressed to the American bishops really in effect chastising them for not more defending immigrants. How can you not defend the immigrants if you know the Bible, it starts with exodus of a group of people who are forced to be immigrants and then we Catholics have our Jesus, Mary and Joseph traveling back into Egypt once they came again, immigrants, but we don't take the side of the immigrants now. It's sort of unbelievable,

ELISE:

Isn't it? Well, speaking of the wisdom pattern, it feels like we are in or beginning our period of extreme disorder. Maybe in your experience, we've been in this for a while, but it feels like it's all being burnt down. Is it in preparation for reorder? I don't know.

RICHARD:

Thank you for having the courage to say that because it's true. It started with postmodernism, continue with the hippies, became modern secularism and now is a delight in deconstruction, confusing deconstruction with construction, and that's what the deconstructionist always wants to do, thinks he or she is building something new, but the instinct to tear down, to dismiss, to deny our earlier word for was nihilism. Neil in Latin means nothing. Nothing means nothing. You see that in many European countries, you're not allowed to believe in anything and be trendy, and now it's hitting America in the way that only America can do. It's mass producing it at the political level.

ELISE:

It's so interesting, and I've heard you talk about this a fair amount and there's just a small mention of this in the tiers of things, but even in the naming of action and contemplation and putting action first and you write action comes before contemplation because you do not have anything to contemplate until you have acted in the world and recognized that the real issues are difficult to resolve, tied up in deep motivations like identity, power and money. And going back to talking about the difference between priests who are in many ways protecting and in-group or speaking for an in-group against others, the prophet speaks against their own group, right?

RICHARD:

That's their unique position.

ELISE:

Yeah.Forcing an evolution, growth change from within rather than just disorder, rather than just striking things down because you don't like them, but pushing for some sort of reform.

RICHARD:

Something bigger, more positive, more inclusive, that Jesus calls the reign of God. It's very interesting. The woman who is a transition figure is that called the prophetess Anna, and she says she lives in the temple. Something was going on at the time of Jesus that allowed a woman prophet to live with the priestly class. I don't know. We don't know any history beyond that. Who was this Anna who lived in the temple for how many years? Didn't it say she was 80? There's something going on there that fascinates me. I don't know what else to say about it.

ELISE:

What do you think it is?

RICHARD:

There's an opening at that time with, we see it with John the Baptist. We see it with Anna to a synthesis, to a re-imagining, which really the partial readiness for Jesus, it doesn't win at that point, but it is fully exposed and the icon of the transfiguration, if you're familiar with that story, we have Jesus appearing on Mount Tabor, which becomes the new Mount Sinai as it were, and he's got Moses on one side, the symbol of the law and the prophet Moses is both, but Elijah the prophet, and if you'll know it in Jesus sermon on the Mount and other places after he's made a major point, he'll offer an exclamation point. This was taught by the law and the prophets. I should have counted before I wrote the book, how often he uses that phrase, order and disorder, put 'em together and in the icon you have Jesus and it paints it in the story like an icon, Jesus in the middle and the two on each side.

ELISE:

I'm not a theologian, but doesn't Jesus also say something to the effect of that He didn't come to throw over the law but to evolve it's right, expand it?

RICHARD:

And there's the words you want. Don't think I'm just a mere deconstructionist. I'm critiquing the law, but I'm not throwing it out. That sets us up for this repositioning, hold on to order and what gives this away is after he works, one of his healings to show he is not in competition with Temple Judaism. He says this amazing thing. Again, go show yourselves to the priest. I'm going to honor my Jewish religion. The priests still have respect and authority. Now those are the kind of rebels who are a new kind of rebel called the prophet. You see it in people like Martin Luther King with all of their awareness of black history still respect their Christian background, but that's rare today people, they think you're a rebel by completely throwing out the first phase order. It's holding the tension and that's the minority who do that. In my opinion,

ELISE:

And this is a through line through I think almost every single book. It's this, the personal transformation required and owning your shadow, recognizing,

RICHARD:

Thank you.

ELISE:

We are full of light, full of darkness too.

RICHARD:

Thank you.

ELISE:

And our job is to integrate that darkness, expand the light, live the light,

RICHARD:

And never think that we can get rid of it.

ELISE:

Never.

RICHARD:

It's the struggle, the holding of it, the admitting of it, the holding it intention with the life, the good, the true and the beautiful. That's where wisdom emerges.

ELISE:

And would you say, and many ways, I mean you write about suffering and conflict, which I love too, but that darkness that whether it's collective darkness, collective evil or what's alive in us is the fulcrum of growth, right? That's what pushes us. That's in some ways the energy that drives us to expand.

RICHARD:

You got it. You just named it. You're right. But hardly any religion except to some degree, Taoism and Buddhism have idealized paradox. We all see it in the Taoist symbol of the white side with the black dot and the black side with the white dot. There it is in symbolic form, but most religion became purity codes telling us, get rid the dark side.

Get rid of it. Even we took Michael the archangel as a killer of dragons. He's on a horse with a big sword. Did you ever hear me tell the story when I taught in Germany once and a friend of mine who was my first German translator, he said, now let me show you something. He said, you can find this in many German churches at the high altar, there is invariably somewhere a painting of Michael with the sword and the horse and killing the dragon. But he says, let me walk you to a side altar, which is still an altar, but only at the side. And there is Martha petting the dragon. Petting the dragon. That's someone, and we're talking about 12th, 13th century already have the inside of the feminine way of transformation. That's beautiful. It is beautiful. I don't say that's in all churches, but it's enough of 'em. Andreas who was my translator, he loved that sort of thing and he knew I did. So in my many trips of teaching in Germany, he let's go to this church. And there the art always told the truth more than the pulpit because the artists were right brain, the pulpits were left brain to left brain.

ELISE:

I know you write about René Girard and scapegoat mechanism and the first murder and the foundation of and not to go to inside baseball and Rene Girard because he breaks my brain a little bit too.

RICHARD:

Yeah, he's heavy. He's heavy. It's true.

ELISE:

But with this idea of the scapegoat mechanism or identifying the contaminating element and moving to eradicate it, not integrate it but eradicate it, and this is what we see with the crucifix. This is what we see throughout time and he does an admirable job tracing it as this unconscious mob reaction. That's just how we're built. Why are we built like that? And then how do we do what you are teaching us, which is to stop that.

RICHARD:

It appeals mightily to the ego to think, I have dismissed evil, I have recognized, captured, destroyed evil. The ego just loves that.

ELISE:

Loves.

RICHARD:

Loves it. Even though it's a lie, you haven't, you've usually with that mindset, you've continued evil in a different form. I mean, it's happening in Ukraine, it's happening in Gaza. It never stops always. There's the bad people and then those, I mean the prophets, forgive me, but would've nothing good to say about what Israel has just done in Gaza. Nothing. And we call it the Holy Land, and this is 2000 years after Jesus, 4,000 years after the Jewish Bible, and we're still scapegoats.

ELISE:

We're still scapegoating.

RICHARD:

Yeah.

ELISE:

When you look out at this tableau of world events at this moment in time, it feels biblical to me.

RICHARD:

It does.

ELISE:

It really does.

RICHARD:

Yeah. It's not trying to make ourselves more important, but the emergence of evil is just in a paramount way of evil calling itself, good presidents who don't even know the Bible holding up the Bible. Wow. Why do people believe that?

ELISE:

What is evil? We identify evil as this outside separate entity force. Right, and then when you think about the etymology of Satan, right, it's a opposer.

RICHARD:

That's right. The accuser.

ELISE:

The accuser.

RICHARD:

Yes.

ELISE:

So is evil not separate, but inherent in our own humanity and do we just perpetuate it or grow it by refusing to acknowledge it?

RICHARD:

By disguising it as good, by calling it good. The only way we can do evil with impunity is to name it as good, to really think we're purifying Germany by killing Jews, and then we got one of the, if not the smartest nation on the earth to believe that it's unbelievable. I don't know if you've traveled in Germany. I taught there a lot and I'm a hundred percent German by background, but there's just schools and academies and theology schools everywhere. No country, so Idealizes International Book Fair, where is it? Frankfurt. Frankfurt. People love books and ideas in Germany. That's probably why I was well received over there. I'm much more known in Germany than I am here. They read my books. Americans…

ELISE:

I don't know. I think you're really well known here, but thinking a book, and I love a book if you haven't noticed, and yet it goes to the naming of the center. We love the contemplation. We love to think about these incredibly complex problems and reduce them to this binary rather than living it, which is always more confounding.

RICHARD:

Oh, you use good words, confounding. That's true. We love dualistic thinking. It allows us to exclude the problem rather than holding the problem until we become, become ourselves the solution to the problem. That's not satisfying. It's torture. And that's even true for us on the so-called left now, how can we stop repeating this pattern of now hating the right, hating whoever we think needs to be excluded.

ELISE:

Yeah, it's true. You write a lot about Ken Wilber and this idea. I like how your reframe of include and transcend.

And I have this maybe quiet fight, but with my friends who are very progressive where it's that he would call it the regressive green, but we're not living at our values when we exclude and hate. It's the exact same thing dressed up from the other side.

RICHARD:

On the left and you can't see it normally. No. Because you really think if I yell louder, I vote stronger. We can get rid of the Republicans in this case, or the right, or whoever.

ELISE:

Do you have any advice when we think about this extreme polarization despite the fact that most Americans are somewhere actually in the middle, and when Americans meet each other, they love each other mostly.

RICHARD:

Mostly,

ELISE:

Yeah. How do we break the binary? I know that's a big question. Can you solve all of our cultural problems?

RICHARD:

Well, it's why I made paramount the teaching of non-dual consciousness as much of the work of the center. It's still, you have to know there is a way of thinking that is non-dual, that is comfortable with paradox. Until we get that, did you read that poem and that scripture as the front of peace of the The Tears of Things? Can I read it?

ELISE:

Yes, please

RICHARD:

Quote it. I discovered this marvelous woman, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. “I want a word that means okay and not okay more than that. A word that means devastated and stunned with joy. I want the word that says I feel it all at once. The heart is not like a songbird singing only one note at a time. More like a, that's Mongolia throat singer able to sing both a drone and simultaneously two or three harmonics high above it, throat singing. It's called a sound. The thorn say that gives the impression of wind swirling among rocks. The heart understands swirl.” Now what we got to do is get the mind to understand paradox. There have been philosophers who said that all great religions at the mystical level or teaching paradoxical thing, holding together, knowing with not knowing the heart, understands swirl, how the churning of opposite feelings weaves through us like an insistent breeze. Insistent breeze leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves, blesses us. She uses the word with paradox so we might walk more openly into this world and then she ends so beautifully, “This world, so rife with devastation, so rife with devastation, the world so ripe with joy.” God, she's good.

ELISE:

That’s beautiful.

RICHARD:

And then the next page, wonderful quote from the second chapter of Ezekiel, A hand was there stretching out to me and holding a scroll on. It was written lamentation, weeping and moaning, which became the title of the book. I opened my mouth. He gave me this scroll to eat. It's a scroll of lamentation, weeping and mounting. I ate it and lo and behold. It doesn't say that it tasted sweet as honey. There's the prophet. The prophet is a paradoxical finger. They see the paradox that Israel is, they are believe the chosen people of God. What an amazing claim. The chosen people of God. Of course, we Catholics thought we were, too.

ELISE:

I want to talk about grief and the path to grief and its precursor anger, which you write about a lot in the book, and obviously we live in a culture that is terrified of its grief and much more comfortable with anger. Before we do that though, I'm an Enneagram six, so I'm very familiar with fear.

RICHARD:

You're a six. Yeah.

ELISE:

Yeah.

RICHARD:

That's why you're so teachable. Sixes are good, healthy sixes, not rebels.

ELISE:

But so fear, I am intimate with fear and I know I've heard you say that in the Bible. It says “Be not afraid” more than any other phrase.

RICHARD:

More than any other. I'm told that by others, but enough others that I believe it.

ELISE:

Yeah. Because to me, when I look at the world, I feel like fear has everyone gripped by the throat, which then I think for many is the source of their anger, which really is fear. How do you recommend contending with fear? Is it faith?

RICHARD:

Well, you just said it. See, you don't need me. It's faith would have done much better if it would've seen itself in opposition to fear then an opposition to doubt. It's pretty clear every major theophany in the Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible begins with the angel or the apparition saying, do not be afraid. Count them. It's a candidate. Do not be afraid.

ELISE:

Yeah, it seems impossible.

RICHARD:

Yeah, it does seem impossible and I'm not a six, but it seems impossible. Yeah.

ELISE:

Well, as a one you're more familiar with anger, right?

RICHARD:

Yeah. Resentment of stupid things. Here are the arrogance in that people who just say stupid things, not realizing that I say stupid things too.

ELISE:

So you write within this pattern, the holy order of prophets. It starts with anger. When you read

RICHARD:

'em,

ELISE:

It transmutes into grief.

RICHARD:

Yes.

ELISE:

And I really appreciate it and think a lot about gender and how we hold these things in our bodies, but that obviously you've written about and you've done a lot of work with men in these initiatory cycles, and I feel like we're also in a culture where men are terrified of their feelings, particularly men who have a lot of power.

RICHARD:

So true.

ELISE:

And just can't feel their grief. No.

RICHARD:

Can't feel their grief, and they let it remain numbing, stupid anger, which gives you a sense of power, which makes men feel masculine and

ELISE:

In control.

RICHARD:

And in control

ELISE:

And Right.

RICHARD:

Yeah. Women don't have that burden, except when they're overly identified with feminism as the new order, then they become as angry. I'm very pro-feminist.

ELISE:

No, no, I understand.

RICHARD:

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Then they become just as angry as men and priding themselves in their anger with their anger.

ELISE:

Well, I think, and this is one of the focuses of my work, it's the same principle when we try to focus the locus of our problems on men rather than recognizing also our own internalized patriarchy and the way that we police ourselves and each other, the way that we're also sustaining and upholding a system. And when I hear women say, oh, we need a matriarchy, it's like, really? You want an oppressive dominance based system that's just gender reversed. That's not what I want. And it's interesting you brought up Prophetess Anna as maybe some sort of initiator for Jesus, or I feel like you've written about John the Baptist…

RICHARD:

An incomplete prophet. I call him.

ELISE:

You do?

RICHARD:

Yeah, because he only addresses individual sinners, so he's back into purity codes. Get rid of hero and Philip's wife and all this stuff, and we'll have purified Israel. That's the lie.

ELISE:

Got it.

RICHARD:

Which is what we're still doing. Just get rid of the sinners and I mean, how much in the last six months have we not caught men in sexual sin and we feel so pure and superior that we've exposed them. I wish they wouldn't be so immature, but that shooting them down one by one and making you feel moral and them immoral is not going to change the world.

ELISE:

No, no, and it goes back to this idea that we're so incapable of recognizing our own shadow, our own darkness.

RICHARD:

That's right.

ELISE:

And doing the work of growth, which is so hard.

RICHARD:

We didn't even have the words I'm told. I mean I'm not scholar enough, but structural sin, institutional evil weren't at least popular in Catholic theology until the 1970s. We didn't have words for it, but now it's very prominent and what that's called is liberation theology. Once you began to critique the system, instead of just accusing individuals, you've moved into liberation theology and the amazing thing is the Jewish prophets did it 3000 years ago. We're already liberation theologians. Where did they get this? Amos is the most striking 35 or 37 cities that amo names. He doesn't name an individual. Well, he does name a priest and a king at the beginning. There it is. Those who hold together the system, but all the rest of the book is Moab.

ELISE:

Yeah, but it's true. I'm sure you've encountered this quote. It's one of my favorite quotes, but I still, I don't have a mind for memory. I have a mind for concepts, not exact words.

RICHARD:

Oh, me too.

ELISE:

Oh, it's hard, but it's this quote from john a. [owell at the Institute for Othering and Belonging, and it's essentially, we need to be better at being hard on systems and soft on people, and we are so good at being hard on people and soft on systems.

RICHARD:

Wow. I wish I'd used that in the book.

ELISE:

That's a good quote. Right?

RICHARD:

That's John Powell.

ELISE:

John Powell.

RICHARD:

That's excellent.

ELISE:

Yeah. If we could shift and depersonalize it then do you think that that also helps us depolarize so that we can get a little bit of space?

RICHARD:

I would have to believe that if everything else I'm saying has any truth to it, we've got to concentrate on critiquing culture, collectives, mindsets. The gun culture of Texas comes to mind.

ELISE:

I think going back to this idea of the initiation of your work with men, we are very intent on identifying all the symptoms that show up as these wounded boys become wounding men, you wreak havoc, but yet we can't attend to the core pain. Do you feel like when you have moved or helped move men into their grief, acknowledging their suffering, that that has been a portal?

RICHARD:

Very definitely. That five day event that I created with the advice and help of others for sure, but the third day is called the Day of Grief, and that's the day where men either move across a precipice of sorts or they don't, and if they do, they get into initiation. They get initiated. They have to do their grief work. I tell the story to them how the Masai were very good to me. I don't know why they trusted me, but some of the chiefs appointed two warriors in full costume. You'd think I was walking around in a movie set, but they were given permission to walk with me a whole day, answer all my questions honestly, and lead me to the caves of grief. And these were concrete caves where warriors were taught how to cry. That became the title of the book, The Tears of Things.

You have to Teach people to cry and to cry about the human tragedy and how I believe it, have profited from it and spread it myself, and I'm not above it. The tragic sense of life that the existentialist philosophers spoke of how we call it in Christian language, the doctrine of the cross, but we mechanized that. We instrumentalized that we made the cross into another little method to get to heaven. God, you just want to cry. Not a lesson about the shape of reality here, not how to get there, but the shape of reality. You're living in here. We'll get it, but we just get things slowly.

ELISE:

And is that feeling the tears of things, allowing the anger to move into grief, to experience that suffering, is that the fulcrum to growth? That's the small self. Letting the small self die.

RICHARD:

That's what in effect happens. You only begin to trust it when the death has begun and you see the freedom it offers not to be ego led, not to be ego defending. There's nothing to defend. What's his reputation that I have or you have or anybody has that needs defense, that lie has to die and God does it in a million ways for a lot of people. It's not till the last months and hospice workers are saying this of life.

ELISE:

That's when the small self dies.

RICHARD:

When the small self finally begins to recognize that most of what it did has been a waste of time. Really an illusion. It's so sad. One man who is involved in our center who like so many men, had a terrible father wound. I always ask him how his dad is doing. His dad is still alive after a life of alcoholism en raging. He said, believe it or not, he's begun gazing. He knows I use that word for my present prayer life, just gazing. And he says, my dad is gazing and he doesn't want to be taken away from, he's about my age, early eighties. He's getting there. Wonder what taught him. A lot of his contemporaries probably had to die. He had to experience his own body beginning to die. And then you say, what's it all for? Why did I do that? And that and that, but you don't hate yourself either. You weep over yourself. I've been thinking so much, dreaming so much lately about my college years, my theology, years, how ego driven I was to become a priest, get ordained.

ELISE:

I bet you are so great.

RICHARD:

Thank God. Use it. I'm glad I was. It is who I am. But it was in its youthful form, largely a seeking of the self. The self to be granted importance.

ELISE:

It's not what we all do in the first time.

RICHARD:

We all do. We all do. And the more sacred it is, forgive me, but even women, I don't know how you could not do it with being a mother. What's more sacrosanct than being a mother? I'm not saying obviously it's wrong to be a mother, but the more sacrificed the role or title is, the more building it is. So you almost have to recognize which most mothers do by their fifties. I wasn't a perfect mother. In fact, my sister just emailed me that yesterday and she's just five years behind me. I'm seeing more and more how I wasn't a perfect mother, but she isn't hating herself for it. She's just recognizing it.

ELISE:

So interesting and in the context of collective evil, I'm thinking too of moms in this moment who are crusading. There's a group of crusading moms and be engaged in some forms of I would say collective evil. It's an interesting part of this whole movement, and I think it's based in fear and anger.

RICHARD:

Yeah, yeah. I would agree. On both counts.

ELISE:

But Steve Bannon cited, I can't remember the, but Moms of America is one of the most influential forces, but it is interesting as a woman to watch that emerge too, all in the name. Of course, father, we protecting all children everywhere.

RICHARD:

And it half believes that truthfully.

ELISE:

Yes. Oh, for sure.

RICHARD:

But half is illusion,

ELISE:

A half illusion

RICHARD:

Self-serving illusion.

ELISE:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, and I'd be curious for your thoughts on this too, and it gets again to this question of priest versus prophet, but the rise potentially of Christian nationalism.

RICHARD:

Oh my God.

ELISE:

I know. Does it break your heart?

RICHARD:

It's so contrary to the gospel.

ELISE:

Yeah. Thinking of Girard and you hear people on Peter Thiel and JD Vance. I don't know how closely you follow politics, but they love Rene Girard. Isn't that interesting?

RICHARD:

Do they?

ELISE:

Yes. It's a foundational text for them.

RICHARD:

I didn't know that.

ELISE:

Yeah, yeah.

RICHARD:

I don't know who Peter Thiel is.

ELISE:

He is a billionaire, another part of the South African PayPal world who is funding Vance and others.

RICHARD:

He loves Rene Girard.

ELISE:

He loves Rene Girard. They see themselves as Girard.

RICHARD:

You're the first one who's told me that.

ELISE:

Isn't that interesting?

RICHARD:

That deserves study.

ELISE:

Yeah.

RICHARD:

How does that chemistry work?

ELISE:

I know. Will you guys do a podcast episode about it?

RICHARD:

Let's do a podcast on how the right is using Girard.

ELISE:

That's what we do, right? These ideas are just weaponized.

RICHARD:

Anything so the ego can feel separate and superior. That's what it wants.

ELISE:

Thinking about the truth-telling that happens in our culture and the way that I think people want to self-aggrandize as prophets, but you know it's not true if it's based on the other, right?

RICHARD:

That's right.

ELISE:

Yeah. It has to be.

RICHARD:

It’s drawing its rightness from someone else's wrongness.

ELISE:

And that you write. They are not seeking fame or fortune or they would not be prophets. They will never be mainstream. They will always be a remnant, but it is their message that they care about, not their reputation or their comfort. I'm sure you've been spared from social media, but social media is awash with truth tellers, promoting conspiracy theories and propaganda under the auspices of truth telling, but it's generally not only self-aggrandizing but self enriching. It's very weird out there.

RICHARD:

Isn't it? Isn't it a whole public scene and not just in America?

ELISE:

Do you think that that's the wisdom pattern playing itself out collectively across the globe?

RICHARD:

It feels like it. Everybody sees the whole world through their strongest idea. It appears to be true right now, but I don't want to become righteous with my most recent idea. That's why I put this off till the end of life. I continue not to trust it. When it was my most recent idea, when it became a recurring idea that strengthened itself over time, that's what told me this might be the spirit of God.

ELISE:

I think that's so important and thinking about the whole that you write about alchemy and Carl Young and growth and this pattern for us individually and collectively, maybe we only see one part of an order disorder reorder on a global scale.

RICHARD:

That's all we can really,

ELISE:

But in us, don't we feel this? Isn't that the process internalized where you have your idea order, you go into deep disorder and then you have to reorder yourself again,

RICHARD:

Again, again, because your discovery of disorder, you soon make your new order, and I think the biblical word for that was righteousness, where you claim a new pedestal from which to judge others and liberate yourself. I've been talking about how liberals are not the same as prophets and they've been allowed to do what I recently called, I don't know if it's the best word, the liberal two step, they name the evil over there and then they step back from any solidarity with sin are the poor, are the oppressed. See, Jesus eats with sinners. Jesus said, I came for sinners. You probably know by two favorite saints are Francis and Res ue, and they both teach downward mobility. Yeah, Jesus critique both the left and the right and up to now most reformers probably epitomize critique the right like the French Revolution, and then pretty soon the thousands and the French Revolution is still a lesson in how I'm not anti French really, but how not to do it and what has it produced is this secular culture that is preoccupied with couture.

ELISE:

I'm sure you're a big couture fan.

RICHARD:

Dressing up and having the best food and I love 'em for it. It is. It's good and beautiful, but it's not going to save the world.

ELISE:

No, no. It's not. The liberal two step. I love that, and so I guess marching orders for all of us are to get closer to that which we profess to hate because maybe we'll find ourselves there,

RICHARD:

Find ourselves. You get it. Just so you don't think I'm anti French St. Vincent de Paul and St. Tr and Li or two of my favorites, but isn't it interesting they both known for their downward mobility, our French to the core we Catholics, we've got to find a saint to symbolize everything. We need a human story. We need a human story that exemplifies it. Of course Jesus does already, but I think the reason we Christians have done and we have such a poor job with Jesus is we didn't read him in the light of the lineage of the prophets. We read it in the lineage of Messiah. There was no lineage created a messiah, so we made Jesus into what we wanted him to be and he became the medallion of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman empire, the Spanish empire, the French Empire, the English empire. They all love Jesus while they killed everybody else. It's just at this point it's laughable.

ELISE:

Yeah, you have the best I'm going to read to you from your own book.

RICHARD:

Oh, let me hear it. Let's see. I said it.

ELISE:

Well, “once we took away the prophetic Jesus's counterintuitive message. In his counter cultural critique, he became the personal possession of every nation's biases, shadows, and preoccupations, hardly worthy of being Lord of the entire universe. Jesus ended up as an outsider in the eyes of Judaism, a theologian to educated Greeks, a competing warrior for Rome, a conquistador for the new world, a proper evangelical preacher for right wingers everywhere. A white capitalist ally for the good old USA, best friend for the therapeutic class, a harmless and optional teacher for many liberals and the founder of a strange cult of innocence, I am not a sinner that almost no one can really live up to.” It's a great section.

RICHARD:

God, I was inspired that morning. See my narcissism, loving my own words. They're so good by me. Yeah.

ELISE:

I just have to also say, because it didn't come up today, but it feels essential for any reorder. Your concept of the cosmic egg, the Me Story inside the We Story inside The Story is so meaningful.

RICHARD:

Yes,

ELISE:

I've written about it a lot because we are so caught in the Me Story and the We Story

RICHARD:

And the We Story,

ELISE:

But that's our reorder is back into some cosmic egg. It's excellent.

RICHARD:

Since I use that in two books, I've had my story, our story, other people's stories in between. I would improve on it. I hope if I wrote those books again, you have to, and that's been happening in this century where we learn Chinese literature and Japanese art and whatever it might be. That's been a real part of the movement toward these story, recognize the validity of other people's stories. So I wish I could redraw the cosmic egg, but that's okay.

ELISE:

Well, another day. But yeah, and it feels like the more you get into the wisdom traditions of other cultures, everyone seems to be saying the same.

RICHARD:

We are.

ELISE:

Yeah.

RICHARD:

Yeah. If you remember, the only way evil can succeed is by calling evil good. That's why Satan is first called the accuser, and then in John's gospel by Jesus, the father of lies. The father of lies. What a telling phrase. If that's the case, then we should not be surprised that people asserting this is the truth by which they mean the whole truth. In the interview I did yesterday, I tried to say why Jesus tempted in the desert, how can Jesus be tempted at all? Tempted is always taking a partial truth and making him the whole truth. You get enamored with the partial truth if you stay with it, prayerfully longer, you see, but it's not true here. It's not true for this class. It's not true for this race, but that you have to stay with it patiently and over time to recognize where the truth is not true. The great example is America's Declaration of Independence. It's laughable to Native Americans and to Black people. How we didn't mean it in the least. Well, no, we did. We meant it a little bit for white people, so just enough to make it universal truth and then pat ourselves on the back. All men are created equal, and what we meant is all white land owning men who have birthright, citizenship are created equal. How come we can't see that? You have to love big truth. Big truth. With a big B and a big T.

ELISE:

Well, friends that was thrilling. Opie, who you may know is Father Richard's dog jumped on my lap for part of the interview too, which was extra thrilling. If you've listened to this podcast for a while or you've read my newsletter, then you know how much Father Richard and his work means to me, and I think to so many of us, if you are uninitiated, highly, highly recommend that you engage with what he has to say and with the Center of Action and Contemplation in general, particularly as we see a rise of Christian nationalism on the right. How do we counter that? How do we help transcend that? I think it's probably not surprising to any of you that progressive Christianity is not as organized as funded and as intense as what we might see on the far right. I wanted to again just come back to the central idea of The Tears of Things, which is this, the priest versus the prophet, and how a prophet does not speak against others.

A prophet is a self critiquing entity. It critiques its own and demands evolution and growth from within an expansion. It's not about identifying the evil or the darkness in the other, it is about finding it in oneself and within whatever ideology you happen to belong to, and we're seeing a lot of false prophets in our culture, a lot of truth telling that certainly only serves for profiteering not being a prophet. It's for self-aggrandizement, aggrandizement for lining pockets with profits, building influence and influence and attention in this world is power at this moment in time. That's what we're seeing playing out, and for people who love Jesus and love what he said, just want to remind you, Jesus had 12 followers, right? He just had 12 followers after I was talking with the team a bit, so lovely and cool group of people, and we were talking about how so many of us are spiritual, not religious, and it doesn't necessarily have a core organizing principle, but that's certainly where culture is going.

Jesus didn't have a church either. He was wandering around the desert. So I think this idea that must happen, that our religious lives or our spiritual lives must happen within four walls is wrong, and I think we're being called to serve something larger than ourselves in whatever form that takes. Ultimately, every single wisdom tradition, Sufism, Kabbalah, Wisdom Christianity, they're all saying effectively the same thing. I also love this line that I think is, well, there are a couple lines. One, this is a very simple summation of the book. “The Hebrew prophets critique their own group first and only then does that give them enough clarity to properly critique others.” So I'll leave you with that. And then also this, which I think is so deep. “A prophet does not need to push the river of her ideas too feverishly because she knows the source of the river is beyond her.”

Oof. Alright? The Tears of Things and then so many of Father Richard's other books. As you can imagine, I hit that bookshop hard. If you like today's episode, please, please rate and review it and share it with a friend.