"Many, if not most, people and institutions remain stymied in the preoccupations of the first half of life." This looks like
~"establishing their personal (or superior) identity"
~"creating various boundary markers for themselves"
~"seeking security"
~"perhaps linking to what seems like significant people of projects" (vii)
"But, in my opinion, this first-half-of-life task is no more than finding the starting gate" (viii).
Desmond Tutu: "We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in" (ix).
True Self: "the larger and foundational self that we are in God"... not "the small self or the psychological self" (169).
"God gives our soul, our deepest identity, our True Self" (ix).
"Our unique little bit of heaven is installed by the Manufacturer within the product, at the beginning! We are given a span of years to discover it, to choose it, and to live our destiny to the full. If we do not, our True self will never be offered again, in our own unique form--which is perhaps why almost all religious traditions present the matter with utterly charged words like 'heaven' and 'hell'" (ix).
So finding our true self=heaven?? If so, it seems we attain it at our own effort. God has given it, but it is up to us to uncover it.
"All we can give back and all God wants from any of us is to humbly and proudly return the product that we have been given--which is ourselves!" (x) (Similar wording to Micah 6:8, very different message!)
"True religion is always a deep intuition that we are already participating in something very good, in spite of our best efforts to deny it or avoid it" (x). (Again, shockingly similar language to biblical language of James 1:27, but the message is just so not that. I think the essence of Rohr's message can have some value, but I wish he would not equate it with faith. The two can inform one another, but I wish he would make it obvious that one can be a heaven-bound believer, due to their faith in Christ's work, without ever taking this journey, and that it is also possible to go on this journey without ever coming to faith. They are different. Obviously I think one is more important. But I still think the other is important, I just wish he wasn't being so heretical about it.)
"You are already in the eternal flow that Christians would call the divine life of the Trinity." "There is nothing to join, only something to recognize, suffer, and enjoy as a participant." So we're all already a part of it, and not we are called to participate? A lot of what Rohr is saying I just don't even understand, aside from trying to fit into a Christian framework, which I recognize I shouldn't do despite his insistence on labeling it as such. Maybe it's because I'm a novice mystic, but it just sounds so poetic it's nonsensical. Hopefully I'll understand better...
Introduction:
"There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong 'container' or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold" (xiii).
"We are a 'first-half-of-life culture,' largely concerned about surviving successfully" (xiii). "But it takes longer to discover the 'task within the task,' as I like to call it: what we are really doing when we are doing what we are doing" (xiv).
eros- life energy
thanatos- negative energy
"We actually respond to one another's energy more than to people's exact words or actions...What we all desire and need from one another, of course, is that life energy called eros!" (xiv).
"This is surely what Jesus meant when he said that you could tell a good tree from a bad one 'by its fruits' (Matthew 7:20). Inside of life energy, a group or family will be productive and energetic; inside of death energy there will be gossip, cynicism, and mistrust hiding behind every interaction. Yet you usually cannot precisely put your finger on what is happening. That is second-half-of-life wisdom, or what Paul calls 'the discerning of the spirits' (1 Corinthians 12:10). Perhaps this book can be a school for such discernment and wisdom. That is surely my hope" (xv). LORD HAVE MERCY, is this really his theology? Does he study these Scriptures he takes wildly out of context? In this discussion of the spirits, where is the Person of the Holy Spirit?
"It is when we begin to pay attention, and seek integrity precisely in the task within the task that we begin to move from the first to the second half of our own lives. Integrity largely has to do with purifying our intentions and a growing honesty about our actual motives. It is hard work. Most often don't pay attention to that inner task until we have some kind of fall or failure in our outer tasks" (xv). Okay, I'm squinting my eyes a little less now. This makes some sense. When we are young, we are focused on rule following and frameworks, indeed we need them to begin to grow. As we grow older we can get to nuance and the heart of the matter, and integration. I relate to this in regards to my journey of faith, going from what others told me the Bible said to figuring out a theology of the entire Bible, and seeing how it can still be true in light of different perspectives, etc. I think many go through this kind of journey.
"My observations tell me that if we can clarify the common sequencing, staging, and direction of life's arc a bit more, many practical questions and dilemmas will be resolved" (xv).
"None of us go into our spiritual maturity completely of our own accord, or by a totally free choice. We are led by Mystery...setting out is always a leap of faith, a risk..." We "set out from the known and the familiar to take on a further journey" (xvii).
"The soul has many secrets. they are only revealed to those who want them, and are never completely forced upon us" (xviii).
"One of the best-kept secrets, and yet one hidden in plain sight, is that the way up is the way down. Or, if you prefer, the way down is the way up" (xviii). Examples: "Dr. Faust has to sell his soul to the devil to achieve power and knowledge; Sleeping Beauty must sleep for a hundred years before she can receive the prince's kiss. In Scripture, we see that the wrestling and wounding of Jacob are necessary for Jacob to become Israel (Genesis 32:26-32), and the death and resurrection of Jesus are necessary to create Christianity" (xix). "This, of course, was Scott Peck's major insight in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled. He told me personally once that he felt most Western people were just spiritually lazy. And when we are lazy, we stay on the path we are already on, even if it is going nowhere. It is the spiritual equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics: everything winds down unless some outside force winds it back up" (xix). These seem excellent observations. His examples of failures, suffering, and sin leading to spiritual breakthroughs, however, are downright heartbreaking. Adam and Eve "'sinned'" (in quotes), "Sin is behovely!" (xxi), and the if we try to avoid sin we are just Pharisees doing even more harm. Thus the sharp choice to call our spiritual breakthrough something we "fall" into. He concludes, "We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right" (xxii), and "the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good. Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept, goodness is a beautiful human concept that includes us all" (xxii). Oh, what a sad misrepresentation of the gospel. Oh, to see that we are indeed incapable of any breakthroughs or growth or anything good or meaningful on our own. To see that the answer is not to "fall" forward, giving up on perfection and seeing the goodness within, but to see rightly ourselves as already fallen and desperate for salvation. Oh, to recognize the need for a savior, that we may rightly celebrate the perfect gift of Jesus' righteousness that is given to us! Oh, to walk in his grace, to say "not I, but Christ in me" (is that not similar to Rohr's own language?). To be led by his Spirit! I remain convinced that this belief system does make sense, but only when we have all the pieces. If sin, atonement, imputed righteousness, or life by the Spirit are left out, it all falls apart, and we're left with meager innate human goodness and the spirit of eros.
Yet, I agree with him in part. Many have initially been taught to keep "up, clear, clean, and together" (xxiii), but when we, as Rohr says, "desire a downward path to growth through imperfection," or as I would say, realize that our best efforts at perfection or even goodness fall short, that is when the magic happens!! Rohr says, "those who have gone 'down' are the only ones who understand 'up,'" (xxv), and I would argue that only those who have become aware of their true desperation can know Christ's strength. We agree that "it is not by your own willpower or moral perfection" and that "we can't engineer it by ourselves. It is done unto us" (xxvi).
CHAPTER 1: The Two Halves of Life
"...the task of the first half of life is to create a proper container for one's life and answer the first essential questions: 'What makes me significant?' 'How can I support myself?' and 'Who will go with me?' The task of the second half of life is, quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver" (1).
"Only when you have begun to live in the second half can you see the difference between the two. Yet the two halves are cumulative and sequential, and both are very necessary....No Pope, Bible quote, psychological technique, religious formula, book, or guru can do your journey for you" (3).
Words for first-half-of-life-ers: juniors, beginners, novices, milk, letter, baptized, apprentice, morning, young
Words for second-half-of-life-ers: seniors, proficients, initiated, meat, spirit, confirmed, master, evening
The first look down on the views of the latter, because "they cannot understand what they have not yet experienced" (3).
The big three issues of the first half of life: identity, security, and sexuality and gender (4). Most of history, most generations, and most of religion is consumed with these, has only made it this far. This time is characterized by being "self-preoccupied," boundary formation, "ego structuring," boundaries (3). Another list: "success, security, and containment--'looking good' to ourselves and others...the early stages in Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs'" (6). There is a need for a "narcissistic fix," in that "we all need some successes, response, and positive feedback early in life, or we will spend the rest of our lives demanding it, or bemoaning its lack, from others" (4-5). Getting a narcissistic fix=being mirrored early in life. "You have already been 'attended to,' and now feel basically good--and always will" (5). "Once you have your narcissistic fix, you have no real need to protect your identity, defend it, prove it, or assert it. It just is, and that is more than enough" (5). "That is exactly what is meant by 'salvation,' especially when we get our narcissistic fix all the way from the Top" (5). "When you get the 'Who am I?' question right, all the 'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves" (6). "We all want and need various certitudes, constants, and insurance policies at every stage of life. But we have to be careful, or they totally take over and become all-controlling needs, keeping us from further growth" (6).
Many teachers have used "process language" to describe the journey to maturity. "Unless you can chart and encourage both movement and direction, you have no way to name maturity and immaturity" (9). These many teachers agree:
1--"You can only see and understand the earlier stages from the wider perspective of the later stages" (9). These kind of people are the best leaders, and they're less concerned with defending their own stance, and more concerned with inclusivity and compassion.
2--"...from your own level of development, you can only stretch yourself to comprehend people just a bit beyond yourself" (10).
"If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal advantage--as if it were God!" (11). [Reminds me of my top take-away from None Like Him and Lore Wilbert's wise words on the Called Out Podcast.]
"Theologically and objectively speaking, we are already in union with God. But it is very hard for people to believe or experience this when they have no positive sense of identity, little courage yet, no strong boundaries to contain Mystery, and little inner religious experience at any depth. Thus the first journey is always about externals, formulas, quotes, and special clothing, all of which largely substitute for actual spirituality (see Matthew 23:13-32)" (13). Yet these things are "probably necessary" (13).
"In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things, charity"--Pope John XXIII (13).
"...authentic God experience...consoles our True Self only after it has devastated our false self" (13). "...we have not found a way to do the age-appropriate tasks of the two halves of life, and both groups are losing out" (15).
CHAPTER 2: The Hero and Heroine's Journey
**Pause to take a deep breath and discern what is true in what Richard Rohr says, despite his audacious but amiss attempts to explain "the precise meaning of the wounds of Jesus!" (19).
All heroes go on a journey, which involves leaving security, safety, and comfort. "Unless you build your first house well, you will never leave it. To build your house well is, ironically, to be nudged beyond its doors" (23).
Chapter 3: The First Half of Life
"The world is more magical, less predictable, more autonomous, less controllable, more varied, less simple, more infinite, less knowable, more wonderfully troubling than we could have imagined being able to tolerate when we were young." --James Hollis
"Healthily conservative people tend to grow up more naturally and more happily than those who receive only free-form, 'build it yourself' worldviews, in my studied opinion" (25).
"You need to struggle with the rules more than a bit before you throw them out. You only internalize values by butting up against external values for awhile. All of this builds the strong self that can positively obey Jesus--and 'die to itself.' In fact, far too many (especially women and disadvantaged people) have lived very warped and defeated lives because they tried to give up a self that was not there yet" (26).
"Law and tradition seem to be necessary in any spiritual system both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity, and to make at least some community, family, and marriage possible" (29).
"...we ironically need limit situations and boundaries to grow up. A completely open field does not do the job nearly as well or as quickly.... If you want a job done well, on time, with accountability and no excuses, you had best hire someone who has faced a few limit situations. He or she alone has the discipline, the punctuality, the positive self-image, and the persistence to do a good job. If you want the opposite, hire someone who has been coddled, been given 'I Am Special" buttons for doing nothing special, and had all his or her bills paid by others, and whose basic egocentricity has never been challenged or undercut. To be honest, this seems to describe much of the workforce and the student body of America. Many of the papers I receive in summer graduate courses at major universities are embarrassing to read in terms off both style and content, yet these same 'adults' are shocked if they do not get an A. This does not bode well for the future of our country" (31).
"[Eric Fromm] says that the healthiest people he has known, and those who very often grow up in the most natural way, are those who, between their two parents and early authority figures, experienced a combination of unconditional love along with very conditional and demanding love!" (32).
"I know this is not the current version of what is psychologically 'correct,' because we all seem to think we need nothing but unconditional love. Any law, correction, rule, or limitation is another word for conditional love. It is interesting to me that very clear passages describing both God's conditional love and also God's unconditional love are found in the same Scriptures, like Deuteronomy and John's Gospel. The only real biblical promise is that unconditional love will have the last word!" (33).
"Butting up against limits actually teaches us an awful lot. 'I would not have known the meaning of covetousness, if the Law had not said, "You shall not covet,"' says St. Paul in his tour de force against the law in his letter to the Romans! (34).
"I am trying to place you and then hold you inside of a very creative tension, if you will allow yourself to be held there. I do promise you it is a creative tension, because both love and freedom are necessary for spiritual growth, as Paul says in Romans and Galatians...Despite having been directly taught to hold this creative tension, rare is the Christian believer who holds it well. We are usually on bended knee before laws or angrily reacting against them--both immature responses...very few Christians have been taught how to live both law and freedom at the same time. Our Western dualistic minds do not process paradoxes very well. " (35-36)
"I am also deeply aware of the damage that misuse of law, custom, authority, and tradition has done in human history and to personal development. I know the destructive and immature state that mere reliance on structure and authority has engendered. The anger and blindness it often brings is devastating, because it often takes away both a necessary self-confidence and a necessary self-questioning. We see this in our political debates today, in people's lack of basic self-knowledge (too-quick answers to keep you from necessary searching), and in scary fundamentalist thinking in all of the world religions" (38).
"But I am not here to say either-or. I am here to say both-and. It is not just 'the exception that proves the rule' but somehow that the loss or transgression of the rule also proves the importance and purpose of the rule" (39).
"None of us can dialogue with others until we can calmly and confidently hold our own identity" (42).
"Unfortunately, we have an entire generation of educators, bishops, and political leaders who are still building their personal towers of success, and therefore have little ability to elder the young or challenge the beginners. In some ways, they are beginners themselves. Self-knowledge is dismissed as psychology, love as 'feminine softness,' critical thinking as disloyalty, while law, ritual, and priestcraft have become a compulsive substitute for the actual divine encounter or honest relationship" (43).
"...spiritually speaking there are no dead ends. God will use this too--somehow--and draw all of us toward the Great Life" (43).
"Western people are a ritually starved people, and in this are different than most of human history" (44).
"The first battles solidify the ego and create a stalwart soldier; the second battles defeat the ego because God always wins" (47).
I'm not sure about the parallels he's making between Freudian terms and theological terms?? Maybe because I so poorly understand all the Freudian stuff, and I can't make sense of his theology either.
"The world mythologies all point to places like Hades, Sheol, hell, purgatory, the realm of the dead. Maybe these are not so much the alternative to heaven as the necessary path to heaven" (50).
Chapter 4: The Tragic Sense of Life
"Every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship he wants to create with us" (57).
"...the whole drama was set in motion by the 'transgression' of Adam and Eve, and then the whole world was redeemed, say many Christians, by an act of violent murder! If God has not learned to draw straight with crooked lines, God is not going to be drawing very many lines at all. Judeo-Christian salvation history is an intergrating, using, and forgiving of this tragic sense of life. Judeo-Christianity includes the problem inside of the solution and as part of the solution" (59).
"Sin and salvation are correlative terms. Salvation is not sin perfectly avoided, as the ego would prefer; but in fact, salvation is sin turned on its head and used in our favor" (60).
"The only people who do not believe that the Enneagram is true are those who do not understand it or have never used it well" (61).
"I do not think you should get rid of your sin until you have learned what it has to teach you" (61).
Chapter 5: Stumbling Over the Stumbling Stone
"Sooner or later, if you are on any classic 'spiritual schedule,' some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using your present skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be, you must be, led to the edge of your own private resources. At that point you will stumble over a necessary stumbling stone, as Isaiah calls it; or to state it in our language here, you will and you must 'lose' at something. This is the only way that Life-Fate-God-Grace-Mystery can get you to change, let go of your egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey" (66).
None of us leaves our comfort zone until we have to (66). "So we must stumble and fall, I'm sorry to say" (66).
"It seems that in the spiritual world, we do not really find something until we first lose it, ignore it, miss it, long for it, choose it, and personally find it again--but now on a new level....In the end, we do not so much as reclaim what we have lost as discover a significantly new self in and through the process" (67).
"There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. For Jesus and for his followers, the crucifixion became the dramatic symbol of that necessary and absurd stumbling stone. Yet we have no positive theology of such suffering, for the most part. Many Christians even made the cross into a mechanical 'substitutionary atonement theory' to fit into their quit pro quo worldview, instead of suffering this inherent tragedy, as Jesus did himself. They still want some kind of order and reason, instead of cosmic significance and soulful seeing" (68). Footnote here says, "For Franciscans, Jesus did not need to change the mind of God about humanity, but he came to change the mind of humanity about God. Ours is a Cosmic Christ from all eternity who revealed the eternal love of God on the cross, but God did not need any 'payment' to love us." This blows my mind, because it seems Rohr himself is trying to fit the event into his logical framework, but of course it doesn't fit it you don't believe in sin and in forgiveness as grace motivated by love and other things of such "cosmic significance." I really am trying to see things from his point of view, but I still don't understand why he thinks Jesus had to die, then. To prove that facing and overcoming difficult things leads to new growth? I think he did mention elsewhere that if Jesus hadn't died, Christianity wouldn't have been born. It's all very brain-contorting to me. He does say, "Jesus must be crucified, or there can be no resurrection" (69). Hmm.
"Suffering does not solve any problem mechanically as much as it reveals the constant problem that we are to ourselves, and opens up new spaces within us for learning and loving. Here Buddhism was much more observant that Christianity, which made even the suffering of Jesus into God's attempt to solve some cosmic problem--which God had largely created to begin with! The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem-- our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the 'scene of our crime'" (69). So this makes it sound to me like the point of suffering is to reveal imperfections within us. I don't know of any worldview that gives a satisfactory, nice-bow-on-it, oh-now-I-understand-and-am-at-peace explanation of suffering, but I will say I far prefer Christianity's view of suffering that there is innocent suffering.
"If you do you do not do the task of the first half of life well, you have almost no ability to rise up from the stumbling stone" (71). Away from any thoughts about Christian teaching, orthodox or not, this makes sense form a developmental, habit, identity sense. "There is nothing to defeat 'infantile grandiosity.'...We try to believe that is is all upward and onward--any by ourselves" (71). Most don't succeed at this, (and "stay at the bottom of their own lives and try to overcompensate in all kinds of futile and self-defeating ways" (71)), but those who do "succeed" and are kept from "awareness, empathy, and basic human compassion" (72).
Chapter 6: Necessary Suffering
Carl Jung: much "unnecessary suffering" comes from people not accepting the "legitimate suffering" that is just part of being a person. "It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message in male initiation rites is 'life is hard.' We really are our own worst enemy when we deny this" (74).
"The Christian truth, and Jesus as its spokesman, is the worldview that got me started, that formed me and thrilled me, even though the very tangent that it sent me on made me often critical of much of organized Christianity. In some ways, that is totally as it should be, because I was able to criticize organized religion from within, by its own Scriptures, saints, and sources, and not by merely cultural, unbelieving, or rational criteria. That is probably the only way you can fruitfully criticize anything, it seems to me" (75). AND ME TOO.
"Necessary suffering goes on every day, seemingly without question" (77). I sure question it. My worldview holds this to be the result of the fall, and not forever. Is there beauty in time? Yes. Does suffering somehow bring about maturity? Yes. But will there be suffering in heaven? I don't think so. Even realities like: "only one saguaro cactus seed out of a quarter of a million seeds ever makes it even to early maturity," I see to be a result of the fall. Hmm.
"I quote Jesus [so much] because I still consider him to be the spiritual authority of the Western world, whether we follow him or not" (81). This statement baffles me because it seems quite objective and final for Rohr...but only claims to make Jesus the authority in the West.
Rohr says that when Jesus commands his followers to "hate" their family, "he is actually undoing the fourth commandment of Moses" (82). 🚨.
"Many people are kept from mature religion because of the pious, immature, or rigid expectations of their first-half-of-life family. Even Jesus, whose family thought he was 'crazy' (Mark 3:21), had to face this dilemma firsthand" (83).
"To move beyond family-of-origin stuff, cultural stuff, flag-and-country stuff is a path that few of us follow positively and with integrity" (84).
"The nuclear family has far too often been the enemy of the global family and mature spiritual seeking" (84). Interesting idea. Very interesting in light of trauma/attachment, etc...but is this what Jesus is talking about?
Chapter 7: Home and Homesickness
"Home is another word for the Spirit that we are, our True Self in God. The self-same moment that we find God in ourselves, we also find ourselves inside God, and this is the full homecoming, according to Teresa of Avila" (91). But why capitalize Spirit here?? I have a spirit, but the Spirit is the Holy Spirit aka God.
"The Holy Spirit guiding all of us from home and toward home is also described in John's Gospel as an 'advocate' ('a defense attorney,' as paraclete literally means, John 14:16), who will 'teach us' and 'remind us' as if some part of us already knew but still needed an inner buzz or alarm clock to wake up" (92).
Chapter 8: Amnesia and the Big Picture
"It is religion's job to teach us and guide us on this discovery of our True Self, but it usually makes the mistake of turning this into a worthiness contest of some sort, a private performance, or some kind of religious achievement on our part, through our belonging to the right group, practicing the right rituals, or believing the right things" (98). 😕
"Any discovery or recovery of our divine union has been called 'heaven' by most traditions. Its loss has been called 'hell'...Only the True Self knows that heaven is now and that its loss is hell--now" (101). 🤪
"Everyone is in heaven when he or she has plenty of room for communion and no need for exclusion. The more room you have to include, the bigger your heaven will be....If you go to heaven alone, wrapped in your private worthiness, it is by definition not heaven" (101). If the first part means having humility and recognizing that I am just as unworthy as anyone else to receive God's grace, then 💯
"If you accept a punitive notion of God, who punishes or even eternally tortures those who don't love him, then you have an absurd universe where most people on this earth end up being more loving than God! God excludes no one from union, but must allow us to exclude ourselves in order for us to maintain our freedom... No one is in hell unless that individual himself or herself choose a final aloneness and separation. It is all about desire, both allowing and drawing from the deepest level of our desiring.... Jesus touched and healed anybody who desired it and asked for it, and there were no other prerequisites for his healings. Check it out yourself. Why would Jesus' love be so unconditional while he was in this world, and suddenly become totally conditional after death?" (102). 🤦♀️
Chapter 9: A Second Simplicity
"I totally believe in Adam and Eve now, but on about ten more levels. (Literalism is usually the lowest and least level of meaning)" (106). 🤔
"...there was a much bigger world than the United States and the Roman Catholic Church, which I realized were also paradoxes. The e pluribus unum("out of many, one") on American coinage did not include very 'many' of its own people (blacks, gays, Native Americans, poor folks, and so on), and as a Christian I finally had to be either Roman or catholic, [meaning all-embracing] and I continue to choose the catholic end of that spectrum. Either Jesus is the 'savior of the world' (John 4:42), or he is not much of a savior at all. Either America treats the rest of the world democratically, or it does not really believe in democracy at all. That is the way I see it" (108). Oh that people wouldn't feel they have to choose between the church and a faith for all people. Lord, have mercy.
"Unfortunately, most Christians are not well trained in holding opposites for very long, or living with what could be creative tension" (111). Yep.
"Basic religious belief is a vote for some coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction in the universe" (111).
"I worry about 'true believers' who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all...People who are so certain always seem like Hamlet's queen 'protesting too much' and trying to hard....It is probably necessary to eliminate most doubt when you are young; doing so is a good survival technique. But such worldviews are not true--and they are not wisdom" (111). 💯
"As the body cannot live without food, so the soul cannot live without meaning" (112).
"Humans are creators of meaning, and finding deep meaning in our experiences is not just another name for spirituality but also the very shape of human happiness" (113). I see this and recognize its place, and it makes me long for what Eugene Peterson calls Spiritual Theology, because the spirituality of it all is essential, but so is good doctrine, IMHO.
Chapter 10: A Bright Sadness
"There is a gravitas in the second half of life, but it is now held up by a much deeper lightness, or 'okayness.' Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness, if that makes any sense" (117). Yes, it does.
"Holier-than-thou people usually end up holier than nobody" (118).
"[In the second half of life] Daily life now requires prayer and discernment more than knee-jerk responses toward either the conservative or liberal end of the spectrum. You have a spectrum of responses now" (119).
On second-half-of-life people: " I no longer have to prove that I or my group is best, that my ethnicity is superior, that my religion is the only one that God loves, or that my role and place in society deserve superior treatment.... Erik Erikson calls someone at this stage a 'generative' person, one who is eager and able to generate life from his or her own abundance and for the benefit of following generations. Because such people have build a good container, they are able to 'contain' more and more truth, more and more neighbors, more and broader vision, more and more of a mysterious and outpouring God. Their God is no longer small, punitive, or tribal... They now enjoy the moon itself instead of fighting over whose finger points to it most accurately, quickly, or definitively" (121).
"I hope you are becoming that shining person yourself, and that this book is helping you... Otherwise, this book too will just be some more words--instead of words becoming flesh. Until it becomes flesh, it cannot shine and shine brightly" (125). In other words, apply what you read. Good advice in general.
Chapter 11: The Shadowlands
"Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see" (128).
"Spiritual maturity is largely a growth in seeing" (130).
"The general pattern in story and novel is that heroes learn and grow from encountering their shadow, whereas villains never do" (131).
"The gift of shadowboxing is in the seeing of the shadow and its games, which takes away much of the shadow's hidden power" (134).
"In our work with men, we have found that in many men this inability or refusal to feel their deep sadness takes the form of aimless anger. The only way to get to the bottom of their anger is to face the ocean of sadness underneath it" (135). 💯
Chapter 12: New Problems and New Directions
"If you are on course at all, your world should grow much larger in the second half of life" (137).
"'How can I honor the legitimate needs of the first half of life, while creating space, vision, time, and grace for the second?' The holding of this tension is the very shape of wisdom" (138).
"So again the meticulous navigating of our small river surpasses ever diving into the Big River" (139).
Then "Jesus' first definition of the church as 'two or three gathered in my name'" as being so wise: When did Jesus define the church this way?
"In your second half of life, you can actually bless others in what they feel they must do, allow them to do what they must do, challenge them if they are hurting themselves or others--but you can no longer join them in the first half of life. You can belong to such institutions for all the good that they do, but you no longer put all your eggs in that one basket. This will keep you and others from unnecessary frustration and anger, and from knocking on doors that cannot be opened from the other side. In short, this is what I mean by 'emerging Christianity'" (142). And my linear brain still just wants a definition, because I still don't understand what you mean. I have a lot to learn in understanding this line of thinking.
"...the cure for loneliness is actually solitude!" (143).
"Basically, the first half of life is writing the text, and the second half is writing the commentary on that text" (143).
"At the risk of being too cleverly alliterative (though it may help you remember), here is the normal sequencing of the dualistic mind: it compares, it competes, it conflicts, it conspires, it condemns, it cancels out any contrary evidence, and then it crucifies with impunity" (147).
"Jesus, I am convinced, was the first nondualistic religious thinker in the West,... but his teachings were quickly filtered through Greek dualistic thought!" (149).
"Dualistic thinking gets you in the right ball park ('You cannot serve both God and mammon'), but non-dualistic wisdom, or what many of us call contemplation, is necessary once you actually get in the right field. 'Now that I have chosen to serve God, what does that really mean?' Nondualistic thinking presumes that you have first mastered dualistic clarify, but also found it insufficient for the really big issues like love, suffering, death, God, and any notion of infinity. In short, we need both" (150).
Chapter 13: Falling Upward
"Until and unless you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level" (154).
"The only final and meaningful question is 'Is it true?' Not 'Who said it?' 'When and where did they say it?' 'Does the Bible or the pope or my president say it?' or 'Do I like it?' The only meaningful, helpful, and humble question is 'Is it objectively true?'" (156).
"Intimate I-Thou relationships are the greatest mirrors of all" (159).
Not sure where this quote came from:
"“When you get your “Who am I?” question right, all the “What should I do?” questions tend to take care of themselves.”-- Rohr
Quotes I really like are this color. A few jump out as ringing true and being important.
😕 This is the face I make when I think he is saying something that has a grain of truth in it, but on the whole is still way off base to the point of being misleading. Usually it's something that would be a lot closer to true if he understood the gospel message that he is misunderstanding and therefore misrepresenting.
🤪 This is the face I make when I think, 'either you're crazy or I'm crazy' because I don't see it the same way at all.
🤦♀️ This is the face I make when I feel so sad and frustrated at how he's interpreting the gospel message.
Red and the alarm emoji are for when I feel more negative emotions than just sad about the way he's interpreting the gospel message.
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