URBANarmy

"It amazes me that we should have to prove the obvious to so many Christians, who for some sad reason prefer a static universe, which they presume they fully understand." (Richard Rohr)

"The Incarnation Means that God is in the Ordinary" Love these thoughts by Rolheiser... "We celebrate many things at Christmas, not the least of which is how scandalously easy it now is to see God. After the incarnation, every home is a monastery, every child is the Christ child, and all food and drink is a sacrament." We struggle to believe this. For many reasons, each of us has the propensity to miss seeing God in the ordinary because we are forever searching for him in the extraordinary...We no longer need to look for God in extraordinary visions—a sunset will do."

I've been thinking about different leadership styles recently, not least the Baby Boomer generation. So I was intigued this morning with Richard Rohr's thoughts based on psychologist Ken Wilber  more here "Boomeritis." It's the disease that the Baby Boomers like myself are likely to have, but just can't see. A combination of arrogance and individualism keeps people trapped at this "Mean Green" level. It seems we have just enough enlightenment to reject everybody below us as naïve, and at the same time we can't imagine anyone being smarter than we are. The mystical, non-dual levels look ridiculous to academic and sophisticated Greens. Wilber also calls this "flatland" because it's contemptuous of both higher and lower levels. Mean Green people will not let go of either their separateness or superiority. Their ego is still in charge.

"Fundamentalism is always a tragedy. It is not religious, it lacks God, it is idolatrous. . . . Such people think they know absolute truth and thus they corrupt religion."  Pope Francis

Some insights from Rolheiser on what represents a prophetic message. "When you hear a voice that deeply shakes you and yet, in another way, offers deep hope, a voice that both draws and upsets you, you are hearing a prophetic voice....Unfortunately, not many voices in our culture do that. More commonly we experience only one of the two: a voice that greatly upsets us, but offers no deep hope; or a voice that offers cheap consolation without deep challenge. These are voices of false prophets." Ron Rolheiser