Richard Rohr (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“There are five realities that males must learn & Integrate by EXPERIENCE if they are to become men.” Richard Rohr
- · Life is hard
- · You are not that important
- · Your life is not about you
- · You are not in control
- · You are going to die
My teacher, Ed Friedman, said that God’s will is that we mature and that happens by facing challenge. Realize that in America we spend a lot of time and money preventing this very learning from happening to our boys (or girls for that matter). If we are prosper as human beings this must happen. If we are to survive this must happen. That is why I suspect that Jesus spent so much telling people to get over themselves take up their cross and follow him. If we are to be Christians we must integrate these five things by EXPERIENCE if we are to follow Jesus where he leads.
NOTE 2018: A man left Saint John’s because I repeated Rohr’s words from the pulpit. He was, needless to say, an extreme narcissist who believed he was that important. God preserve us from such and may his tribe, influence and time decrease. JWS
Beyond Contradiction 
The failure to realize these realities can lead to consequences as described below: [Contemporary man] is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by “powers” that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food – and, above all, a large array of neuroses. Carl Jung
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Another interesting and related thought.
“This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet. In the practical life of the individual, we know how his whole gloom or glee about any present fact depends on the remoter schemes and hopes with which it stands related. Its significance and framing give it the chief part of its value. Let it be known to lead nowhere, and however agreeable it may be in its immediacy, its glow and gilding vanish. The old man, sick with an insidious internal disease, may laugh and quaff his wine at first as well as ever, but he knows his fate now, for the doctors have revealed it; and the knowledge knocks the satisfaction out of all these functions. They are partners of death and the worm is their brother, and they turn to a mere flatness.
― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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Enjoy reading and reflecting on Rohr’s writings. Thanks for sharing.
http://thewannabesaint.wordpress.com/
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