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A Call to Contemplative Solidarity - Fr. Richard Rohr and Rev. SeiFu Anil Singh-Molares, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnbJ3Bw77AE.
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Title:: A Call to Contemplative Solidarity - Fr. Richard Rohr and Rev. SeiFu Anil Singh-Molares
Year:: 2021
Citekey:: sdi-thehomeofspiritualcompanionshipCallContemplativeSolidarity2021
itemType:: videoRecording
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Abstract
A recorded conversation with Fr. Richard Rohr and Rev. Seifu Anil Singh-Molares on how spiritual direction can help us cope with these difficult and unpredictable times. This conversation was recorded in anticipation of Fr. Richard’s participation in SDI’s upcoming virtual conference - 2021 Renaissance - happening April 20-25th.
Join Fr. Richard and many others as we celebrate a new season of growth for spiritual companionship around the world.
Filled with contemplative practice and opportunities to connect with other participants. This conference is a chance to celebrate without reservation after a truly difficult year. This conference is a chance to awaken to the kinship of all beings, to embrace truth as a gateway to love – and to share the experience with other deep listeners.
Learn more and register on the SDI website: https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-eve…
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Notes
Transcript
Rev, Seifu
So, Father Richard, welcome. Thank you for being here with us. And we’re excited to have you at the SDI conference next month in April of 2021. And what we’ve seen at SDI is a tremendous increase in interest in spiritual direction and spiritual companionship over the last year. And for obvious reasons, I think people are facing their mortality, which is always an invitation to the spiritual path. A very strong and powerful death is a strong and powerful or imminent death or looming death. And so I wondered if I could ask you first about how you see spiritual direction and spiritual companionship in the context of the last year, how it touches on its core themes of spiritual direction as you see them, but particularly as it relates to the COVID pandemic.
Fr. Richard
Because so much is in motion, including the very foundation, when you're talking about death all around us, it seems to me that people are grasping for some objectivity, some ground, some foundation, and they're grabbing in good places and also an awful lot of bad places. They don’t realize it, but the need is so great for foundation, center, objective ground, that I think a lot of the false certitude, the false opinionatedness, the mental health issues that are rampant are all corollaries of this time, where people just aren’t used to living with this much in motion and this much that’s unpredictable. So there has been, in my experience too, more people asking for spiritual direction, more people just needing spiritual direction. Let me throw in now, it might be a question you're still going to ask, but a lot of people have substituted, well, certitude, of course, but process language and purely, now do hear the word purely, purely psychological language with no reference to spirit, because it's easier. And I think the job of a spiritual director is to hold on to spirit and introduce that as a livable, credible part of the conversation. And a lot of people are recognizing that, but a lot aren’t. I really have met a good portion, even in my own circle, of people who only use the language of health and process, and I’m all for health and I’m all for process. But when there’s no reference to spirit, it looks like a new way of taking control to me.
Rev, Seifu
You know, I’ll ask a quick follow-up question, which is that the role of suffering and kind of image of someone on their deathbed, finally, after a lifetime of denying God, saying, I think it’s time for me to engage, which is a little away from the game. And so there’s a lot of that going on right now, which is people are really struggling and suffering on so many different levels, including with issues like racial inequities, systemic racism, in particular Black Lives Matter. And so I wonder if you can address that dimensionality through the prism of spiritual direction, which is the sense of the world is kind of in a crisis mode that we haven’t seen in quite a while. And the response of spiritual directors to that crisis across these various pandemics, the health pandemic, the systemic racism pandemic, the social inequity pandemic.
Fr. Richard
You know, I want to narrow in on your fortunate use of the word systemic. I wrote a book about a year or so ago on evil. What do we do with evil? And I reverted to classic medieval Catholic theology, which said there are three sources of evil, the world, the flesh, and the devil. And the first one was the world. And in our individualistic Western culture, we haven’t pointed that out up to now. It’s all the emphasis has been on the second level, the flesh, the individual sinner, the individual bad person. And especially this issue of racism is making a lot of us see that the only way a full racist, an unapologetic racist can emerge is in a culture of racism, a worldview, a county, a city, a state, a neighborhood, a church that already has agreed racism is good. And you can take all the capital sins. It’s true of every one of them. We have to start with the world. That’s the old fashioned word for that. It doesn’t mean creation. It doesn’t mean nature. It means the system. And I think it's really important that spiritual directors today broaden out the source of evil away from this merely taking on individual guilt, individual shame, and say, you do know you're a part of a racist family, don't you? Or a racist religion, or church.
This is the one good thing I see coming out of this conversation that people can speak about racism just to use that one.
Rev, Seifu
Let me shift to the second part of this interview, which is to talk about spiritual direction and the spiritual path, right? And so you’ve been a spiritual director for a long time. You’ve been well steeped in it. And really the question that I wanted to ask is, why is spiritual direction always, possibly, hopefully, always relevant, no matter what stage of your spiritual development? Why is it so important to have that feedback mechanism that spiritual direction provides in our spiritual lives?
Fr. Richard
Unless we have a mirror. And I think that’s why most people are called a relationship, or at least solid community. We just are highly capable of illusion. We don't naturally confront our compulsions, our delusions, our shadow self. Now, that’s not the only job of a spiritual director. But if he or she is well trained, they know how to do that in an almost indirect way. I know I had spiritual directors do it with me, not in an accusatory way, but just a questioning way.
Do you think we could look at this? Or so forth. And as you just well said, you need that at every step of the journey. And without shadow work, you don't go on to the next level of consciousness, stage of holiness. If I can use language like that, I know it’s dangerous. But the ego will remain entirely enthroned in the name of religion. And you and I both know, at least what I know I can say, some of the most egotistical people I’ve ever met have been clergymen.
And it’s because their God talk is such a careful cover for yourself. And in my old age, I see it in myself. All the disguises of shadow are more and more clever, more and more clever. So you have to have a mirror. And that's all a good spiritual director is, but a spiritual mirror. And not just, I mean, I use a lot of psychology, as you can already tell, but not just the psychological mirror.
Rev, Seifu
So let me ask you this, and we touched on it a little bit earlier, which was why, kind of the role of suffering, right? I mean, we don’t live in a, fortunately or unfortunately, by design or not, we don’t know, in a world where things are made easy for us, right? It seems like we’re forced, particularly in the spiritual life that it is strife, discord, suffering, and loss, in particular, the loss of people who we love, or love us, of friends, of parents, that really drive us closer, to use your terminology, closer to God. So why is the pathway to insight, goodness, clarity, paved with so much suffering, in your view?
Fr. Richard
The degree of a person's suffering, the degree of it, that's the word I'm emphasizing, is usually the degree of their need to be in control. Now, I’m not, obviously, just talking about physical pain, but when suffering continues over days, and weeks, and months, I just was online, present to a death this morning, with a family, it was very spiritual, before this death of their mother, and during it, and now still in the day. And I think because they genuinely have given control to another, whom we would call God, there was, believe it or not, perfect sadness, combined with intense joy, at the same moment, because they've given up control. People who think their job is to be in control, which is almost the definition of a secular culture, there’s going to be a lot of suffering.
And so, without suffering, we don’t give up control. It’s forced on us. It’s absolutely forced on us, because there’s nothing reasonable, logical, about suffering. No one deserves it, really. It just comes our way, damn it. Yeah. And I think in many people’s lives, who am I to say, but it has to come our way. We don’t recognize our immense control needs. I want to define my life the way I want to define my life. Spirit can’t let you get away with that, or you’ll be a very small soul, a very small humanity. So, suffering takes you outside of your comfort zone, literally, where you have to find a different meaning, a bigger purpose. You have to expand the limits of your soul and your psyche and your perception.
Rev, Seifu
The final question is one that I’ve wrestled with in the context of the tradition that I’m wearing these robes in, which is Buddhism. But it’s the distinction and yet connection between enlightenment and maturity, spiritual insight and spiritual maturity. And those two are not the same. You can have great insight into your place in time and space, past time and space, without having the necessary spiritual maturity to be able to live that out in a life of service to others, right? We were talking a little bit about, you were saying how some of the most egotistical people you know are and, you know, we have this experience in Buddhism and Hinduism as well. Every religion, right? You can’t escape it because insight doesn’t mean maturity. And in fact, the most dangerous people are the ones who have the insight, but not the maturity. Yeah. I wondered if you could reflect on your thoughts from your perspective on not just how they’re distinguished from each other, but how they might be intertwined.
Fr. Richard
I bet you’re familiar with Ken Wilber’s distinction between stages and states, huh? Yes. Yeah. And everything you receive, you receive at your present stage. You receive it at your present stage of development. And that means you can have a high state of ecstatic union, let's say with the divine, with love, but it still comes through a funnel into your wicked little soul. Forgive me, that’s from some poet. I can’t remember who it was. And it’s a crucial distinction because you can have big people, and by that I mean people who have been enlightened. And this is the brilliance of Buddhism, that it puts that front and center, whereas we put this poorly defined thing called salvation front and center, and it just messed up everything. Messed up everything. Because you know that I think Jesus was talking about enlightenment too.
But we didn’t let him do that. We had to make him into an answer giver. So, this would be another theme that’d be worth talking about. But the Latin phrase that we were taught in philosophy, I'm going to impress you, I'm sure, with my Latin, quid quid recipitur recipitur ad modem recipientis. And the professor would just put out his hand, and we’d all, students, recite this phrase. It means whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.
It was so often applicable to what we were studying in philosophy that we had to memorize it. He would put out his hand, and we’d all repeat it again. Little did I think, I was in my early 20s when I studied philosophy, and how useful that would be the rest of my life. Because it isn’t what you say, it’s the level at which you’re understanding it, receiving it, which is the level you’ve grown up. And the level you’ve grown up, in great part, is how you’ve dealt with the sufferings that have come into your life.
Rev, Seifu
So, the last thing I’ll ask is if you don’t mind saying a few words to the SDI community. You’ve been a longtime favorite of ours, you know, for actually decades before I joined five years ago.
They’re always eager to hear from you. So, maybe you can say a few words to our members and to SDI, inviting them to join you and join us next month. Spiritual Directors International, you’re one of those groups that I feel safe with. I feel that we’ve grown together. I’ve known you since I had hair. I had to shave off mine my first day as a novice when I had hair.
And so, to be with you next month is something I already relish. And I hope what I’ve talked about here with Reverend Seifu is something that we can really dig into a month from now. I’m excited by talking about it just a little bit. But I welcome you to the conversation, and I do want it to be a conversation. So, we’re going to leave enough time for question and response. Even though I won’t always have the perfect response, we’re still going to try. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.