Happy and blessed New Year! Here's to another Rohr!

Richard Rohr reflection on Where is God?

God is everywhere!

Happy and blessed New Year! I hope and pray that this new year will bring us all the health and happiness we desire. More importantly I pray this year brings us all the deeper union we all thirst for. I am currently in the midst of writing some reflections that I will add here in the near future. However, in the spirit of starting out the new year properly disposed to committing to an even deeper union with God, I thought it was fitting to share a reflection – yes, another – from Richard Rohr. In this reflection, he talks about where God is. I think he is going to help us get our “bearings” and get off to a good start this year. This one’s a keeper!

Where is God?

When I was on retreat at Thomas Merton’s hermitage at Gethsemani Abbey in 1985, I had a chance encounter that has stayed with me all these years. I was walking down a little trail when I recognized a recluse, what you might call a hermit’s hermit, coming toward me. Not wanting to intrude on his deep silence, I bowed my head and moved to the side of the path, intending to walk past him. But as we neared each other, he said, “Richard!” That surprised me. He was supposed to be silent. How did he know who I was? “Richard, you get chances to preach and I don’t. Tell the people one thing.: Pointing to the sky, he said, “God is not ‘out there’!” Then he said, “God bless you,” and abruptly continued down the path.

The belief that God is “out there” is the basic dualism that is tearing us all apart. Our view of God as separate and distant has harmed our relationships with sexuality, food, possessions, money, animals, nature, politics, and our own incarnate selves. This loss explains why we live such distraught and divided lives. Jesus came to put it all together for us and in us. He was saying, in effect, “To be human is good!” The material and the physical can be trusted and enjoyed. This physical world is the hiding place of God and the revelation place of God!”

Far too much of religion has been about defining where God is and where God isn’t, picking and choosing who and what has God’s image and who and what doesn’t. In reality, it’s not up to us. We have no choice in the matter. All are beloved. Everyone – Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Muslim, black and white, gay and straight, able-bodied and disabled, male and female, Republican and Democrat – all are children of God. We are all members of the body of Christ, made in God’s image, indwelled by the Holy Spirit, whether or not we are aware of this gift.

Can you see the image of Christ in the least of your brothers and sisters? This is Jesus’ only description of the final judgment. (Matthew 25). But some say, “They smell. They’re a nuisance. They’re on welfare. They are a drain on our tax money.” Can we see Christ in all people, even the so-called “nobodies” who can’t or won’t play our game of success? When we can see the image of God where we don’t want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.

Jesus says we have to love and recognize the divine image even in our enemies. Either we see the divine image in all created things, or we don’t see it at all. Once we see God’s image in one place, the circle keeps widening. It doesn’t stop with human beings and enemies and the least of our brothers and sisters. It moves to frogs and pansies and weeds. Everything becomes enchanting with true sight. We cannot not live in the presence of God. We are totally surrounded and infused by God. All we can do is allow, trust and finally rest in it, which is indeed why we are “saved” by faith – faith that this could be true.

Hopefully this reflection will help us focus more on the fact that God is EVERYWHERE. He is in the midst of the “situation.” He is in that person we find so annoying. He is in that creature we very rarely notice, in that rose we rarely stop to smell. When I read this the second time around I was hopeful that healing of relationships was going to come this year. I’m committed to allowing, trusting and resting in the fact that I am “totally surrounded and infused by God.” In this way, I will feel His presence amidst the broken relationship, in that broken person, in me! I hope to start seeing with eyes not my own.