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Monday, December 13th, 2021

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Fifty: Devotion

Full-Body Knowing

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. —Ezekiel 36:26

Jesus is our model for what it means to live from our hearts. Father Richard teaches:

In Jesus, God gave us a human heart we could love. While God can be described as a moral force, as consciousness, and as high vibrational energy, the truth is, we don’t fall in love with abstractions. So God became a person “that we could hear, see with our eyes, look at, and touch with our hands” (1 John 1:1).

Love—God incarnate—always begins with particulars: this woman, this dog, this beetle, this Moses, this Virgin Mary, this Jesus of Nazareth. It is the individual and the concrete that opens the heart space to an I-Thou encounter. Without it, there is no true devotion or faith but only argumentative theories.

This is the simple religious knowing that the West is going to have to rediscover, both on the Right and on the Left. It’s always a whole-body knowing. Since the Enlightenment and argumentative Reformation we have situated our “knowing” in the mind, illustrated by Descartes’ notorious “I think therefore I am.” The mind is good but it’s only a part of what Jesus recommended: “You must love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with your whole mind” (see Matthew 22:37). That’s full-body knowing! That is devotion.

Love lives and thrives in the heart space. It has kept me from wanting to hurt people who have hurt me. It keeps me every day from obsessive, repetitive, or compulsive head games. It can make the difference between being happy and being miserable and negative. Could this be what we are really doing when we say we are praying for someone? Yes, we are holding them in our heart space. Do this in an almost physical sense, and you will see how calmly and quickly it works.

We invite you to pray for the ability to be more loving with modern mystic Howard Thurman (1900–1981):

I want to be more loving in my heart! It is often easy to have the idea in mind, the plan to be more loving. To see it with my mind and give assent to the thought of being loving—this is crystal clear. But I want to be more loving in my heart! I must feel like loving; I must ease the tension in my heart that ejects the sharp barb, the stinging word. I want to be more loving in my heart that, with unconscious awareness and deliberate intent, I shall be a kind, a gracious human being. Thus, those who walk the way with me may find it easier to love, to be gracious because of the Love of God which is increasingly expressed in my living. “I want to be more loving in my heart!” [1]

[1] Howard Thurman, Meditations on the Heart (Beacon Press: 1953, 1981), 168–169.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking, disc 3 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2012), CD, MP3 download;

Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, disc 4 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2013), CD, MP3 download;

unpublished “Rhine” talk (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2015); and

Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 204–205.

Image credit: Nicholas Kramer, Untitled (detail), 2021, photograph, Seattle. Used with permission.

Image inspiration: The pattern of the leaves and colors of this succulent invite us inward to its center. We yield to the call of its presence—so also with God.

Learn more about the Daily Meditations Editorial Team.

Prayer For Our Community

Loving God, you fill all things with a fullness and hope that we can never comprehend. Thank you for leading us into a time where more of reality is being unveiled for us all to see. We pray that you will take away our natural temptation for cynicism, denial, fear and despair. Help us have the courage to awaken to greater truth, greater humility, and greater care for one another. May we place our hope in what matters and what lasts, trusting in your eternal presence and love. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our suffering world. Please add your own intentions . . . Knowing, good God, you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God. Amen.
Listen to Father Richard pray this prayer aloud.

Story From Our Community

Someone told me that in the midst of all the confusion, planet destruction, civil division, and lack of empathy, the seeds of love have been sown. Hearing that opened another door for hope in me—it is why I read these daily meditations before I start the rest of my day. We are all part of one great whole, we have everything we need within us. Fr. Richard's meditations remind me of that each morning.
—Marie A.
Share your own story with us.

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News from the CAC

The New ONEING Explores the Cosmic Egg

Thirty years ago, Richard Rohr encountered the cosmic egg, and it radically shifted the way he perceived wholeness. In the new issue of ONEING, the biannual journal of the Center for Action and Contemplation, unpack Fr. Richard’s model of meaning, revealing a universal and inclusive framework for integrated spirituality. ONEING: The Cosmic Egg is available now in print and downloadable PDF.

Explore Staff Favorites from the CAC Online Bookstore

As fellow travelers on the contemplative path, CAC staff recommendations include a mixture of both classic and recent materials including The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, The Naked Now, and Race and the Cosmos. Check out this specially-curated collection in our online bookstore.

Explore Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations archive at cac.org.

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