Men as Mentors - Richard Rohr and Sergio Milandri - Part 15

Start with three minutes of silence or a piece of evocative music..

Part 15. We are One.

We don’t do well with mystery. As modern people who are enlightened, we have been taught to mistrust the unknown and to seek security in what we can control.

Much of our culture’s demand for scientific credibility has robbed us of our spiritual heritage and connectedness and what has suffered most is the real mystery that sustains us. Being aware of this mystery requires us to hold spiritual and relational unknowns with an attitude of openness and respect. We need to live with an intuitive knowing that mystery holds realities that are beyond our understanding but deeply significant to our being. Mystery is not an impersonal superstitious sentiment but rather an affirmation of authentic personal spiritual relationship. We are the mystery. Each one of us is a deep unknown, a profoundly graced person, rich in being. Much of this is lost in the daily humdrum and desacrilising of life.

As we were seeing last week, we connect with each other mostly on surface levels.
We know what attracts us and what repels us about people. We know what we want from others and what we don’t. But do we really know them? If we feel good we want more and if not we walk away. This wreaks havoc with our relational inner self as it makes and breaks connections as easily as thinking a thought or changing our minds. Are we not in danger of reducing others to what we think we know of them as if they are consumer commodities? Are we simply isolated islands bumping into or avoiding each other according to our whim without any inkling of the life-giving connections that we are forming or tearing as we seek our immediate gratification? Can we accept that we have a profound effect on each other and that what we see on the outside is a small part of a person? The real work of relating is to create a safe space for one another’s becoming, and allow mystery to take root and flower in each of us.

What we all desire is security in relationships but we look in the wrong places for it. Security in relationship is not about control but about commitment; what we give to another rather than what they can assure us of. This is not about words but about our inner presence and self-giving, things that we put in place when we enter into relationship with another. Ongoing and deepening relationship is about strengthening those ties to give life and mystery is this framework. It is an invitation to become at one because the bigger mystery is that we carry one another within. Our relationships are spiritual connections, webs of being that sustain and support us in ways we have not even begun to be aware of or to fathom.

A bigger mystery yet is that we are united in our humanity and together we are in God, at one with our Creator-Presence who has called us and continues to call us into being. We need to take off our shoes for we are on holy ground.

Jesus prayed, “May they become one and be in us as you are in me and I in you.”
John 17:20

Reflection (10 minutes in silence)
What does it feel like to be connected to others in spirit and together to be in God?

Journal (5 minutes)
Write down what you find hard to believe.

Connect with each other in the group.

This week. Reflect on your piece of the human quilt and how we are all held together. Read chapter 16 of Richard Rohr’s “From Wild Man to Wise Man”.