Our Mission
We are a center for experiential education, rooted in the Gospels, encouraging the transformation of human consciousness through contemplation, and equipping people to be instruments of peaceful change in the world.
Passage and Verse | July 2011
The Christian Gospel and the Natural World
By Richard Rohr, OFM
On Saturday, August 6th, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus, I am doing a webcast with Bill Plotkin on “Nature and the Human Soul”, as a preview of what we hope to do together in January at the Tamaya hotel on the banks of the Rio Grande.
I am humbled and honored by Bill Plotkin’s readiness to work with me, for I think we have much to support and offer his wonderful “soulcentric” work, just as he has given us so much.
My only disappointment as I read both of his books Nature and the Human Soul and Soulcraft, was that he was able to use almost no Christian sources to support or expand his solid thesis and presentation. I do not “blame” him, however, I blame us! We do not know our own Sources and Tradition, much less disseminate them—we, the very religion that believes God created all “things”, became “flesh” in Jesus, and that the Divine is revealed in the sacramental symbolism (meaning “matter reveals spirit”) of “things” like water, oil, sexual union, bread, wine, and relationships themselves.
Bill’s understanding of the direction and nature of spiritual growth almost perfectly parallels a Christian understanding of the same. Maybe we would describe the final goal as divine union itself, however. But you have to start “uniting” earlier than in the next world! Plotkin makes the path itself clear, honest, practical, and describable in words that make sense. We Christians talk of things like holiness, salvation, conversion, reform, growth, repentance, and love, but we usually have few words that accurately describe what that actually looks like—and the traps, counterfeits, and blockages along the way. Bill Plotkin gives us descriptions that are hard not to recognize as true.
We, for example, might quote Jesus’ “Unless the grain of wheat dies, it remains just a grain of wheat” (John 12.24), and we all bow our heads, of course, but there is no clear reference point or meaning to any one of those words. We are free to easily dismiss such a quote, although even that is too much engagement with the text. We usually just forget it as pious babble. Or the words are allowed to mean whatever the ego wants them to mean or not to mean in the moment. This has kept much of Christianity very immature and even delusional about its own path.
Bill, in comparison, after well defining ego and soul, says something like, “Before initiation, the ego has little or no understanding of the soul, and is merely an agent for itself. After soul initiation, the ego accepts its role as an agent or handmaiden for the soul.”
With words like this, we are at least engaged, challenged, intrigued, and invited into something that seems like a real possibility for us and for everybody. He describes his eight stages with a clarity and honesty that matches John of the Cross’ “nights” of the soul, Teresa of Avila’s “mansions”, and Spiral Dynamics’ “levels."
And how exactly does Plotkin do this? By presenting, quite accurately I think, both the cultural basis at every stage and the nature basis for every stage. This is not theoretical at all, but something you can “hear and see, touch with your hands, and watch” (I John 1:1). Yet it will not last for long, or go deep, if you fail to observe nature and yourself honestly.
Once you do this, you know the teaching is true, and you know with Jesus that “the lilies of the field”, the “fallen sparrow”, the habits of sheep, the “mother hen shielding her young” and the “red sky at sunset” all have a clear and compelling message for those who are willing and ready to see. And take long times in nature to learn presence.
Maybe Bill is just teaching us how to see, and how to see reality honestly, which might just be what it means to see God.
