Summary
This podcast episode explores Richard Rohr's book 'The Tears of Things,' focusing on prophetic wisdom for an age of outrage. It delves into the prophets' pattern of responding to Injustice with anger, then sadness, and finally love. The discussion highlights the importance of embracing imperfection, the value of uncertainty, and the concept of 'holy disorder' as a pathway to spiritual growth. The episode also contrasts traditional interpretations of scripture with a more nuanced, evolutionary understanding, emphasizing compassion and solidarity over judgment and certainty, and invites listeners to embrace their own journey of spiritual maturity.
Key Insights
The prophetic path involves confronting Injustice with anger, leading to sadness and then love.
When faced with global Injustice and cruelty, the initial response is often anger. Richard Rohr encourages embracing this anger as a teacher, which can reveal a deeper sadness underneath. This concept is central to the book's title, 'The Tears of Things,' symbolizing that all things have tears and deserve tears.
Necessary rage at Injustice must be balanced with compassion and understanding.
There's a necessary rage at the loss of human dignity, but it must be coupled with an understanding that most people are doing the best they can. Without tears, rage does not transform into compassion and can become a source of self-righteousness.
Original sin reflects inherited collective woundedness, not just individual transgression.
The concept of original sin can be understood not just as an individual inherited sin, but as an inherited collective woundedness. This perspective shifts the focus from pointing out individual sinners to recognizing our shared participation in a broken culture.
Tears are salvific because they break down self-righteousness and reveal interconnectedness.
Tears break down the illusion that suffering is 'over there.' They reveal our own complicity in the suffering of others, like the high level of consumption in America fueling global Injustice. This realization can lead to profound sadness but is essential for genuine caring.
Disorder is a necessary part of spiritual growth, often catalyzed by pain.
Pain, more than love, often serves as the catalyst for moving from order to disorder. This disruption is not to be feared but embraced as essential for spiritual health and growth, as modeled by the prophets.
Prophets act as crisis managers, disrupting order to guide towards reform.
Prophets serve as crisis managers who disrupt existing orders to address societal issues. They bring 'holy disorder,' a necessary shaking-up that allows for recognition of brokenness and eventual reordering based on justice and righteousness.
The prophetic word's ultimate expression is love, mirroring Christ's journey.
The prophetic trajectory pushes towards justice and culminates in love. For Christians, this is embodied in Christ's path of humility, crucifixion, and resurrection—a renewing of all things in love.
Sections
Introduction to The Tears of Things
The podcast explores Richard Rohr's book 'The Tears of Things,' focusing on prophetic wisdom and the Hebrew prophets.
This season of the 'Everything Belongs' podcast focuses on Richard Rohr's latest book, 'The Tears of Things,' with discussions centered on its chapters. Listeners are encouraged to read along but it's not required to follow the episodes. This episode delves into Chapter 1, titled 'Tears of Things,' which examines the full path of the prophets.
The prophetic path involves confronting Injustice with anger, leading to sadness and then love.
When faced with global Injustice and cruelty, the initial response is often anger. Richard Rohr encourages embracing this anger as a teacher, which can reveal a deeper sadness underneath. This concept is central to the book's title, 'The Tears of Things,' symbolizing that all things have tears and deserve tears.
This journey represents spiritual growth in understanding scripture, religion, and responding to Injustice.
The exploration of the prophets is framed as an invitation to grow up in how we read the Bible, think about religion, respond to Injustice, and ultimately, how we show up to love ourselves and our neighbors.
Guest Pete NS discusses the value of uncertainty and evolving faith.
Mid-episode, Pete NS, host of 'Bible for Normal People,' joins to discuss the importance of making room for the new through uncertainty and the need to evolve our understanding of scriptures and our engagement with the world.
The Origin and Meaning of 'The Tears of Things'
'The Tears of Things' originates from Virgil's Aeneid and holds dual meanings.
The phrase 'lacrymārum rērum' (the tears of things) from Virgil's Aeneid, observed on a fresco of fallen soldiers, signifies that all things are crying and all things deserve tears. This phrase has been influential in various fields, including poetry and theology.
The phrase describes the tragic sense of life and the cruciform shape of reality.
Roar interprets 'The Tears of Things' as Virgil's expression of the tragic sense of life, akin to the Christian concept of the 'cruciform shape to reality,' acknowledging that everything suffers and dies.
Book title reflects prophetic guidance towards acknowledging suffering.
Roar chose 'The Tears of Things' as the title because the prophets guide us toward acknowledging and processing grief and suffering. The subtitle, 'Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage,' highlights the contemporary relevance of this wisdom.
Navigating Rage, Anger, and Injustice
Holding onto rage and resentment can lead to harm and wounded souls.
If we remain in rage and resentment for too long, we can unknowingly perpetuate hurt and damage our own souls. In an 'age of outrage,' there's a tendency to pass anger back and forth, necessitating a balance between speaking out and love.
Necessary rage at Injustice must be balanced with compassion and understanding.
There's a necessary rage at the loss of human dignity, but it must be coupled with an understanding that most people are doing the best they can. Without tears, rage does not transform into compassion and can become a source of self-righteousness.
Prophets target the collective, not just individual sinners.
Prophetic critique aims at the culture or collective rather than solely at individual wrongdoers. This broad critique helps avoid politicization and weaponization of anger by one side against another.
Unresolved anger can be inherited intergenerationally.
Unhealed anger and outrage can be inherited from previous generations, creating a cycle of negativity. The soul is not meant to live in anger, as it offers a constrictive view that often leads to self-righteousness.
Original sin reflects inherited collective woundedness, not just individual transgression.
The concept of original sin can be understood not just as an individual inherited sin, but as an inherited collective woundedness. This perspective shifts the focus from pointing out individual sinners to recognizing our shared participation in a broken culture.
Addiction redefined as a disease, not a sin, mirrors prophetic direction towards compassion.
The shift in understanding addiction from sin to disease, as championed by AA, offers a prophetic direction toward recognizing universal woundedness. This reframing fosters compassion for ourselves and others, promoting solidarity rather than judgment.
Jesus' gospel emphasizes solidarity with all people, especially the marginalized.
Jesus' message is one of solidarity with sinners, exemplified by his association with them. This contrasts with a tendency to compartmentalize sin and separate oneself from perceived wrongdoers, which prevents experiencing the 'tears of things.'
The Salvific Nature of Tears and Compassion
Tears are salvific because they break down self-righteousness and reveal interconnectedness.
Tears break down the illusion that suffering is 'over there.' They reveal our own complicity in the suffering of others, like the high level of consumption in America fueling global Injustice. This realization can lead to profound sadness but is essential for genuine caring.
Weeping is essential for the soul and fosters solidarity and humility.
The prophets understood that the soul must weep to be truly alive. Weeping is a visible act of solidarity that breaks down the ego's tendency towards judgment and solidifies connection with others, placing us in the same 'puddle' of shared humanity.
Scripture, especially the prophets, invites a journey of spiritual maturity.
Engaging with scripture, particularly the prophets, is presented as a process of growing up. This journey progresses through stages of anger, grief, and eventually, love, mirroring how God communicates and leads us toward deeper understanding.
Recognizing our benefit from the world's sin leads to humility and compassion.
When we acknowledge that we have benefited from the sins of the world, such as by viewing others as inferior, it dismantles false righteousness and leads to humility. This perspective encourages compassion for others, recognizing that they are as 'fooled' as we are.
Carrying the burden of others fosters compassion and widens circles of solidarity.
The willingness to carry the burden of others, seeing them as equally flawed, cultivates compassion. This expands solidarity to include marginalized groups like the poor, mirroring Jesus's embodiment of solidarity.
The prophetic journey involves stages of bargaining, conviction, and deeper God experience.
The prophets' path includes phases like bargaining, conviction, epiphanies, deeper spiritual experiences, warnings, deconstruction, and reconstruction. This progression can seem daunting but is central to prophetic work.
Religion as a 'cult of innocence' hinders spiritual growth by avoiding sin and imperfection.
Many religions fall into a 'cult of innocence,' focusing on purity codes and avoiding the reality of sin. Jesus, however, challenged these purity codes, inviting solidarity with sinners and embracing imperfection as the path to grace.
True penance involves solidarity with the marginalized, not just external acts.
Living a life of penance, as exemplified by St. Francis, means living in solidarity with the marginalized and rebuilding community, rather than focusing on self-punishment or external rituals. It's about making a 'little church out of the big church.'
Find your place where compassion comes naturally to begin rebuilding.
The path forward involves identifying where compassion flows naturally, often emerging from places of past hatred. This place of natural union with God serves as the starting point for expanding our influence outward.
Weeping is the visible act of solidarity that counters judgment and control.
When we don't weep over or for things, we tend to judge and compartmentalize, placing ourselves on a higher rung. Weeping, however, is a physical expression of solidarity, acknowledging helplessness and fostering empathy that opposes judgmentalism and desire for control.
A heart of stone cannot recognize the empires it builds or worships.
The lack of weeping hardens the heart, leading to uncritical participation in building personal and collective empires, thus preventing recognition of our own complicity and the price of our consumption.
The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder
The wisdom pattern involves moving through order, disorder, and reorder.
Drawing from Walter Brueggemann, Richard Rohr outlines a 'wisdom pattern' or 'wisdom rhythm' of moving through order, disorder, and reorder (or construction, deconstruction, reconstruction). This is a foundational concept in spiritual growth.
Experience and tradition are the wisdom wheels, with experience driving the vehicle.
Rohr uses the metaphor of a tricycle: tradition and scripture are the back wheels, while personal experience is the front wheel that steers how we engage with the other two. This emphasizes the role of lived experience in spiritual interpretation.
Disorder is a necessary part of spiritual growth, often catalyzed by pain.
Pain, more than love, often serves as the catalyst for moving from order to disorder. This disruption is not to be feared but embraced as essential for spiritual health and growth, as modeled by the prophets.
The Hebrew Bible models a journey through order and disorder, accommodating faith crises.
The Hebrew Bible, compiled over a millennium, explicitly models a journey with periods of order and disorder, allowing for faith crises. It presents a 'counter-testimony' (e.g., Job, Ecclesiastes) that challenges simpler understandings of divine transactionalism.
Prophets act as crisis managers, disrupting order to guide towards reform.
Prophets serve as crisis managers who disrupt existing orders to address societal issues. They bring 'holy disorder,' a necessary shaking-up that allows for recognition of brokenness and eventual reordering based on justice and righteousness.
Scripture is multivocal, containing internal inconsistencies and contradictions.
Scripture is understood as a thoroughly human book, intended to be multivocal, with internal inconsistencies and contradictions reflecting diverse human experiences and perspectives. This means we must adapt the tradition through community and wise interpretation.
Reading the Bible as poetry or mythology reveals deeper, multi-layered meanings.
Approaching scripture as poetry or mythology, rather than purely literal historical accounts, opens up emotive and multi-layered interpretations. This perspective acknowledges the limits of literalism and embraces the imaginative resonance of the text.
Genre recognition is crucial for understanding the Bible's diverse texts.
Understanding the genre of biblical texts (e.g., law, poetry, narrative) is vital for accurate interpretation. Applying modern notions of law, for instance, can distort the original meanings found within their ancient contexts.
The Bible encourages questioning, adapting tradition, and community-based interpretation.
Rather than settling into certainty, scripture invites ongoing questioning and adaptation of tradition within a community. This dynamic interpretation ensures the text remains relevant and alive for contemporary audiences.
Inspiration means active participation in the ongoing conversation of faith.
Inspiration is not merely about a perfect, error-free text, but about scripture's capacity to inspire active participation in the ongoing conversation of faith. It invites us to adapt tradition wisely in community to address matters of Injustice.
The prophetic word's ultimate expression is love, mirroring Christ's journey.
The prophetic trajectory pushes towards justice and culminates in love. For Christians, this is embodied in Christ's path of humility, crucifixion, and resurrection—a renewing of all things in love.
Conclusion and Invitation
Embrace imperfection and heartbreak as pathways to deeper understanding.
Richard Rohr suggests the only perfection available is accepting our imperfection. Heartbreak over personal and global imperfections can be a meeting place for deeper connection and understanding.
The journey of 'The Tears of Things' encourages embracing grief and empathy.
The book invites listeners to connect with the 'inherent grief in everything' and the sadness connected to Injustice. This empathetic approach, expressed through tears, stands in opposition to control, judgment, and violence.
Empathy and tears foster a non-egocentric understanding of life.
Prophets and mystics recognize that all things have tears and deserve tears, understanding that grief and sadness are doorways to comprehending life in a non-egocentric way.
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