quiet word or smile, a meal shared with someone we care for, where we are
suddenly enlivened by a force larger than the two of us.
It is so important to taste, touch, and trust such moments. Words and
complex rituals almost get in the way at this point. All you can really do is
return such Presence with your own presence. Nothing to believe here at all.
Just learn to trust and draw forth your own deepest experience, and you will
know the Christ all day every day—before and after you ever go to any kind of
religious service. Church, temple, and mosque will start to make sense on whole
new levels—and at the same time, church, temple, and mosque will become
totally boring and unnecessary. I promise you both will be true, because you are
already fully accepted and fully accepting.
*1 Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Harvard
Theological Review 56, no. 3 (1963), 199–215. This scholarly work is for me key to
understanding how the last five hundred years largely misunderstood and individualized
Paul’s message. N. T. Wright will take the point even further in his marvelous and
monumental study of Paul.
*2 Rohr, The Naked Now, and Just This (cac.org, 2017), a book of brief spiritual prompts and
practices. Both develop this key idea.
*3 Rohr, The Divine Dance.
*4 Augustine, The Retractions, trans. M. Inez Bogan, R.S.M., The fathers of the Church
(Baltimore: Catholic University of America Press, 1968), 52.
*5 Rohr, The Naked Now, ch. 16.