THE ROHR THAT IS HEARD AROUND THE GLOBE

I met Richard Rohr eleven years ago when he launched his book Falling Upward at a gathering in a 600-seat hall in the Boston Public Library.

I realized I was the first member of the audience there when I slipped into a well-lit, comfortable seat in the second row behind a solitary, middle-aged gentleman.

Realizing suddenly that I was alone with the guest speaker, I muttered something like, “I hope we’re we get a decent audience this evening. I loved your book.“

He beamed. “What did you like about it?”

Half an hour later we were still in deep discussion about his book when the librarian on duty interrupted: “Sorry, gentlemen,” we have to get started.”Rohr smiled and promised me he would make time after his talk to share more background with me on his Center for Action and Contemplation. 

He explained that in 1987, shortly after moving to Albuquerque and establishing his Center, he wrote a letter to some of its early supporters:

In this time, when our American culture is almost entirely dominant, we need to find time and space to "nurture the alternative consciousness." The tradition of saints and prophets tells us that this alternative consciousness will be solid and trustworthy only if it is grounded in contemplative union. Mere idealism, activism or liberalism is not sufficient for the task. It is only contemplatives who can live at the Center and move beyond their own center. Folks who are not committed to seeking an inner life and a serious search for union with God will not feel called to such a school.”

Three decades later, announcing his retirement, Rohr wrote: Thank you for your commitment to seeking the inner life and helping make CAC a “school for prophets” for the past 35 years. It is because of people like you, who have felt the urgency of our time and decided to respond, engage, and join with this movement, that any of this work has been possible.”

Now we learn that Father Richard is withdrawing from his leadership of the Center—partly because of ill-health— 

and and perhaps a veiled readiness to leave it in the capable hands of faculty members such as Brian McLaren, who aptly described the change this way:

“At every step of this transition process, Richard has said again and again that he doesn’t want CAC to become a monument to the past, but he wants it to be a continuing movement.

“That means with our existing and future staff and faculty, we need to keep the same momentum, vitality, and robustness of intellectual, spiritual, and theological work going. This is the greatest way we honor Richard’s beautiful legacy.”

Mc.Laren continues: “We believe that the work of nurturing contemplative consciousness in the world is more important now than ever. By making the Christian path of transformation more accessible to people and leaders worldwide, we believe that CAC can become a catalyzing force for change of consciousness within Christianity and each of our communities. 

“It is a humbling charge to accept, he adds, “yet together I know we will continue to build on the CAC’s founding purpose to bring forward the gifts of contemplative wisdom and practice in ways that can transform ourselves and our communities to co-create a world where everything—truly!— belongs.”

It didn’t take me long to discover that Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass, 2011) is one of many books on the market where you don’t have to share the writer’s theology or view of the transitions in human life to be prompted to reexamine your own life and move it forward (or upward!) in fresh, helpful ways.

What grabbed me even before that stolen library discussion, were observations from this compact 200-pager such as these:

 “Great love is always a discovery, a revelation, a wonderful surprise, a falling into ‘something’ much bigger and deeper that is literally beyond us and larger than us.

“We may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall [inspired by Thomas Merton].

And the president of the Fund for the Future of our Children, Avideh Shashaani, offered her tribute to Richard Rohr this way: “Through his unswerving example and expansive heart, he has reached out to people from all walks of life, and has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around our globe.

“His luminous spirit has comforted us in times of upheaval, guided us, and encouraged us to look within his many books and regular CAC columns to find the source of strength, love, and peace in our own hearts,” says Sashaani. 

“Fr. Richard has planted the seed of faith, trust, and hope in the hearts of those who’ve come to him to grow and be sustained in the garden of Divine guidance. 

In his 40 years in the ministry, Fr. Richard has written more than 20 books, focusing mainly on his Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which espouses among its principles, “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” 

In Falling Upward, a small, hardback 200-pager that is even easier to hold than an iPad, Rohr offers a new paradigm for understanding one of life’s most counterintuitive yet profound challenges—how our failings can be the foundation for our continuing spiritual growth.

“Far too many people just keep doing repair work, Rohr suggests, and never throw their nets into the deep ( John 21:6) to bring in the huge catch that awaits them.”

And , without hesitation, I leave the last word to Father Rohr himself:

“It seems that God [Has blessed] this ministry, and it is my honor [to have served] alongside it. As Jesus said, we are all merely servants, and we have only done what it is our duty to do (Luke 17:10).”