Dear Community of Saint Joseph’s;

Every morning as I get ready for my day, I listen to National Public Radio.  The other morning they broadcast a segment entitled, “This I Believe.”  On this particular episode they were interviewing Father Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Father Rohr is a dazzling and inspirational preacher who always speaks from the very edge of current thought regarding theology and justice.  I loved what Rohr had to say about living “comfortably with ambiguity.”  I agree with Father Rohr when he states that today people are afraid of mystery and want everything explained and categorized.  Rather, to be a believer, a seeker, a person who loves and forgives is to enter into the unknown.  To be at peace with the mystery of God is on some level to really know and live as a person of faith.  Here is the entire piece reproduced for you from the NPR website.  I hope you enjoy it and if you do - consider reading some of Rohr’s writings or listening to his inspirational recordings. 

May God Bless you and those you love on this Feast of the Holy Family.

Father Matt Pennington

Pastor

I believe in mystery and multiplicity. To religious believers this may sound almost pagan. But I don't think so. My very belief and experience of a loving and endlessly creative God has led me to trust in both. I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world. This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything. Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity. "Hints and guesses," as T.S. Eliot would say. I often spend the season of Lent in a hermitage, where I live alone for the whole 40 days. The more I am alone with the Alone, the more I surrender to ambivalence, to happy contradictions and seeming inconsistencies in myself and almost everything else, including God. Paradoxes don't scare me anymore. When I was young, I couldn't tolerate such ambiguity. My education had trained me to have a lust for answers and explanations. Now, at age 63, it's all quite different. I no longer believe this is a quid pro quo universe -- I've counseled too many prisoners, worked with too many failed marriages, faced my own dilemmas too many times and been loved gratuitously after too many failures. Whenever I think there's a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say "only" or "always," someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like "principles of uncertainty" and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and  clarity, while thinking that we are people of "faith"! How strange that the very word "faith" has come to mean its exact opposite. People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It's the people who don't know who usually pretend that they do. People who've had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don't know. They are  utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind. It is a litmus test for authentic God experience, and is -- quite sadly -- absent from much of our religious conversation today. My belief and comfort is in the depths of Mystery, which should be the very task of religion. Richard Rohr –NPR Morning Edition, December 18, 2006