Interviewed by David Hardin

David Hardin: Richard, to many people I know, the Center for Contemplation and Action is almost an oxymoron. They view contemplation as a kind of avoidance of life or action.Richard Rohr: Yes, I think that is why we chose the title. Even though it is a cumbersome title, we knew these classic polarities had to be put together because they are too often separated. I think it produces schizophrenic Christianity if they are not put together. We put it in our title to hold ourselves to it.

Hardin: You are talking about the schizophrenia being contemplation on the one hand and social action on the other.

Rohr: That’s right.

Hardin: Why are they each necessary?

Rohr: I think they are un-whole without the other. I have often used the metaphor of the spring and the stream — contemplation perhaps being the spring and action being the stream. If you just stay with the spring and it doesn’t flow out, it becomes dead water after while. There is, of course, nothing to flow if there isn’t some action. They really necessitate one another. It is like breathing in and out. You can’t do one without the other.

Hardin: A wise friend of mine said that you can’t give what you don’t have. You get the skills and the strength from meditation that perhaps you can then use in the world. What kinds of problems does the Center address?

Rohr: We are probably somewhat unusual, at least in the American church, in terms of training lay people who are working with the disadvantaged, working with refugees, working with a battered women’s shelter. They come to us from all over the country and really the English-speaking world. They live with us for six weeks. In the morning, they work maybe at the homeless shelter, at the jail where I am the chaplain.

In the afternoons, we give them classes on contemplative prayer, Liberation Theology, scripture, spirituality. They have a spiritual director and they live in community while they are there. The community experience itself is sort of the matrix where all of this can happen.

Hardin: Who are these people?

Rohr: They are usually people in the middle of life. Most who apply to come are people who have already gotten in the fray and realize how hard it is. You can romantically idealize the poor, but when you are actually running the soup kitchen, you see the dark side of the ministry.

Often they are people who are losing heart or losing the vision, or who maybe haven’t learned how to pray yet. They come to us wanting to put those together.

Hardin: You mentioned that you work with the people in the jail. There was a horrendous riot in the New Mexico Prison not many years ago. What can we do about people in prisons? What is your prescription for a really healthy prison system?

Rohr: Our assumption is, of course, whatever this means in our minds, that they are bad people. I have been chaplain there for five years. To be brutally honest, the only completely communal thing I have seen is that most of them are poor.

Secondly, most of them did not have good parenting, were not believed in, were not loved. What I would primarily advise is some kind of prison system that really seeks to give these men and women back their humanity. Give them back their dignity, back themselves, back their soul as we were saying in this talk. Merely incarcerating them doesn’t do that.

Hardin: We almost take their humanity away in prison.

Rohr: I’m afraid we brutalize them and we really are not resolving the problem at all.

Hardin: I think we are afraid of being soft, or something like that.

Rohr: There is a bit of a punitive attitude in a lot of us who think that punishment is going to achieve holiness or goodness or reform.

Hardin: Thank you very much for being with us.

Rohr: You are welcome. My delight.
  

One of the things I’ve always struggled to do, or maybe I should say struggled to ‘be’ is myself, even today I still carry this legacy from a broken past.

The thing that I’ve always admired (grudgingly) is that some people can just be themselves ‘anywhere, anyplace, anytime’ with little or no thought whatsoever as to the consequences. In the back of my mind is the thought that who I am, and more importantly what I am will just not cut it. Some people in being themselves cause great offence, but at the same time they live in a great space, one that’s largely free of the insecurities, frailties, and neurosis that I may feel.

Parker Palmer describes most people as ‘shy souls’ only coming out when the coast is clear, when there is no sense of danger, or harm sadly most people never find this place.

Now I have a number of friends (a small number) who have understood this about me (intuitively) and its has created an environment, where I feel safe to bring out the real me, the one who is always hanging about in the shadows waiting for an invitation, this invite by the way is never verbal. Creating the right environment is no small thing, it’s not a place that most would even consider, it’s not for the brassy, the bold, the outspoken, it’s a place of gently embrace, one where I and you, are really and truly heard, where we are given unconditional space and unlimited time.

This is the picture that Jesus brings to my mind, time and time again through some of the beautiful, touching, intimate connections he had with people, think of the ‘women caught in the act’ when he had managed to ‘rid this space’ of those who had no idea, from those who had not the slightest understanding of any warmth, or connection, they are the tyrants of every era, look a little harder you will find them in your church, they create the walking wounded.

Lets continue with the story; moments after this space became a ‘sacred space’ the dust settled, the noisy throng had disappeared, he draws along side her, giving her plenty of space and plenty of time, words were not needed (a new concept !) looking into her eyes, making sure that she was fully present, making sure she was with him, if not he would have waited, he simple says; “ neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more’ this was a gently loving suggestion, not some command that was barked out at her, she was heard, and in being heard, she was also liberated. Make no mistake whatsoever, that this was conveyed through every fibre of his being, she understood this long before these words were spoken.

Jesus creates a place a ‘sacred space’ where you and I can be ourselves, not only does he make this possible, but he creates a space where we can for the very first time discover the real me, the real you, and for most of us, this is the greatest discovery of all, because in finding myself, I find that he has been there all along, just waiting and longing for me to come home.