Falling Upwards

Richard Rohr’s “Falling Upwards”, recently read, offers some interesting insights as to our relationship with God. His basic premise is to divide life into two halves, the first around discovering who we are, and many never get past that, and the second around developing our relationship with God. More fundamentally, he stresses that all God wants of us is that we are ourselves – “All we can give back and all God wants from any of us is to humbly and proudly return the product that we have been given—which is ourselves!” He describes the distinction between these two elements, saying, “There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong “container” or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold.” One of the things I find particularly helpful in what Rohr says is connected to his recognition that sin is an inevitable part of the package that is us. He points out that this is not something that bothered Jesus in terms of his encounters during his earthly life. Rather, the challenge is to discover the positive elements in what is otherwise damaging. “You cannot avoid sin or mistake anyway (Romans 5:12), but if you try too fervently, it often creates even worse problems. Jesus loves to tell stories like those of the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9–14) and the famous one about the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), in which one character does his life totally right and is, in fact, wrong; and the other who does it totally wrong ends up God’s beloved! Now deal with that!” He expands this by commenting further – “If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own.” And he adds -“A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.” But perhaps what chimes most strongly is Rohr’s reminder that “Like skaters, we move forward by actually moving from side to side.”