The Emptying of Self

I’m currently reading a book, a type of which I have not read too many, mostly because I haven’t chosen to do so. The book is about meditation, contemplation and the emptying of self – not exactly topics of which I have a lot of knowledge or experience (as a competitive American).

The book is titled Simplicity, with the subtitle, The Freedom of Letting Go. It is written by Richard Rohr (pictured), a Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM.

If we want to understand the contextual Christianity which Christ taught and exemplified, Rohr suggests, we must find a way to totally and completely empty ourselves of culture, education, desires (self), theology, and, yes, even “the church,” before we can really begin to understand how to live the faith.

One of the best ways to do this, he offers, is to learn how to properly meditate and contemplate. Much of the book is given to several approaches that he has practiced in his lifetime. He offers the following, from his book:

“I believe that there are two necessary paths enabling us to move toward wisdom: a radical journey inward and a radical journey outward. For far too long we’ve confined people to a sort of security zone, a safe midpoint. We’ve called them neither to a radical path inward, in other words, to contemplation, nor to a radical journey outward, that is, to commitment on the social issues of our time.”

Additionally, our western world concepts convolute our analysis. He further observes:

“The practical definition of freedom that we have formed under capitalism is to have endless possibilities and options. But Jesus also said that we should expect no freedom from the world. The freedom it offers us is always a freedom that serves its own purposes. It is a tiny freedom. It is the ‘Pax Romana,’ not the ‘Pax Christi.’”

For me, and I would suppose for most Americans, this is a radical book. But more and more I want to know about the “radicalness” of the Gospel. It’s in this “radicalness”, I think, that we find the counter-cultural aspects of the Christian faith, about which we westerners know so little.