The Interfaith Store

02/12/2025

“The truth is never available to those whose interest is in anything but” - Me

11/25/2024

Ready for Christmas.

05/12/2024

04/10/2024

Why Your Spiritual Practices are Important to Practice?

From cac.org, here's some insight into that question from Fr. R. Rohr in his daily devotional:

"Practice is an essential reset button that we must push many times before we can experience any genuine newness. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we are practicing all the time. When we operate by our habituated patterns, we strengthen certain neural pathways, which makes us, as the saying goes, “set in our ways.” But when we stop using old neural grooves, these pathways actually die off! Practice can literally create new responses and allow rigid ones to show themselves.

"It’s strange that we’ve come to understand the importance of practice in sports, in most therapies, in any successful business, and in creative endeavors, but for some reason most of us do not see the need for it in the world of spirituality. Yet it’s probably more important there than in any other area. “New wine demands fresh skins or otherwise we lose both the wine and the container,” as Jesus said (see Mark 2:22; Luke 5:37–38). Practices, more than anything else, create a new container for us, one that will protect the new wine we wish to take in" - Fr. R. Rohr

04/05/2024

What do you see?

It’s all in the seeing - and the seeing occurs within you. In other words, you see in the world what you either see, or refuse to see, in yourself.

Which is why it is true: Change the way you see the world and you will see the world change.

We make a mistake if we think what’s potentially good or evil is always outside us. The possibility for either exists in all of us.

So, for me it is true, what I see in the world is essentially what I see, or refuse to see, is also in me.

Understand this, and live by it, and you’ll discover that’s when the miracle of living in this life begins.

04/05/2024

Father Richard describes how it’s possible to experience resurrection before we die:

"We don’t need to wait for death to experience resurrection. We can begin resurrection today by living connected to God. Resurrection happens every time we love someone even though they were not very loving to us. At that moment we have been brought to new life. Every time we decide to trust and begin again, even after repeated failures, at that moment we’ve been resurrected. Every time we refuse to become negative, cynical, hopeless, we have experienced the Risen Christ. We don’t have to wait for it later. Resurrection is always possible now.

"The resurrection is not Jesus’ private miracle; it’s the new shape of reality. It’s the new shape of the world. It’s filled with grace. It’s filled with possibility. It’s filled with newness.

"The resurrection is not a miracle story to prove the divinity of Christ, something that makes him the winner. It’s a storyline that allows us all to be winners. ALL! No exceptions! There’s no eternal death for anybody: ALL are invited to draw upon this infinite Source, this infinite Mystery, this infinite Love, this infinite Possibility. Spiritually speaking, we live in a world of abundance, of infinity. But most of us walk around as if it were not true, operating in a world of scarcity where there’s never enough. There’s not enough for me, there’s not enough for you, there’s not enough for everybody.

"And so we hoard it—Spirit, Love, Life—to ourselves. We hoard grace, we hoard mercy. We don’t allow ourselves to be conduits through which it pours into the world. Truly, the only way we can hold onto grace, mercy, love, joy—any spiritual gift—is to give them away consciously and intentionally. Once we stop acting as a conduit, we lose them ourselves. That’s why there are so many sad, bitter, and angry people. Disconnected from God, we choose death. We ourselves contribute to negativity, cynicism, anger, and even to the oppression of other races and religions. In that state, it’s always other people who are wrong."

04/01/2024

Death and life are two sides of the same coin; we cannot have one without the other. Each time we choose to surrender, each time we trust the dying, our faith is led to a deeper level, and we discover a Larger Self underneath. We decide not to push to the front of the line, and something much better happens in the back of the line. We let go of narcissistic anger, and we find that we start feeling much happier. We surrender our need to control our partner, and finally the relationship blossoms. Yet each time it is a choice—and each time it is a kind of dying. It seems we only know what life is when we know what death is.

"The mystics and great saints were those who had learned to trust and allow this pattern, and often said in effect, 'What did I ever lose by dying?' Or try Paul’s famous one-liner: 'For me to live is Christ and to die is gain' (Philippians 1:21). Now even scientific studies reveal the same universal pattern. Things change and grow by dying to their present state, but each time it is a risk. We always wonder, 'Will it work this time?'

"So many academic disciplines are coming together, each in its own way, to say there’s a constant movement of loss and renewal at work in this world at every level. It seems to be the pattern of all growth and evolution. To be alive means to surrender to this inevitable flow.

"It’s the same pattern in every atom, every human relationship, and in every galaxy. Indigenous peoples, Hindu gurus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus all saw it clearly in human history and named it as a kind of 'necessary dying.'

"If this pattern is true, it has been true all the time and everywhere. Such seeing did not just start two thousand years ago. All of us have to learn to let go of something smaller so something bigger can happen. But that’s not a religion—it’s highly visible truth. It is the Way Reality Works" - Fr. R. Rohr

Richard Rohr identifies death and resurrection as the universal pattern of Reality:  Christianity—as well as Buddhism, other religions, and

04/01/2024

Christianity—as well as Buddhism, other religions, and nature-based systems—suggests that the pattern of transformation, the pattern that connects, the life that Reality offers us is not death avoided, but always death transformed. In other words, the only trustworthy pattern of spiritual transformation is death and resurrection. Christians learn to submit to trials because Jesus told us that we must “carry the cross” with him (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 14:27). Buddhists do it because the Buddha very directly said that “life is suffering.” Buddhism teaches us how to skillfully discern the source of suffering, detach from our expectations and resentments, and let go of illusion.

Death and life are two sides of the same coin; we cannot have one without the other. Each time we choose to surrender, each time we trust the dying, our faith is led to a deeper level, and we discover a Larger Self underneath. We decide not to push to the front of the line, and something much better happens in the back of the line. We let go of narcissistic anger, and we find that we start feeling much happier. We surrender our need to control our partner, and finally the relationship blossoms. Yet each time it is a choice—and each time it is a kind of dying. It seems we only know what life is when we know what death is.

The mystics and great saints were those who had learned to trust and allow this pattern, and often said in effect, “What did I ever lose by dying?” Or try Paul’s famous one-liner: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Now even scientific studies reveal the same universal pattern. Things change and grow by dying to their present state, but each time it is a risk. We always wonder, “Will it work this time?” So many academic disciplines are coming together, each in its own way, to say there’s a constant movement of loss and renewal at work in this world at every level. It seems to be the pattern of all growth and evolution. To be alive means to surrender to this inevitable flow. It’s the same pattern in every atom, every human relationship, and in every galaxy. Indigenous peoples, Hindu gurus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus all saw it clearly in human history and named it as a kind of “necessary dying.”

If this pattern is true, it has been true all the time and everywhere. Such seeing did not just start two thousand years ago. All of us have to learn to let go of something smaller so something bigger can happen. But that’s not a religion—it’s highly visible truth. It is the Way Reality Works. (This was written by one of my spiritual mentors, Fr. R. Rohr. To reference this post, visit the following site:

Richard Rohr identifies death and resurrection as the universal pattern of Reality:  Christianity—as well as Buddhism, other religions, and

12/10/2023

What is all this talk I hear in some Christian circles about the "Second Coming of Jesus," the Battle of Armageddon, the Rapture, Judgment, and the End of the World?

What is this thought and feeling among many Christians that the world is spinning out of control (which, admittedly, it feels at times it is), that what's happening in Israel and Palestine is all some kind of prophecy fulfillment, and that the return of Christ and the end of the world is that which we should look for to - honestly, escape the mess our faith has failed to change?

I love the perspective of Fr. Richard Rohr who in his morning devotional from the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM, who wrote the following: (Check it out...)
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/universal-restoration-2023-12-10/

09/30/2023

“Great Mystery unscrews the tight lids of the jars of certainty that you hold, too tightly, too fiercely. You realize, sometimes even trembling, that something greater than yourself is meeting you” - Theologian Randy Woodley

You can that again.

And again.

04/11/2023

Louisville, let us pray.