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Saturday, October 1, 2022 Feast Day of Thérèse of Lisieux

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Thirty-Nine Summary and Practice

A Spirituality of Imperfection

September 25–September 30, 2022

Sunday
Any Christian “perfection” is, in fact, our ability to include, forgive, and accept our imperfection. As I’ve often said, we grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central lesson of how spiritual growth happens, yet nothing in us wants to believe it. —Richard Rohr

Monday
Many religious people think that it’s all a merit badge system—all achievement, accomplishment, performance, and perfection. I’m convinced that Jesus’ good news is that God’s choice is always for the excluded one. —Richard Rohr

Tuesday
Everybody’s trying to get higher, trying to get up, up, up. While Jesus, surprise of surprises, is going down. The experience of powerlessness is where we all must begin. —Richard Rohr

Wednesday
We can try, at great personal sacrifice, to be perfectly righteous, a perfect friend, perfectly responsive, perfectly available, perfectly forgiving. But at the heart of our efforts must lie the knowledge that, by ourselves, we can do, heal, or correct nothing. The point is not to be perfect, but to “perfectly” leave Christ to do, heal, and correct in us what he wills. —Heather King

Thursday
It is in the process of embracing our imperfections that we find our truest gifts: courage, compassion, and connection. —Brené Brown

Friday
The little way is the spirituality of imperfection; we come to God not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. —Richard Rohr

Week Thirty-Nine Practice

Practicing the Presence of God

Lay brother Nicolas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence (1611–1691), lived in a Carmelite monastery outside of Paris in the seventeenth century. He is known to the world for his practical recommendations to pray in little moments throughout the day, which he called “Practice of the Presence.” As Carmen Acevedo Butcher tells in her new translation, Brother Lawrence developed an ongoing awareness of God’s love during decades of work—and prayer—in the monastery kitchen. He disliked the work, but “got used to doing everything” there “for the love of God.” [1] Here is how he describes this practice:

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

[1] Carmen Acevedo Butcher, introduction to Practice of the Presence, by Nicolas Herman, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2022), 9.

[2]Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence, 53–54.

Image credit: Arthur Allen, Daily Meditations 9 (detail), 2022, photograph, France, used with permission. Katrina Lillian Sorrentino, Entelechy 8 (detail), 2022, photograph, Spain, used with permission. Belinda Rain, Frost (detail), 1972, California, public domain. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: We pause to appreciate the seemingly insignificant and experience the awe of the simple and unexpected.

Explore Further. . .

Read about the “Christian Zen” of Brother Lawrence.

Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.

Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Prayer For Our Community

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough, because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Listen to Father Richard pray this prayer aloud.

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