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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Twenty-four

Inner and Outer Freedom

Emancipation
Wednesday, June 17, 2020

For the kinds of freedom and liberation that are needed today, I am going to use the word “emancipation.” Instead of focusing on the mere personal freedoms enjoyed by individual people, emancipation directs our attention to a systemic level of freedom. With the exception of those who are fully emancipated (which are very few indeed), we each live inside of our own smaller security systems of culture, era, political opinion, and even some quiet, subtle agreements of which we may not even be aware.

In the United States, we rightly revel in the fact that we enjoy certain rights and freedoms from restraints (free markets, free speech, the freedom to be secure and to defend ourselves). However, we pay little attention to the fact that these liberties can ultimately only offer us as much freedom as we ourselves have earned from the inside. If we haven’t achieved the inner freedom to love, we are totally dependent on the outer systems which, paradoxically, can never fully guarantee or deliver the very freedoms they promise. Our inability to recognize this has made our so-called freedoms very selective, class-based, often dishonest, and open to bias.

For example, are we really free to imagine that there could be better alternatives to our free-market system? We are likely to be called dangerous or un-American if we dare broach the topic. We believe in free speech, but we know better than to claim that money actually controls our elections, rather than “one person, one vote.” Does our freedom to protect ourselves with gun rights and limitless military spending give us the freedom to use the vast majority of the economic resources of our country for our protection? Even if it means not providing food, healthcare, or education for the same people we say we are securing?

When we place all of our identity in our one country, security system, religion, or ethnic group, we are unable to imagine another way of thinking. Only citizenship in a much larger “Realm of God” can emancipate us from the confinement of certain well-hidden, yet agreed-upon, boxes we have labeled “Freedom.” In fact, because these are foundational and necessary cultural agreements, we do not even recognize them as boxes.

To be fair, such boxes are good, helpful, and even necessary sometimes! These silent agreements allow cultures to function and people to work together. But my job, and the job of Christian wisdom, is to tell you that “We are fellow citizens with the saints and part of God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19), and thus “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). We have been called to live in the biggest box of all, while still working and living practically inside of the smaller boxes of society. That is a necessarily creative and difficult tension, yet it is really the only way we can enjoy all levels of freedom. “In the world, but not of the world” was the historic phrase commonly used by many Christians, whereas today most of us tend to be in the system, of the system, and for the system—without even realizing it!

So, let’s use the word emancipation to describe a deeper, bigger, and scarier level of freedom: inner, outer, personal, economic, structural, and spiritual. Surely this is the task of our entire lifetime.

Gateway to Action & Contemplation:
What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?

Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.

Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer.

Story from Our Community:
I work in India and during this . . . time we have seen about 40 million [people] become very poor over night as India went into a complete “lockdown.” Our teams have been giving out food all over the country. Reading your daily devotions of God’s love and care for the poor has been so encouraging. —Elisabeth C.

Share your own story with us.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “Emancipation,” Oneing, vol. 3, no. 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2015), 11–12.

Image credit: Sun in an Empty Room (detail), Edward Hopper, 1963, private collection.

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Action & Contemplation

2020 Daily Meditations Theme

What does God ask of us? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. —Micah 6:8

Franciscan Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation. If we pray but don’t act justly, our faith won’t bear fruit. And without contemplation, activists burn out and even well-intended actions can cause more harm than good. In today’s religious, environmental, and political climate our compassionate engagement is urgent and vital.

In this year’s Daily Meditations, Father Richard helps us learn the dance of action and contemplation. Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Click the video to learn more about the theme and to find reflections you may have missed.

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Inspiration for this week's banner image: Only when we are able to “let go” of everything within us, all desire to see, to know, to taste and to experience the presence of God, do we truly become able to experience that presence with the overwhelming conviction and reality that revolutionize our entire inner life. —Thomas Merton