"Contemplation gives power back to the “People.”

This may come as a shock to the corporate Church and its employed commissioned or ordained Clergy. 


If the religious institutions and its clergy taught both students and parishioners’ contemplation, where individuals can and do experience the mercy of God for themselves, the result would have been the people would no longer have to be dependent upon clergy.   Although this codependency on organized religious institutions was not engineered maliciously, it did create job security for paid accountable ministry in later years, at lest in the last 1000 years.    We all have a hard time doing things that essentially work ourselves out of a job or make ourselves unnecessary.  Sin management does hold the flock together, but soon we realize that there is little maturity, discernment or even love, in a flock that is glued together in this way.  The passive, passive-dependent, and passive-aggressive nature of the church is rather obvious to many of us who have worked on the inside, to quote Richard Rohr.

This may come as a shock to academia or commissioned clergy but there is nothing in Jesus’ teaching to suggest there should be different levels of discipleship in his vision.  In fact he shows us the complete opposite for we are all equally called to follow Jesus, but we have created our own caste system; where some people “got it” and took his teaching seriously, but somehow his non dualistic teaching or the Apostle Paul's teaching of double mindedness seems to have fallen through the cracks within the history of the Christian church.   The very term layperson implies someone who doesn’t know anything, how did that happen?  We were left with thinking in dualistic terms of the professionals and the amateurs, but we were all meant to be called into discipleship, to be professional.

Richard Rohr and others theologians have suggested that contemplative prayer {a form of meditation} could be the very thing that has the power to both democratize and mature Christianity.  Here is the most exciting thing about this spiritual practice:  It does not require a degree in education; it does not need a hierarchy of decision makers, {corporate church}; it does not argue about gender {however that is understood} issues in leadership or liturgy; nor does it demand licensed officials to serve the traditional sacraments {corporate church}.   This might be pretty scary for some but meditation/contemplative prayer does not need preachers and bishops; it does not have moralistic membership requirements.   Meditation and contemplation lives and thrives with those dedicated to pray who have every chance of becoming healers in their world, each according to his or her gift.  This seems to be the foundation for Jesus ministry and his teaching because he talked a lot more about praying and healing than anything else.  And it was always with those on the margins of life. 

Faithfulness to contemplative practice can achieve the radical inner renewal that the sacraments and formal initiation rites have had on many devoted followers since the beginning of the Christian church as we know it today.  Contemplation takes us deeper and addresses the root, the underlying place, where illusion and ego are generated.  It touches the unconscious, where most of our wounds and need for healing lie.  Richard say that with meditation or contemplation, I think we have every likelihood of producing actual elders for the next generation, and not just elderly people.

 Reference:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press: 2014), 55-57, 98.

You may not have 1hour to listen to this presentation at the moment but may I suggest that this pod cast is certainly worth your ear and gives food for thought.