![]() God gets truly larger as we mature in our faith. When we magnify God, for example, and make God so large and almighty like a Santa Claus in the sky, we actually narrow our image of God. When we get caught up in the minutia and details we can truly become lost souls. Spiritual seeing comes when we widen the view, the “frame”, and see the larger picture. The parables, for instance, make little sense if you have a narrow view of God’s love as conditional.Īs with the puzzle metaphor, when we focus too closely on a piece, we narrow our view. It’s about black and white morality, which certainly doesn’t spring from an encounter with the Jesus in gospels who presents a lot of grey through parables and proverbs. ![]() Many sincere religious people are what Pope Francis calls “new gnostics”, who prize head-knowledge of religion or Jesus than heart-knowledge. The Catholic tradition has always been both-and. “When somebody has an answer for every question, it is a sign that they are not on the right road,” Pope Francis says. Is it human or divine? Is it three or is it one? Is it grace or is it free will?” “To be Catholic is to affirm both sides of a theological question. Habito who engages with both the Christian and Zen traditions, admits that he lives in the tension of trying to reconcile contradictions. Our Christian faith stands on contradictions-in life and in theological questions. But when I finally place the pieces into the entire face, I can see how each piece makes sense. Wait, is that their nose? When I look at the pieces on their own I have a silly Mr Potato Head image in my mind. The person’s eye seems too close to their mouth. We have a jigsaw puzzle of some family photos and there’s always a couple pieces that on their own don’t seem to make sense. ![]() To be a mystic means to hold this contemplative, big-picture stance, where we peer into the wholeness that God sees, the bigger picture where contradictions can make more sense. Do I forgive this friend? Do I trust again? What are the ethical implications of this choice or that? There are contentions we sometimes face in our Examen. When people on either side of any contentious issue cannot love one another, it means they don’t have the big message yet.” They can see that each side has a part of the truth. Rohr says, “ don’t think one side is totally right and the other side is totally wrong. We close up and our Christian identity becomes little more than a flag to wave. When we remain at either of those two levels and think that’s all there is, that that’s “truth”, then we become black and white narrow-minded moralists and excluders. And if we remain in the tribal “our story” and don’t acknowledge the even larger story beyond that, then our own group becomes individualistic (we see this in religion and politics). If we remain in my story and don’t see the larger context, then we’re in danger of remaining in the ego. Richard Rohr teaches about the “ Cosmic Egg“, a metaphor with layers of story: my story, our story, and the story. And our personal lived experience is its own part in an even larger story of our community, our world, and all creation. We can be a contemplative on the scale of a single day, seeing the parts of the whole during our Examen. To have a contemplative stance means holding as one the many facets of the larger story. The spiritual life is to see through God’s perspective, to widen our narrow gaze so we can see a bit more of the whole. Without that context, the piece would have little purpose on its own. Only God sees the entire picture. Now when we’re putting together a section of a puzzle, we don’t need to see the whole picture, but we do need to see the surrounding context for a single puzzle piece to make sense. But it also helps us see the context so the puzzle piece makes even more sense. This prayerful reflection can focus us in on a certain puzzle piece, naming it with specificity and nuance. This is how the Examen gives meaning to events that can at first seem insignificant. I like to think of the Examen like looking at the jigsaw puzzle of our lives (or our day), and examining each piece, placing it within the larger picture. The wisdom of the Examen is that it widens our gaze to see more of the whole-the whole of our lived experience, our context, our world.
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