On a peaceful summer afternoon recently, the noise pollution really hit me. We had sunshine after what seemed like a month of rainy days. Then suddenly one neighbor began mowing his yard with a very noisy lawn mower. Another was in his backyard with the radio playing loudly. And another began to saw and pound boards in his backyard. I laughed and thought “oh for the rainy days of peace and quiet.”

Ubiquitous noise works insidiously. It not only raises our blood pressure but contributes to anxiety, stress, and nervousness. It closes our minds to contemplative experiences. But along with noise, hyperactive busyness characterizes much of our contemporary life. People today feel guilty if they are not rushing from place to place, working on projects at home, multitasking, and constantly connecting via cellphone, texting, and social media. If the power goes off, life becomes suddenly strange and disconnected.

A friend said we need a rediscovery of reflective contemplative moments. We need to control our noise pollution, clear our schedules for more free time, and reduce our cyber connectedness. The more receptive, contemplative, and inwardly quiet we become, the more open and attentive we become to the deeper vibrations in Reality. I would call that deeper contemplative awareness spirituality. I remember the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in his 1963 book Strength to Love: “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

Contemplative moments open us to an experience of the Sacred which we describe in several words: our experience of the Transcendent, the Ground of Being, and of course our experience of God.

This week, therefore, a reflection about God from a master of contemplative wisdom whom I greatly respect: Richard Rohr (born 1943) a Franciscan friar in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He posted this on his website a few years ago but it rings true today. I have now known Richard since the early 1970s and have occasionally collaborated with him. On July 1, 2022, Pope Francis met with him and expressed support for his work. Later that year, Richard announced he would step back from public ministry following a lymphoma diagnosis. On May 9, 2023, he announced that he was now officially on the Core Faculty Emeritus at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque.

Richard’s Reflection:

“It takes a long time for us to allow God to be who God really is. Our natural egocentricity wants to make God into who we want or need God to be. It is the role of the prophet to keep people free for God. But at the same time, it is the responsibility of the prophet to keep God free for people. This is also the role of good theology, and why we still need good theology even though it sometimes gets heady. If God is always mystery, then God is always on some level the unfamiliar, beyond what we are used to, beyond our comfort zone, beyond what we can explain or understand….

“The First Commandment says that we are not supposed to make any images of God or to worship them. At first glance, we may think this deals only with handmade likenesses of God. But it mostly refers to images of God that we hold in our heads. God created human beings in God’s own image, and we have returned the compliment, so to speak creating God in our image. In the end we produced what was typically a tribal God. In America, God looks like Uncle Sam or Santa Claus, or in any case a white Anglo-Saxon male, even though it says in Genesis 1:27 that “God created humankind in God’s own image; male and female God created them.” That clearly says that God cannot be strictly or merely masculine.

“Normally we find it very difficult to let God be a God who is greater than our culture, our immediate needs, and our projections. The human ego wants to keep things firmly in its grasp; and so, we have created a God who fits into our small systems and our understanding of God.

“Thus, we have required a God who likes to play war just as much as we do, and a domineering God because we like to dominate.

“We have almost completely forgotten and ignored what Jesus revealed about the nature of the God he knew. If Jesus is the ‘image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15) then God is nothing like we expected. Jesus is in no sense a potentate or a patriarch, but the very opposite, one whom John the Baptist calls ‘a lamb of a God.’ (John 1:29).”

•  Jack

Dr. John Alonzo Dick – Historical Theologian