http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/may_jun_09_rohr

My friend David Burnight send to me a hard copy of an essay by Richard Rohr which was published in the May/June issue of Tikkun. You can find the essay on the internet at the address above. I urge you to read it. I don’t usually share a private letter which I’ve sent to a friend, but this time it is my journal writing for today; so I’m including it here. I've sent the letter to David by "snail mail." I'm in the awkward position of posting the letter here before it is actually delivered to him by the Postal Service. Because he will recognize how very much I appreciate his sending the essay to me, I know he will forgive me for this breach of etiquette.
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David,

Thanks very much for the essay from the May/June 2009 Tikkun. I read it tonight just after I had made myself blue and discouraged by sitting and watching the four Republicans beat up on each other in an effrort to become their party’s candidate for the presidency. Except for Ron Paul, their “reasoning,” if you can call it that, is informed by their determination to make America bigger and stronger with more of everything than any other country in the world... and, of course, throwing Barack Obama out of the White House... I like Richard Rohr’s point of view and his thesis. I especially like his insistence that we have developed a “Cadillac faith,” that diverges radically from the clear, straight-forward Gospel that Jesus delivered to the world... a gospel which clearly warns that greed hurts people, that healing the world is not done by making mountains of everything that can be changed into money.

I like the way Rohr shines a light on our arrogance and superficiality masquerading as success. Although he doesn’t say is specifically, I think Rohr is saying we confuse self-sufficiency with self-actualization... or if we know the difference, we choose self-sufficiency. I personally have too much rather than too little of almost everything... and like most of my friends, I don’t make much effort to share what I have.

I also like his emphasis on the loss of joy in our culture, especially what he calls “inherent joy” that comes to individuals who somehow manage to find and preserve in themselves a simple presence---presence to ourselves, to others, to the moment.

He is bold to say that our society, our culture, takes us back to a time of the divine right of kings; and we insist that it is somehow guaranteed by “democracy” and “free markets” and “capitalism.” When we say we don’t want our grandchildren to lack the benefits of the America “that made us great,” we are actually putting our grandchildren in grave risk of becoming hollow people.

I especially like and join Rohr’s hope for smallness? I especially like his last paragraph: “I trust, I believe, I hope, and I even know that the new Imaginers are out there! This crisis of prosperity is an opportunity to again love the small, the local, the human scale, the human over the corporate, the soulful over the successful, and the common good over private advantage. This alone will offer us a future worthy of spiritual and wise human Beings.”

Thank you, David, for sharing this essay with me. I’ll pass it on.

Jerral