The Divine Dance

by Richard Rohr

  My prayer understanding of Jesus is God alongside us, the accompanying God who walks with us, especially through the mystery of death and resurrection, of letting go and receiving. Theologians name this pattern the Paschal Mystery; it’s the best direct and concise summary of all Jesus’ teaching and experience.

  The divine pattern revealed in the Trinity is loss and renewal, self-emptying and living on an expanded level, surrender and receptivity, “death and resurrection,” darkness and light.

  Life has no real opposite; death is merely a transitioning, which takes trust every time we walk through it.

  I can probably say that Jesus is often roundly rejected as a serious model because few people want to believe in this pattern, and yet it is the big and redemptive pattern of everything. (I try to present this concept to modern and postmodern audiences in my book Falling Upward.)

  By and large, what human beings want is resurrection without death, answers without doubt, light without darkness, the conclusion without the process.

  Maybe you could say we don’t like Jesus when we don’t like reality. We deny chit, consciousness, and we escape into a flight of fantasy, banality, and unreality. Mechanical thinking takes over, and our lives run on autopilot—a spin cycle of passing pleasure and purposeless pain.

  The Dynamism Within and Between: Holy Spirit

  And finally: God within us, already promised by the Hebrew prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah, takes on an indwelling character. The unnamable I Am becomes writ large on our hearts, revealing the “down and in” divine characteristic present since the beginning of time. Let’s call the Holy Spirit Implanted Hope.

  When God as Holy Spirit is missing, I would put it this way: there’s no inner momentum. There’s no élan vital. There’s no inner corrective, no inner aliveness that keeps people from dying from their wounds.

  When the Spirit is alive in people, they wake up from their mechanical thinking and enter the realm of co-creative power. As in Ezekiel’s vision, the water flows from ankles to knees to waist to neck as the New Earth is hydrated.216 Like Pinocchio, we move from wooden to real. We transform from hurt people hurting other people to wounded healers healing others. Not just individually, but history itself keeps moving forward in this mighty move of Spirit unleashed.

  It was said in the past that we lived in the age of the Father, and then the age of the Son; according to Joachim of Fiore in the twelfth century, we Franciscans were supposed to inaugurate the age of the Spirit. I don’t think that we did, but why—from this medieval word to the latest prophecies of Great Awakenings and revival—is there this frequent hope that the age of the Spirit is impending?

  Perhaps what we most need is a shift in perspective, to fully enter into what’s already happening. I believe it has entirely been the Age of the Spirit up till now—history doesn’t stop. Creation just keeps unfolding;217 the evolution of planets, stars, species, and human consciousness has never stopped since the very beginning, but our hierarchical, masculine-without-feminine, and thus static notion of God did not allow us to see it! We now know for certain that the universe is still expanding outward.

  The Indwelling Spirit is this constant ability of humanity to keep going, to keep recovering from its wounds, to keep hoping and trying again. I think one thing we love so much about young children is their indomitable hope, curiosity, and desire to grow. They fall down, and soon they’re all grins again. Another generation is going to try again to live life to the fullest. But too often, by the time they’re my age they don’t smile so much at all, and we ask, “What happened between six and sixty?” It has always in some form been a loss of Spirit, because if the Holy Spirit is alive within you, you will always keep smiling, despite every setback. This is the sheer joy of ananda.

  TDD—Trinity Deficit Disorder

  The third facet in our exploration of “Why the Trinity? Why Now?” is a renewed understanding of Jesus and “the Christ,” as we reverse the historical effects of having essentially extracted Jesus from the Trinity in our concept of God. Let’s look at some of these historical causes.

  Unitarianism, a small outlying movement in Poland and Transylvania in the sixteenth century, really began to pick up steam in eighteenth-century England and America in the wake of Enlightenment rationalism. Adhering strictly to the Deism becoming fashionable at the time among educated elites, Unitarianism promised a move away from fractious and superstitious religion into seeing God as a remote First Cause, Jesus as just a fine moral teacher, and the church solely as a societal good in the world. Mostly, as their very name implies, they rejected the Trinity as outdated and incomprehensible.

  On the flipside, a number of more conservative movements and denominations have surfaced over the years rejecting the Trinity, such as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists, and Oneness Pentecostals. The beliefs of these movements differ wildly from each other in almost all respects, but they’re united in their rejection of the Trinity along the grounds of a literalistic, proof-texting approach to biblical interpretation, pointing out (as we’ve already covered) that the term Trinity doesn’t appear in the pages of Scripture as such.

  Well-meaning attempts by both liberals and conservatives in theology and spirituality have borne fruit worth considering, no doubt; but overall these approaches leave so many of us hungry, and we’re not always quite sure why.

  The Trinitarian unfolding of God’s dynamic action satisfies us at a core level, and we’re currently suffering from a Trinity Deficit Disorder. Here’s why I think this is true…

  Absentee Father

  When God-as-Father is missing or is seen largely as threatening and punitive, there is a foundational scariness and insecurity to our whole human journey—fear and competition dominates more than love. It’s not a safe universe. It’s not a benevolent universe. There’s a terrorist god behind every rock, and I’ve got to protect my life because no one else will. I am not inherently participating, nor do I intrinsically belong. Life is framed in a win/lose paradigm, which we then use Jesus to resolve—in a superhuman kind of way, not a partnering kind of way. Please give this some honest thought and consideration.

  If God is not for you, then it’s all on you. Like an orphaned child, or a child with an abusive father, you grow up bereft and even bitter if there is no solid ground. You can see why so many people are so paranoid and obsessive today, and so preoccupied with weapons and security systems of every form and shape. Why their eyes tear up when they find their ancestors on Ancestry.com. When there’s no underlying okay-ness to the world or to your own life, you’ll believe anything and do anything to feel dignity and meaning. There’s a deep alienation when you don’t know the Father. There’s no sense that reality is safe, personal, and strongly on your side, a sense that those of us with good human fathers took for granted.

  In a fatherless society, you’ve got to save yourself, which a lot of Christians are attempting to do by all kinds of overcompensating “jihads” against the world and all manner of perceived threats. When there is no strong protection in your life, you have to be macho and materialistic, basically a control freak. There’s no time whatsoever to smell the roses.

  I believe that the immense cynicism and overwhelming fear that we see in the postmodern West could rightly be called a non-knowing of the Father. And when I say knowing, I’m using the term as we have in these pages—an experiential knowing. The biblical word for knowing God is often what we would call “carnal knowledge.” Honestly, it’s the knowledge of two naked bodies, intimate knowledge one for the other. This is almost shocking to poorly-trained church people. God-knowledge is not abstract knowing, which Western people prefer. Perhaps this is saying that true knowing is deeply loving! Yes!

  God refuses to be known except through trustful, loving relationship. You cannot know God with your mind alone. And that’s why all teachers of prayer and contemplation are teaching you to let
go of your inadequate mind so you can go to that deeper, ubiquitous consciousness that we call the mind of Christ. It’s really God in you knowing God, which is what real prayer journeys finally teach you.

  Son: Have You Seen Me?

  Now when God as Logos, meaning, or logic (not logic in the rational sense, but logic as in the patterns of reality) is missing, there is no meaningful direction or purpose for our lives. We each have to start at zero. We have to figure it all out on our own, and how could we know how to connect the overwhelming plethora of dots? What matters and what doesn’t?

  The sad thing for me as a Christian is that we who are supposed to know this pattern seem, for the most part, as ignorant about it as everyone else. We do not know, believe, or trust that reality has a Paschal (Passover) pattern.

  To put it plainly, change, death, and transformation are part of the deal!

  Resurrection and renewal are the final goal and result.

  The Paschal pattern is always loss and renewal. There is no renewal without loss. There is no new birth without death, and that’s my critique of much of the born-again language of some evangelicals, which appears to be sharply on the wane with the Millennial generation even as it thrived among Boomers of my generation. The once-mighty movement that popularized this language loves to talk about new birth, but it doesn’t talk honestly about death. They largely end up reflecting the culture wars of America instead of revealing any new or real alternative. Until there’s a very real death to the old self of security, status, power, money, guns, and war, any talk of a rebirth or new self has become laughable to most of the world.

  The Relentless Drive of the Spirit

  History keeps moving forward with ever-new creativity. Admittedly, this movement is accompanied by equal and opposite push back. Look at what’s happened just in the last century! For all of the horrible wars, injustice, and sin, both personal and systemic, the immense advances in consciousness, science, technology, and awareness are astounding. Most white folks didn’t even know racism, sexism, or persecution of LGBTQ people was a problem in the 1960s, and in some places still don’t. Today at least, many of us cannot go backward, yet this was “done unto us” by a Larger Wind. We did not do it by ourselves.

  And where do these advances come from? I believe they emerge from the Holy Spirit, who never gives up on this creation and our humanity.218 I don’t think you can understand Scripture in any honest way unless you know that its primary arc is a salvation of history and creation itself, and today’s individualism is regressive. All the covenants are with the people collectively—the “house” and the future. Individuals like Abraham, Noah, and David are only the instruments. The individuals are caught up in the salvific sweep of history, almost in spite of themselves, as YHWH shows mercy “to Israel and their descendants forever.”219 At this point, not to see this in the text is culpable ignorance.

  I believe there is little consciousness of the Father in our postmodern milieu. There’s not much underlying okay-ness to the felt-sense of the world right now.

  There’s little belief in the Son, either; little trust in the Paschal mystery.

  It is the Spirit in history that seems to be driving us forward, not giving up on us—God within and in the spaces between. I’ve been grasping at metaphors to help us. The Spirit is like a homing device put inside of you, and all creation, too. For all of our stupidity and mistakes, there’s in everything this deep, internal dignity, convinced of its own value. This divine indwelling keeps insisting, “I am what I am seeking!” This is surely what Jesus means when he says that all true prayers are already assured of their answer.220

  It’s God in you that loves God.

  It’s God through you that recognizes God.

  It’s God for you that assures you it is all finally and forever okay.

  Now you’re living inside the Trinitarian flow.

  You are already home free!

  Inside-Out Prayer

  As conventionally understood, prayer has become a one-way attempt to influence this Other whom we call God. If we do it right, the folklore goes, this will compel God to listen to us. I always feel sorry for poor God, who is getting all these contrary messages from contrary people, all of whom are groveling and faith-ing!

  Whom does God listen to? When God’s getting thousands of prayers on the outcome of the Super Bowl, does another game go on in the heavenlies, with God having the angels tally up the prayers on each side to determine the outcome?

  As long as we keep the power in our own pocket, the whole thing falls apart. It basically becomes silliness. But in a Trinitarian understanding of reality, prayer is always entering into mutuality, a kind of relatedness in a loving, trusting way.

  I don’t know what to pray, or really even how.

  Yet prayer is happening in me and through me. When I want to pray, I ask, “What is God desiring in me now?” If the response that arises doesn’t display some of the fruits of the Holy Spirit as Paul lists them—“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness [“faithfulness” niv, nkjv], gentleness, and self-control”—I doubt if that’s the prayer of the Spirit.

  But if this deep flow inside of me reveals a desire for healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation, maybe not always in the form I understand or even want, I can say with full authority, “Go with this flow and make this your prayer.”

  But remember: It is first of all God’s prayer, and it’s only secondarily yours. That’s why the great Christian prayers are always prayed to the Father; all liturgy is addressed to the Father.

  Why? Because we are in the Spirit. We are standing in the authority that this homing device is operating within us, and we always offer our prayers through the Christ.

  Why did these early luminaries in the faith use this preposition, through? Because you are standing there in persona Christi, as the body of Christ with the full authority of Christ. It is not just “your” prayer. Again, that’s why we don’t pray to Christ; none of the great prayers of the liturgical churches are addressed to Christ. Have you ever noticed this? Check it out; it’s shocking, really.

  Why are the great written prayers all oriented this way? Why not pray to Father, Son, and Spirit?

  Because this upsets the symmetry.

  You are “Christ”: You’re standing there as Christ in the Spirit addressing the Father; the prayer is flowing through you. You listen for the homing device, your magnetic center. What is God desiring through me today? What is God appealing for? And all I can do is stand in that relationship and second the motion.

  God, I want it, too. I desire what you desire, and I offer my prayer through Christ our Lord.

  It is making yourself a part of the dance, a part of the love, a part of the communion that’s already happening.

  Jesus seems to teach that somehow our inclusion in the dance matters in the great scheme of things. This must be a furthering of the great kenosis—the self-emptying of God—that we really count.

  Where do we get two great indications of this? In the great prayer of Mary and in the great prayer of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.221

  Both of them are saying, “Let it be.”

  Mary, who is the personification of the human race receiving the Christ, shows us that our “let it be” matters to God—God does not come into our worlds uninvited. The Spirit needs a Mary, a body, a womb, a humanity that says, “I want you”—your yes is always God’s yes.

  When you want it, it will be given to you; it’s that simple. “Let it be done unto me,” and it was done, right? This is the symbiotic nature of the Trinitarian life, of the Christian life, that we have been included as the mirror on the Rublev icon—into the table, into the dance. For some unbelievable reason, God allows us to matter and our prayers to matter; that’s why it seems Jesus does teach us to offer intercessory prayers.

  By all means, ask God for what you want. Jesu
s tells us to do this, but don’t think you’re spending some currency of personal worthiness to make a transaction happen. First you listen, then you speak; and this speaking, we’re promised, matters in the great scheme of things.

  Jesus, of course, in the garden of Gethsemane, embodies the same willingness his mother had. Not trusting his own ability to make a decision about whether to enter into his own arrest and execution, he says, in effect, “But You, Father, do it through me and in me”—this is the absolute relatedness we see in Jesus till the end.

  I only do what I see the Father doing. I do nothing else except what I see him doing first, echoing his motions.222

  Christian prayer thus becomes much more a merging than a manipulating, much more dancing than dominating, much more participation than partisanship. Those of you who want rain and those of you who want the flooding to stop both dance in the unitive center of the God who holds the rain and the dry land alike.

  You rest in God, not in outcomes.

  Primal Prayer

  What prayer becomes, in this divine rest, is experiential knowledge of the flow. Prayer is not primarily the spoken or read word. That might be a second or third level of prayer, but not the primary one. Primal prayer is where you can in truth pray always,223 where you can live in conscious communion with the divine indwelling, with the Spirit who was poured out so universally and graciously upon all creation, upon all nations and languages.224 Primal prayer does not mean waiting for some mythical, projected future “spiritual” state, but waking up inside your life, right now, in the present moment.

  Know that how you do anything is how you do everything! Just watch the how of your life—even more than the what—as dangerous as that sounds.