Falling Upward E-Book

Richard Rohr

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 266

Beschreibung

A fresh way of thinking about spirituality that grows throughout life In Falling Upward, Fr. Richard Rohr seeks to help readers understand the tasks of the two halves of life and to show them that those who have fallen, failed, or "gone down" are the only ones who understand "up." Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite. What looks like falling down can largely be experienced as "Falling Upward." In fact, it is not a loss but somehow actually a gain, as we have all seen with elders who have come to their fullness. * Explains why the second half of life can and should be full of spiritual richness * Offers a new view of how spiritual growth happens?loss is gain * Richard. Rohr is a regular contributing writer for Sojourners and Tikkun magazines This important book explores the counterintuitive message that we grow spiritually much more by doing wrong than by doing right.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise for Falling Upward

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Invitation to a Further Journey

Introduction

The Way Up and the Way Down

A Founding Myth

Chapter 1: The Two Halves of Life

Steps and Stages

Of God and Religion

Chapter 2: The Hero and Heroine's Journey

Chapter 3: The First Half of Life

Conditional and Unconditional Love

Holding a Creative Tension

First Half Done Poorly

Discharging Your Loyal Soldier

Chapter 4: The Tragic Sense of Life

The “Tragic” Natural World

The Great Turnaround

Chapter 5: Stumbling over the Stumbling Stone

Chapter 6: Necessary Suffering

All Creation “Groans” (Romans 8:22)

“Hating” Family

Chapter 7: Home and Homesickness

Chapter 8: Amnesia and the Big Picture

“Heaven” and “Hell”

Chapter 9: A Second Simplicity

Anxiety and Doubt

Chapter 10: A Bright Sadness

Chapter 11: The Shadowlands

Depression and Sadness

Chapter 12: New Problems and New Directions

Loneliness and Solitude

Both-And Thinking

Chapter 13: Falling Upward

Mirroring

Coda

Notes

The Invitation to a Further Journey

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Two Halves of Life

Chapter 2: The Hero and Heroine's Journey

Chapter 3: The First Half of Life

Chapter 4: The Tragic Sense of Life

Chapter 5: Stumbling over the Stumbling Stone

Chapter 6: Necessary Suffering

Chapter 7: Home and Homesickness

Chapter 8: Amnesia and the Big Picture

Chapter 9: A Second Simplicity

Chapter 10: A Bright Sadness

Chapter 11: The Shadowlands

Chapter 12: New Problems and New Directions

Coda

Bibliography

The Author

Index

Advertisement

Praise for Falling Upward

“Richard Rohr has been a mentor to so many of us over the years, teaching us new ways to read Scripture, giving us tools to better understand ourselves, showing us new approaches to prayer and suffering, and even helping us see and practice a new kind of seeing. Now, in Falling Upward, Richard offers a simple but deeply helpful framework for seeing the whole spiritual life—one that will help both beginners on the path as they look ahead and long-term pilgrims as they look back over their journey so far.”—Brian McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christianity and Naked Spirituality (brianmclaren.net)

“The value of this book lies in the way Richard Rohr shares his own aging process with us in ways that help us be less afraid of seeing and accepting how we are growing older day by day. Without sugar coating the challenging aspects of growing older, Richard Rohr invites us to look closer, to sit with what is happening to us as we age. As we do so, the value and gift of aging begin to come into view. We begin to see that, as we grow older, we are being awakened to deep, simple, and mysterious things we simply could not see when we were younger. The value of this book lies in the clarity with which it invites us to see the value of our own experience of aging as the way God is moving us from doing to being, from achieving to appreciating, from planning and plotting to trusting the strange process in which as we diminish, we strangely expand and grow in all sorts of ways we cannot and do not need to explain to anyone including ourselves. This freedom from the need to explain, this humble realization of what we cannot explain, is itself one of the unexpected blessings of aging this book invites to explore. It sounds too good be true, but we can begin to realize the timeless wisdom of the elders is sweetly and gently welling up in our own mind and heart.”—Jim Finley, retreat leader, Merton scholar, and author of The Contemplative Heart

“This is Richard Rohr at his vintage best: prophetic, pastoral, practical. A book I will gratefully share with my children and grandchildren.”—Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal priest, retreat leader, and the author of Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Mystical Hope, and The Wisdom Way of Knowing

“Falling Upward is a book of liberation. It calls forth the promise within us, and frees us to follow it into wider dimensions of our spiritual authenticity. This ‘second half of life’ need not wait till our middle years. It emerges whenever we are ready and able to expand beyond the structures and strictures of our chosen path, and sink or soar into the mysteries to which it pointed. Then the promise unfolds—in terms of what we discover we are and the timescapes we inhabit, as well as the gifts we can offer the world. With Richard Rohr as a guide, the spunk and spank of his language and his exhilarating insights, this mystery can become as real and immediate as your hand on the doorknob.”—Joanna Macy, author World as Lover, World as Self

“Father Richard Rohr has gathered innumerable luminous jewels of wisdom during a lifetime of wrestling with self, soul, God, the church, the ancient sacred stories of initiation and its modern realities, and the wilder and darker dimensions of the human psyche. His new book, Falling Upward, is a great and gracious gift for all of us longing for lanterns on the perilous path to psychospiritual maturity, a path that reveals secrets of personal destiny only after falling into the swamps of failure, woundedness, and personal demons. An uncommon, true elder in these fractured times, Richard Rohr shows us the way into the rarely reached “second half of life” and the encounter with our souls—our authentic and unique way of participating in and joyously contributing to our miraculous world.”—Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., author of Soulcraft and Nature and the Human Soul

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Rohr. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

A Wiley Imprint

989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax [phone], or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax [phone], or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax [phone].

Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rohr, Richard.

Falling upward : a spirituality for the two halves of life / Richard Rohr.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-90775-7 (hardback); 978-1-118-02368-6 (ebk); 978-1-118-02369-3 (ebk); 978-1-118-02370-9 (ebk)

1. Spiritual formation. 2. Spirituality. I. Title.

BV4511.R64 2011

248.4—dc22 2010049429

Excerpt from “East Coker” Part V in Four Quartets. Copyright © 1940 by T.S. Eliot and renewed 1968 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from “The Dry Salvages” Part II in Four Quartets. Copyright © 1941 by T.S. Eliot and renewed 1969 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and Faber and Faber Ltd.

“Wenn etwas mir vom Fenster fallt…/How surely gravity's law” from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. Copyright © 1996 by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., and the translators.

“When in the Soul of the Serene Disciple” by Thomas Merton from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton. Copyright © 1957 by The Abby of Gethsemani. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally unsolvable. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.

—CARL JUNG

First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!

—LADY JULIAN OF NORWICH

To the Franciscan friars, my brothers, who trained me so well in the skills and spirituality of the first half of life that they also gave me the grounding, the space, the call, and the inevitability of a further and fantastic journey

The Invitation to a Further Journey

A journey into the second half of our own lives awaits us all. Not everybody goes there, even though all of us get older, and some of us get older than others. A “further journey” is a well-kept secret, for some reason. Many people do not even know there is one. There are too few who are aware of it, tell us about it, or know that it is different from the journey of the first half of life. So why should I try to light up the path a little? Why should I presume that I have anything to say here? And why should I write to people who are still on their first journey, and happily so?

I am driven to write because after forty years as a Franciscan teacher, working in many settings, religions, countries, and institutions, I find that many, if not most, people and institutions remain stymied in the preoccupations of the first half of life. By that I mean that most people's concerns remain those of establishing their personal (or superior) identity, creating various boundary markers for themselves, seeking security, and perhaps linking to what seem like significant people or projects. These tasks are good to some degree and even necessary. We are all trying to find what the Greek philosopher Archimedes called a “lever and a place to stand” so that we can move the world just a little bit. The world would be much worse off if we did not do this first and important task.