Franciscan Fractal
Contemplating Today’s Culture through the Eyes of St. Francis & the Life of Christ
“Two Paths of Transformation”
I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings. Jeremiah 17:10
People seldom make changes in their lives without encountering a major event. We spend most of our life living in a box of preconceived thoughts as to how the world should operate, and become comfortable with what we are familiar. If something gets out of order, then we try to nudge it back into what we already know. At the same time, we become resistant to change. It takes a powerful life-changing event to move us along, even if it is for our own good. According to Fr. Richard Rohr, these life-changing events fall into one of two categories, either great love or great suffering.1
Great love for another person gives us a willingness to risk everything and hold back nothing. Such love can overcome our feelings of separateness, loneliness, or fear. We experience great love when we find that we are unconditionally accepted by another person. (Unconditional acceptance may also be experienced with God). This union allows us to be totally who we are. The wonder of this encounter allows us to let down our guard, and see that we are not alone, but connected with another dimension in creation — at least for a while.
Great suffering opens us up in another way. Here, things usually happen against our will — which is what makes it suffering! In time, we may learn to give up our defensiveness and resentment. The situation is simply what it is, although we may go through stages of denial, anger, bargaining, resignation, and (hopefully) on to acceptance. Our suffering might feel that we have been wronged. It might also feel absurd, mentally or physically painful, or simply totally unfair.
Yet, great suffering can lead us in one of two directions. It can make us very bitter and shut us down, or it can make us wise, compassionate, and totally open. The latter is because our heart has been softened, or perhaps suffering makes us feel like we have nothing more to lose. It often takes us to the edge of our innermost resources, where we find ourself left with the only option but to “fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).
Great love has the potential to open a person’s heart space, and then mind space. Great suffering has the potential to open a person’s mind space, and then heart space. Eventually, a person needs to have both spaces opened in order to move beyond resistance to change.
People who have never loved or never suffered will normally try to control everything with an either-or attitude, or all-or-nothing thinking. Not having experienced grace or mercy themselves, they divide the world into the “deserving and undeserving.” This leaves them judgmental, demanding, unforgiving, and weak in empathy and sympathy. (Think of the shackling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the abandonment of 32 million children in Africa.)
Until we both love and suffer, we will try to figure out life and death with only our minds. With God’s grace, a larger source opens up within us and we comprehend differently, “knowing the love, which is beyond all knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). That is why Jesus said, “This is my commandment, you must love one another” (John 13:34).
Love is the only way to initially and safely open the door of awareness, aliveness, and ability to change for the good. Suffering for such love keeps that door open and available for ever greater growth as a Christian. Great love and great suffering are two transformative doors, and we dare not fear these doors or leave them closed.
Prayers and Blessings,
Fr. John
1Richard Rohr, OFM. The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, 2009, Crossroad.
This article was adapted from the writing of Richard Rohr entitled, “Two Great Doors” Center for Action and Contemplation, 2013.
