Order, Disorder,
Reorder

If we don't know how to become a community with our own species, how shall we find harmony with other life forms in the cosmos? The greater the opposites we can hold together, the greater soul we usually have. True transcendence frees us from the tyranny of I Am and the idolatry of We Are.

But the Scriptures tell us that restoration will also happen on a communal, planetary, and even universal level! Jim Antal, a climate justice leader with the United Church of Christ, reminds us of our ability and responsibility to participate with God in the renewal and reordering of the earth. "How can you know all these facts [about climate change] and still have hope?" For me, faith and hope are rooted in the conviction that, regardless of how bad things may be, a new story is waiting to take hold-something we have not yet seen or felt or experienced. . . . God is calling us-as individuals and congregations-to work with God and others to champion that new story.

For the vast majority in our society, that new story remains unseen. Wresting our future from the grip of fossil fuel seems impossible-our addiction is too strong, affordable options are too few, and the powers that defend the status quo are mighty, indeed... we cannot be freed by chipping away at this millstone. We must begin to live into a new story by changing the human prospect [of destruction] and restoring creation's viability. That's what the Water Protectors of Standing Rock have done. Their courageous, unflinching discipline inspired thousands to join them and millions to imagine with them the new world that is waiting to be born. They prepared themselves through prayer and ritual to face down sheriffs, paramilitary contractors, attack dogs, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and high-pressure water cannons in subzero temperatures. They were fueled by hope, hope for a revolution rooted in love - love for God's great gift of creation... We can't accept God's invitation to help create a new story unless we are willing to take action. We become partners with God when we act in unfamiliar, untested ways. Those new actions will be guided by a preferred future that embraces: resilience in place of growth, collaboration in place of consumption, wisdom in place of progress, balance in place of addiction, moderation in place of excess, vision in place of convenience, accountability in place of disregard, self-giving love in place of self-centered fear...

As broken-hearted as God must be over what we have done to the gift of creation, God still has a dream... God dreams that humans seek spiritual rather than material progress. God's dream envisions a just world at peace because gratitude has dissolved anxiety and generosity has eclipsed greed. God dreams of a time when love and mutual respect will bind humanity together, and the profound beauty of creation will be treasured. Let us embrace God's dream as our own. Suddenly, the horizon of our hope comes nearer. As we live into God's dream, we will rediscover who we truly are and all of creation will be singing.

Repairing and Restoring Barbara Holmes, a member of our Living School faculty, writes about what I'm calling Reorder as a cosmological fact. When we return to the original Order-the unbroken unity of all of creation with and in God-with new eyes, we see the gifts of abundance, diversity, and interconnectedness always available to us.
Any community that we construct on earth will be only a small model of a universe whose community includes billions of stars and planetary systems. Are we alone? We don't know, but if we don't know how to become a community with our own species, how shall we find harmony with other life forms in the cosmos? Our ideas of community begin with fragmentation, difference, and disparity seeking wholeness.

Our beloved community is an attempt to hot-glue disparate cultures, language, and ethnic origins into one mutually committed whole. The universe tells a completely different story-that everything is enfolded into everything...Even though the languages of the new physics and cosmology discard mechanistic understandings of the universe in favor of potential, we love order. We see it where it doesn't exist and impose it through our narratives. Everything that we do conceals the unity that seems to be intrinsic to our life space. We take pictures of objects that seem to be outside of self, we demarcate national boundaries, we align with friends and break with enemies, we give and receive in what seem to be neat sequential packets of life and experience.

By contrast, [physicist David] Bohm [1917-1992] described the universe as a whole or implicate order that is "our primary reality... the subtle and universal reservoir of all life, the wellspring of all possibility, and the source of all meaning." The life space, Bohm wrote, is... the order that unfolds as a visible and discernable aspect of this unseen wholeness... We are one, and our wars and racial divisions cannot defeat the wholeness that lies just below the horizon of human awareness... Diversity may not be a function of human effort or justice. It may just be the sea in which we swim. To enact a just order in human communities is to reclaim a sense of unity with divine and cosmological aspects of the life space.

My Story, Our Story, THE Story
Only the whole self is ever ready for the whole God, so Reorder always involves moving beyond the dualistic mind toward a more spacious, contemplative knowing. In fact, if we are going to rebuild society, we first need to be rebuilt ourselves. A healthy psyche lives within at least three levels of meaning. We might imagine three domes, or containers. The first and smallest dome is called My Story, the second larger dome is Our Story, and the third and largest dome is The Story. In the first dome is my private life: those issues that make me special, inferior or superior, right or wrong, depending on how "I" see it. "I" and my feelings and opinions are the reference points for everything. Jesus teaches that we must let go of exactly this, and yet this is the very tiny and false self that contemporary people take as normative, and even sufficient.

The next realm of meaning is about Us. Our Story is the dome of our group, our community, our country, our church- perhaps our nationality or ethnic group. These groups are the necessary training grounds for belonging, attaching, trusting, and loving. Unfortunately, some folks just spend their lives defending the boundaries and "glory" of their group. Group egocentricity is even more dangerous than personal egocentricity. It looks like greatness when it is often no more than disguised egotism. Loyalties at this level have driven most of human history-and most wars-up to now.

The third and largest dome of meaning is THE Story, the realm of universal meaning and the patterns that are always true in every culture. This level assures and insures the other two. It holds them together in sacred meaning. In fact, we could say that the greater the opposites we can hold together, the greater soul we usually have.

True transcendence frees us from the tyranny of I Am and the idolatry of We Are. Still, when all three are taken seriously, as the Bible does very well, we have a full life - fully human and fully divine.

The person who lives most of their life grounded within THE Story is the mystic, the prophet, the universal human, the saint, the whole one. These are the people who look out at the smaller picture with eyes as wide as saucers because they observe from the utterly big picture - with love. If we hope for societal reconstruction, it will come from people who can see reality at all three levels simultaneously, honoring the divine level and ultimately living inside of the great story line.

The final stage of birthing labor is the most dangerous stage, and the most painful... The medical term is "transition." Transition feels like dying but it is the stage that precedes the birth of new life. -Valarie Kaur.∎

Richard Rohr is a revered speaker and bestselling author. He is founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.