By Scott Graber
It is Sunday, early, and it is warm.
This morning I’m on our reconditioned deck; watching the sun illuminate the low-hanging moss; listening to a “meditation” supplied by Rev. Richard Rohr.
Rohr’s meditation deals with the early days of the Christian Church. It deals with a recently crucified man who lived in Judea — a man who emphasized love of neighbor, sharing of one’s wealth and simplicity when it came to wearing apparel.
Rohr tells us that this ancient “influencer” didn’t pose much of a threat to the Roman Empire that then controlled all of the Mediterranean basin and beyond. (The Romans couldn’t rein-in the Scots or the Germans and so they built walls to keep them out.)
In those early days there wasn’t much theology beyond love of God and love of neighbor. Jesus didn’t like incense, or small animal throat-cutting, or wear the ermine-lined robes that were popular with the restive and sometimes rebellious Jews who lived in this dusty, desiccated province.
The “Jesus people” were really strange dudes who operated on the lowest rung of society’s ladder, an unimportant splinter; and yet there was something strangely attractive in their sandal-wearing simplicity.
The Romans — sensing their own Greek-inspired gods were no longer providing the spiritual sustenance that supported their regime — decided a change was necessary. So, starting with Constantine, they changed horses.
The Romans slowly embraced this now-expanding splinter group deciding that what it needed was a beefed-up theology (more rules); better vestments and a building program that was on par with the temples and amphitheaters it had been building for centuries.
But, if the truth be told, the Romans were really focused on rules — details around divinity that had been largely side-stepped by the early Christians. They got into, for example, the concept of Original Sin and whether we entered the world corrupted or uncorrupted. Starting with Paul, then moving on to Augustine, Aquinas, Ambrose and others volumes were written on the nature of God; the nature of sin; the nature of evil; a half-way house called “purgatory”; the status of women, and why it was wrong to eat meat on Friday.
By the time I came along all of this was condensed into something called the Catechism which was as important (to Catholics) as the Bible itself.
In 1957, I was a uniformed school-boy at St Michael’s Catholic School in Columbus, Ohio. I was in the complete thrall of the nuns who taught me the Catechism every morning; relishing the certainties and marveling at the “mysteries” they taught. I continued my rule-based education at Central Catholic High School in San Antonio, Texas.
Eventually I strayed from that well-paved pathway finding comfort in John Sholar — a Presbyterian preacher here in Beaufort; and in Roger Smith who was, for a time, the Rector at St Helena’s Church.
While John was certain of the Resurrection of the robe-and-sandal wearing man in Judea, I remember sitting with him in an Augusta cafeteria discussing the contents of the Ark of the Covenant and where that fabled vessel might be hidden. My conversations with Roger Smith were equally colloquial and, perhaps, my comments bordered on blasphemy.
All of which brings me back to the Richard Rohr, the Catholic cleric, who does not focus on rules or espouse a transactional relationship with God.
His meditations usually reinforce the idea that one’s life has two parts — the first part being a time of hustle, bustle, status-seeking and finding a reasonably priced time share in Aruba. It’s mostly about status — status, perceived success and stability — that at some point in the future will be utterly shattered.
Rohr says this shattering is not a bad thing — it opens the door to doubt, reflection, re-evaluation and, ultimately, a craving for grace, goodness, compassion and — if you’re lucky — a second chance at finding the Divine.
Recently Rohr also said that (in this second and final phase) we should not care about what other people think of us. We should focus on being “awake” to what is happening around us.
After a lifetime of self-promotion, resume-writing and virtue-signaling are we really expected to stop the flossing, the sit-ups and any effort to appear productive and successful?
I, myself, think the Roman padre goes too far.
Asking us to give up our near-constant campaign to appear successful, worthy of respect and, yes, happy is a ship that has sailed for me; a Leviathan that cannot be turned around or, to use the disaster at Arnheim as a metaphor — “a bridge too far.”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.