Hey, I think we're going to do it! It's the last of my summarizing of Richard Rohr's grand book 'The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for An Age of Outrage.'
I will follow the same format here by providing a summary of chapters 9 & 10, and then the points I highlighted within them.
ChatGPT summary:
In chapters 9 and 10 of The Tears of Things, Richard Rohr continues to explore how suffering and loss are integral to spiritual growth. He discusses the transformative power of embracing the shadow side of life, including the personal and collective wounds that shape us. Rohr suggests that through these experiences, we learn to see the world and ourselves with greater depth and compassion. In the final chapter, he ties everything together by emphasizing the importance of surrender and acceptance. True spiritual freedom, he writes, comes when we stop fighting against life’s challenges and learn to live fully in the present moment. Rohr’s conclusion encourages readers to let go of their attachments to success, control, and certainty, and instead embrace the unknown with trust in God’s presence within all things.
Chapter 9 highlights (Ezekiel: Redemption and the Grace of God) --
Ope... I guess I didn't actually highlight anything in this chapter...
Chapter 10 highlights (It All Comes Down to Love) --
*****p. 142-143 - "The early English Franciscan brother William of Ockham (1287-1347) had an overriding principle that is still taught in philosophy classes, and is somewhat humorously called 'Occam's razor' (using the Latin spelling of his name). As he put it, 'The answer that demands the fewest assumptions is likely the correct one.' If his students wanted to discover the truth of something, he encouraged them to 'shave' away as many assumptions, beliefs, or complicating explanations as possible. Great truth might well be mysterious, Ockham believed, but it is never complex. The better answer is almost always the simpler one was his conclusion. ... What I have tried to say in this book is that prophets are those who simplify all questions of justice, reward, and punishment by a simple appeal to divine love. God's infinite, self-giving care is the only needed assumption, cause, factor, or possible variable in the drama of creation. All else must be 'shaved' away as creating needless and useless complexity -- which only confuses the soul and the mind. ... This is the nature of mature, mystical religion -- simple and clear."
*****p. 145 - "I have met too many saintly people in a confessional context whose holiness is the result of years of struggle with their darkness and their ego, which they could never completely overcome. In fact, such folks are the quite obvious norm! Our job, like that of the prophets, is to guide their struggle toward love, not to deliver them altogether from struggle."
p. 146 - "Divine light does not inflate us with the pride of "I know," but illuminates those around us with the gratitude of "I am, too" -- a kind of joining "everyone in the house." Both light and love reveal not our separate superiority, but rather our radical sameness. That quality is, in fact, the way you can tell divine light from human glaring."
**p. 147 - "The last veil to fall is when you see your own negative projections - not only your participation in the collective but also the hurts you've transmitted to others and yourself - and just want to weep. This is the universal solidarity and sympathy that I believe characterizes mystical and prophetic Christianity."
p. 149 - "Mature religion and good prophets make sure that this growth happens. They liberate us to be like God, who is love (1 John 4:8), and reveal that God is not like us, which is the purified message of almost every prophet."
p. 154 - "Please remember that certainty - not doubt - is the opposite of faith."
p. 155 - "...we haven't understood or appreciated the prophet's unique job description in Israel: 'licensed,' internal, faithful critic of one's own people and leaders. The prophets were radical traditionalists whose conservatism ironically made them into tearful and empathetic 'progressives' by contemporary standards."
Yeah, that last chapter... whew... it's a doozy. So good.
This is, honestly, one of those books that I have a hard time just saying, "Oh, yeah, it's a great book. It's about ______ whatever, and everyone should read it." I don't know if it's good or not... nor if everyone should read it. But I liked it. A lot. Sure, there were a few dry sections, but there was also so much goodness. It was almost like, some chapters had too much good. I simply wanted to underline everything, and it took so long to read through them...
So, this ends my look back through The Tears of Things. I'm really glad I read it.
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