Say for yourself, yesterday's meditation from Father Richard (scroll down) was apt for me, right on, plus realizations of my own. As we emerge from pandemic strictness, realizations occur, I'm seeing things, experiences, discoveries, what after Christmas Season we'd call epiphanies. Including about myself and us, some good, but not all. Some things that covid has forced us to encounter need to be the basis for new ways in life.

Waste, for one, waste of Time and resources, traveling to work when some work has been found to work equally well from home; driving to meetings when some meetings turn out to have been just as effective by Zoom.

Greed, selfishness, for another. Wanting to keep prices down for ourselves by returning to labor and economic practices that compel elements of humanity to work at and below poverty level compensation: restaurants that cannot reopen fully because staff will not return. In a proper capitalist economy (as opposed to economically forced), supply and demand would require employers to pay a wage that attracts the workers they want. The pandemic has opened a closet door. In our rich society we rich will force the poor to return to misery by cutting off their government financial benefits. We prefer a perpetuated poverty level to paying more taxes to abolish poverty; and we'd rather feel generous about ourselves by deigning to leave a tip than to know the wait staff are paid sufficient; and the kitchen help; and who clears tables and carries out the garbage. "Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?" takes on new meaning. If we Get It.

For all its sickness, death and grief, covid has opened closet doors. Jesus did not die to forgive your sin of selfishness and greed; the sins that we see and do not correct are unforgiven and unforgivable, retained unto us; as are the sins that we fail to see and refuse to see. Fr Richard's eyeopening message is more than clear, too pointed, a sharp stick.

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Image credit: Jenna Keiper, dapple (detail), 2020, photograph, Bellingham.

Week Twenty-Four: Shadow Work

Unveiling the Shadow

This week’s meditations focus on unveiling the shadow self, an essential concept in my work that comes from Swiss psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). It always needs initial clarification and definition.

Let’s begin with the personal shadow. During the first half of our lives (and for many, into the chronological second half of life), we are building up our separate or false self. For the first months of life, human infants feel they are one with their caretaker, usually their mother. But soon the child grows into a sense of separateness, a split between my self and your self that understands “I’m here and you’re over there.” We call this dualistic consciousness.

To put it very simply, as children we learn which behaviors cause approval and disapproval from our family, teachers, and friends. If we want to have some sort of control over our lives and create pleasant outcomes, we tend to develop those things which are acceptable and repress those things which are not. Those things we repress or deny about ourselves become our shadow. The qualities we “place” in our shadow aren’t necessarily or only bad; they simply are the ones that are not rewarded by our family system or culture.

The more we have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work we will need to do. Therefore, we need to be especially careful of clinging to any idealized role or self-image, like that of minister, mother, doctor, nice person, professor, moral believer, or president of this or that. These are huge personas to live up to, and they trap many people in lifelong delusion that the role is who they are or who they are only allowed to be. The more we are attached to and unaware of such a protected self-image, the more shadow self we will likely have. This is especially dangerous for a “spiritual leader” or “professional religious person” because it involves such an ego-inflating self-image. Whenever ministers, or any true believers, are too anti anything, we can be pretty sure there is some shadow material lurking somewhere nearby. Zealotry is a good revelation of one’s overly repressed shadow.

Our self-image is not substantial or lasting; it is simply created out of our own mind, desire, and choice—and everybody else’s preferences for us! It is not objective at all but entirely subjective (which does not mean that it does not have real influence). The movement to second-half-of-life wisdom has much to do with necessary shadow work and the emergence of healthy self-critical thinking, which alone allows us to see beyond our own shadow and disguise and to find who we are, “hidden with Christ in God,” as Paul puts it (Colossians 3:3). The Zen masters call it “the face we had before we were born.” This self cannot die, lives forever and is our True Self. Religion is always in some way about discovering our True Self, which is also to discover God, who is our deepest truth.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking, disc 3 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2012), CD, MP3 download; and

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass: 2011), 128, 129–130.

Image credit: Jenna Keiper, dapple (detail), 2020, photograph, Bellingham.

Image inspiration: Shadows are always influential if not always obvious. Some, in focus in the foreground, are easier to name while others remain hidden in the background. How might we attend to the lessons of our own inner shadow landscapes?