Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

One’s biggest secrets and deepest desires are usually revealed to others, and even discovered by ourselves, in the presence of sorrow, failure, or need—when we are very vulnerable and when one feels entirely safe in the arms of someone’s love. That is why all “little ones” have a huge head start. When vulnerable exchange happens, there is always a broadening of being on both sides. We are bigger and better people afterward. Those who never go there always remain small and superficial, and unconnected to themselves. You would normally experience it as a lack of substance or even reality in a person. People who have avoided all intimacy normally do not know who they are at any depth—and cannot tell others who they are.

What the saints discovered is that God was always disclosing himself to them—not ideas, nor formulas, not answers, but God’s inner “secrets,” or what St. Thérèse of Lisieux called the very “science of love.” Such divine intimacy gives you a great big head start in knowing how to do human intimacy.

Adapted from Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, p. 165

The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available
in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, And . . . .