Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr, St Anthony Messenger Press 2008
Reading this book is for me an exhilarating adventure of ‘feet on the ground’, renewal, liberation and eagerness. It offers a new set of eyes with which to view my journey and with these eyes I see magnificent values and creative options within my grasp, options to which I have been oblivious until now.
As the title suggests, Rohr draws extensively and lucidly on both Hebrew and Christian scriptures to show that the life we call God is as transformingly active today as in the days about which the scriptures report, offering creative possibilities for us to pursue. We may feel tyrannised by pain, mediocrity or despair but Rohr points to God leading the way through the desert to the Promised Land of abundant meaning and worth.
Rohr says that keeping rules and accepting ‘correct ideas’ is not the way to life. In fact he declares that morality is often ‘counterfeit’ religion. The destiny of authentic human living is to dance delightedly to the music provided by the orchestra whose conductor is the Spirit of Life whom we have come to call God.