Ep. 358 Fr. Ronald Rolheiser - Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser joins me to talk about his new book Insane for the Light, the final part of his spiritual trilogy that began with The Holy Longing and Sacred Fire. Together, we explore what it means to live faithfully through every stage of life from getting our lives together, to giving them away, to finally giving our deaths away. Fr. Rolheiser shares profound insights on the difference between resignation and surrender, how helplessness can become holiness, and why love is sustained not by emotion but by fidelity and presence. We talk about aging as a spiritual practice, the call to move from bitterness to gratitude, and the deep grace found in letting go. This is a conversation about surrendering in love, learning to live with open hands, and allowing the light of God to shine through us, even as everything else fades.

Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., is President-Emeritus of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas, where he remains a full-time faculty member and Professor of Spirituality. In 1982, he began writing a column “In Exile” which is carried in Catholic newspapers worldwide. He is the author of many award-winning books including The Holy Longing and Sacred Fire, and his newest book Insane for the Light releases in 2025.

Ron's Books:

Insane for the Light

Sacred Fire

The Holy Longing

Ron's Recommendations:

All the Way to Heaven

Rachel Held Evans

Richard Rohr

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Transcript

Ronald Rolheiser: 0:29

You know, I'm struck by the verb that they use when Jesus died in Mark's gospel, Mark says, Then he bowed his head and he gave over his spirit. Surrender is different in resignation. See, resignation of the spirit. The bully has you penned, and finally you say, I give up. See, that's not surrender. Surrender is you're giving it over in love.

Joshua Johnson: 1:04

Hello and welcome to the shift in culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we could make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, few spiritual writers have traced the human journey with as much honesty and depth as father, Ronald rohlheiser, his trilogy The Holy longing, sacred fire and now insane for the light, maps the movement from getting our lives together, to giving them away, to finally giving our deaths away. In this conversation, we explore how faith matures with time, how the energy of youth gives way to the wisdom of surrender, and how helplessness can become his own form of grace. Father rohlheiser talks about the difference between resignation and surrender, about showing up when we feel nothing, and about how love is sustained not by emotion but by presence. We also talk about how aging as a spiritual practice is moving from bitterness to gratitude, control to trust and learning to grow transparent until the light shines through. So join us for a conversation about fidelity, surrender and the beauty of a faith that holds even when all our images of God fall away. Here is my conversation with Father, Ronald rohlheiser. Father Ronald rohlheiser, welcome to shifting culture. It's an honor to have you on thank you for joining me.

Ronald Rolheiser: 2:29

Thank you, Josh, it's a pleasure being with you. Okay, your

Joshua Johnson: 2:33

new book that's coming out in same for the light, it's a spiritual journey for our wisdom years. It's the third of your trilogy that started with the holy longing, sacred fire. And now here, in same for the light, can you take us on a little bit of the journey of, let's go back holy longing and sacred fire. And what are these, the arc of the human journey? What does it look like? And what are these struggles?

Ronald Rolheiser: 3:02

Yeah, well, let's begin this way. You know, like in Christian spirituality, we haven't, you know, sorted out so much like that. You know that this is spirituality for Sunday school. This is for adults, this is for retired people and so on. And notice you don't see that in Jesus. Jesus just has a set of teachings. But the difference is this, we hear them in different times of our lives. It's one thing to hear a parable when you're seven years old, another thing there when you're 17, when you're 37 and you're 77 you know, and that's why we need to break this down. The structure I use actually comes to the great Christian mystics, and it's spiritual structure. It's also psychological or anthropological, they'll say. And this makes perfect sense. You have three great struggles in your life. The first one to struggle to get your life together. You know, from the time you're born till you land in your 20s, sometimes you know who are you, and how do you get your life together? But then you have about 50 years, generative years, I call them. You know where you're in that right now, where your struggle is to give your life away. You know, at our age, the biggest struggle shouldn't be, who am I? And how do I find myself? And how do I serve better, and so on. But usually Christian spirituality, popular spirituality, ended there, then you're expected to die, but you need another one, and that is, how do you live your old age in such a way that these have a different kind of generativity. In fact, the image I use is this, you have Abraham and Sarah. And this is an incredible story. They said, when Abraham was 80 and she was 70, God said, I want you to set off to a distant country, and when you get there, she's going to become pregnant. So they do. It took 20 years. Now, when he's 100 she's 90, they have Isaac, you know. So we always say, like, like, what's going to be your post menopausal pregnancy? Like, like, like, today, a lot of people are retiring 65 and they're going to live healthily for 20 or 25 years. What are those years for? And then also, the concept they use in the book is the same as right now, you're trying to give your life away through service in those latter years, you got to give your death away. Your death as Henry now and you say, it's your it's the last greatest gift you make to your to your community. So the books are the holy longing is basically how to get your life together, sacred fires, how do you give your life away? And this book is, how do you give your death away? What's the spirituality for. Retirement and post retirement.

Joshua Johnson: 5:31

So as we walk through these struggles and these journeys, you're going to suffer, you're going to have difficulties. As I'm in this time of service and giving my life away, I'm also going through darkness and suffering and times where I feel like I can't I don't have anything in me to give away. God is obscure to me. What happens? How do we walk through those struggles and be attached to divine love in the midst of our suffering?

Ronald Rolheiser: 6:06

Couple of things there, you actually put your finger on something that's very important. You know, I think that in Christian spirituality, we haven't been able to tease that out well for people. So, you know, you know, we can talk about later with just like, dark nights or something, but if you say, like, what's what? What's the meaning of the suffering, you know, well, first of all, and this is part of what I have in this last book, sometimes when you're helpless when you have nothing to give, that's when you have the most to give. Let me use the example I use of Jesus, you know. And I don't think we've ever teased that out properly, you know. But you know, like when we talk about Christ's passion, the Passion of Jesus, Christ, we normally think of his sufferings, you know, and the pilot and the whips and so on. But that partly misses the point. If you know, passion here comes from the word Passio means passivity. If he said, This is the passivity of Jesus Christ, like, for instance, if you read the passivity of Jesus Christ according to Matthew or mark and so on, and the rest of the time you could talk about the activity. You know, when you look at all four gospels, you'll notice this up until Jesus is arrested and they bind Him and walk him away. He is the active. Notice he's teaching, preaching, doing miracles, doing all this stuff and so on. And after he's arrested, he doesn't do anything anymore. Everything is done to him so he becomes passive. You know, they lead him away. They bind him. They put him on trial. Pilate carries his cross. They'll cross. Now this is the interesting thing. We believe we are saved more by his passivity than his activity. We are saved through what Jesus taught us, but we're saved preeminently by his dying for us and so on. And now that isn't just some theological mystery, it is, but you know like like, for instance, in our helplessness, in your passivity, sometimes you can, you can give more than you can in your activity. A friend of mine, this woman tells a story, said her father was an alcoholic, and he said his alcoholism completely destroyed our family. So by the time he died, said we were five siblings. We couldn't live in the same house to the same city with each other. So then my mother, for years, tried to reconcile us. She'd bring us together at Thanksgiving and do stuff, said, and it didn't work. Said. Then my mother died of cancer, and during the last week of her life, she was unconscious in hospice since and the family gathered around her, you know what happened? They reconciled. When she was unconscious and couldn't do anything, she was able to what she couldn't do in her activity. That's true of Jesus. You know, Jesus tried for three and a half years to get his message costs, and they didn't get it. He died, and they got it. That's a great mystery. That's a great mystery. And so when, when you're in your generative years, and you're struggling, you're struggling with faith, with tiredness, with this and that and so on. And I, I teased that out in the book the sacred fire that you know those generative years, they're going to be long. Fact, John of the Cross, the great mystic, says, you know, it's going to be the biggest problem in your prayer for about 30 years of your life. He said, flat out boredom, like basically, and you expect that. He said, Because at that age, that the deeper things are happening under the surface. You know, when you're in fervor, when you first convert, and you're walking on water and so on. It's all you know that, but that's a honeymoon that only lasts. You come home from a honeymoon, then you have 30 or 40 or 50 years where a heat exchange that verb. You're kind of grinding it out, but you're not grinding out because what's happening is deeper. Things are happening under the surface, you know, on a honeymoon, stuff happens on a surface that and then also your helplessness, when you're tired and down and out and you want to quit and you show up, maybe that tiredness is going to color your work in such a way that it's much deeper and more powerful. Or, I'm sure, Joshua, you ever gone to a funeral, a tragic thing, and you have nothing to say, and you just hug the person you're sharing your helplessness that's the most powerful thing you can do. You know, you say a few words, but they're completely unhelpful. Basically, your helplessness is what speaks and what heals you. So Jesus, in his helplessness, was able to do something for us that he couldn't do when he was the great helper. It's interesting to say in Mark's gospel, all the verbs about Jesus in Greek, before he's arrested are active. He taught, he walked, he did. And after he's arrested, they're all passive. They bound him, they let him away, discouraged him, they questioned him. Passivity and helplessness. That's a big part of that last

Joshua Johnson: 10:57

book, that passivity and the helplessness. If you're talking about the boredom, Johnson Cross says you're praying, it's gonna be boredom during this time, it feels like there's, there's generative things to do. But if you say something like deeper underneath, like the things that are happening are really underneath the surface, is that the passivity that's happening under the surface while you're being generative in your life, what is going on there that is actually forming us into this, this creature that looks more like Jesus,

Ronald Rolheiser: 12:34

okay, that's part of it, but let me give you the example that I use with students in class. You know. So imagine this, okay, imagine your mother is in assisted living, okay? And you are the dutiful son, and you happen to be living five miles away, and so it falls on you. And five or six nights a week, you go and spend an hour with your mother. She's eating her dinner and so on. Spend some time with her. And you do this day in, day out, year in, year out. How many times during the course of a year do you think you'll have an exciting, interesting conversation with your mother once or twice, and the other times you're talking about the weather, the sports team, the politics and you know. And sometimes while you're she's eating, you fall asleep for 15 minutes, you wake up and so on. Now contrast that you have a sister and she is conveniently living in Alaska, okay? So she does not become five nights. So she comes once a year for a couple days, and her and your mother are having conversations. They're crying and hugging each other. You want to kill them both. Okay, now it's what your sister has. Is that deeper than what you have? No that's fervor, you know, see, when your mother dies, you're going to be closer to her than anybody. Because you know the words have been spoken, then presence, presence is everything. You are with her, and if you fall asleep, that's okay too. You know tres of lezu, the saying she wants that. Somebody asked her, is it wrong to fall asleep when you pray? And she said, No. Said a little child is equally pleasing to her parents, awake or asleep, maybe more asleep. No, your mother lost. You're tired, you're there. You know, see, so that during these generative years, that's the thing. Your task is to show up for prayer, for service, for family. So on, day in, day out, it isn't always exciting on the surface. That fidelity, you know, that's the essence of contemplative prayer. We another example I often use on a marriage homily from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great Lutheran and martyr. You know, he was a priest, and when he married people, he'd almost tell them. He said today, you're young and you're in love, and you think your love will sustain your marriage, but it can't. But your marriage can sustain your love. See, see, see, your fervor isn't going to sustain your prayer, it isn't going to sustain you know, but, but your commitment can sustain that you know. See, you stay in a marriage, or you stay in a church, or you stay in service on the basis of commitment. You're going to visit your mother five nights a week and so on. See then your emotions, they move in, they move out. Some Sundays, you're better in church. Other Sundays, you're looking at your wrist watch and so on. It doesn't matter. You know, you're there, you're there. The basic, ultimate rule for prayer is simply show up.

Joshua Johnson: 15:35

Show up. So it feels like, if it's a show up, it's, it's about presence and being with more than the whatever the activity is. But it's, it's the the presence of of God with us, even if we don't have that emotional high before or even if we don't feel his presence, but the actual like with ness of God,

Ronald Rolheiser: 15:57

see, love is sustained through a commitment. So give me an example. So you take a married couple, okay? And they have a little ritual practice. So every morning, before they leave for work, they kiss each other and say, I love you, okay, some mornings, emotionally, they don't mean that, no, but actually, deeper down, they do mean that. That's where they're staying together. See, see, that separates your emotions from the depth and faith. So faith is, you know, some days you show up for church. You don't want to be there. So, you know, but, but, yes, you do at a deeper. Level. At a deeper level, you know that that's, you know, I give you a colorful story, you know, remember, you know that the writer, Annie Lamotte, yeah, Annie Lamotte, you know, right out of San Francisco and but she tells the story, I love this her color. She says her son, Samuel, said, I raised this kid. I virtually raised him at church, said, and then he said, he gets to be 1314, he comes one Sunday, and he says, I don't want to go to church anymore. And she says, why not? I don't find it meaningful. So you know what she said to him? She said, I couldn't give a shit whether you find it meaningful or not. She says, that's a kid's answer. Said it doesn't have to be meaningful to you, it's meaningful in itself. So it's like visiting your grandmother, you know, visit your grandmother because it's meaningful to you. It's meaningful. That's what you do. You know, and I like that. You know, like you don't go to church every Sunday because it's meaningful to you. You go to church because it's meaningful. You don't show up to pray every day because it's meaningful to you. It's meaningful. These things mean something beyond you. And like you said, just presence showing up, visiting your mother, you know, you know, or the ritual a couple of kisses, I love you. Some days they want to kill each other, you know, no but deeper down, they love each other, you know. See, in that sense, that's what bonhomme meant when he said, The ritual will hold you the ritual will keep you in love. Love will keep you inside of a marriage. A marriage will keep you inside of love.

Joshua Johnson: 18:02

I mean, it's good. A couple of weeks ago, as we were sitting around having a conversation, my wife said, I have the spiritual gift of showing up, and that people that were there were like, you have so much more than just showing up. And she wasn't actually, like denigrating herself. It's, it's what she she commits, and she shows up and she's there and she's present. And I think what you just said will encourage her that it is a spiritual gift to show up. It is the commitment to be there, day in and day out as a Hey. It is meaningful, even if you're not finding meaning and purpose at the moment when you show up. This is what God has called us to, to give our lives away through service.

Ronald Rolheiser: 19:32

That's the ultimate spiritual gift, fidelity, you know. And you know, when Martin Luther King was being buried, I was a young seminar. Seminarian, and I remember a statement. They were interviewing some people, and they said to this old black fellow, they said, What does it mean to you? Said he was a faithful man. He said he believed in us when we didn't believe in ourselves. He said, You know, like he always showed up, basically, you know, that's fidelity. He was a faithful man. You know, notice faithful and full of faith. It's the same word faithful you show up. That's the deep faith commitment underneath your emotions go up and down and up and down. Also, people, if you're only going to pray when you feel like it, you're not going to pray very often. You pray when it's time to pray

Joshua Johnson: 20:18

as we move out of that service time and then move into our wisdom years and and you distinguish between the elderly and becoming an elder. What makes that difference as we're moving into our wisdom years?

Ronald Rolheiser: 20:35

Well, you know, it's interesting that you should ask. You know, in Christianity, and that's not a disparaging remark, Chris, we've never really developed a program or spirituality for our later years, and the reason we didn't is because we didn't need it. People used to die young. You wouldn't believe this 100 years ago, or 105 years ago, in 1919, the average age for an American was 49 so so if you're dying by age 50, you don't need much of a developed spiritual today, it's 76 for men and about 86 for women. So we need to develop this. But then also, there are stages. We have a program here. We call it forest dwelling. Okay, we stole the title from Hinduism. In Hinduism, they said there's a stage between retirement and becoming a true elder, and they call it forest dwelling. So it's almost like, you know, when you finished high school, you went to college to prepare for life. They said, No, when you retire, you should go back to college. You should have some years to get ready so that you enter in our program. We'd say, Joshua, we want to work with you now. Right now, you're transitioning. You're transitioning from a certain kind of generativity to work you've done for 40 years. How do you become the holy old beggar? How do you become the Christian martyr and so on when nobody wants to kill you. So see, so that, so that it's, it's an interim stage where you see, like you have to learn what, what am I being called to, like Abraham and Sarah, what's going to be your Isaac? What Isaac are you going to give birth to when you when you're 7580 and 90 years old? You know? See, right? Know Your generativity is clearer. You're a married man, you have kids, you're doing a job, you're paying a mortgage and so on. That's good. That all ends at a certain point, and then you might live another 25 years. So what are they for? See you you're not when you retire at 65 or 70, you're still not an elder. You're you know, it's basically, how do you become that holy old fool, the holy old beggar? How do you, or how do you enter into Christ's passion that your passivity, your diminishment in old age, that's going to be a great gift to the world. So how do we

Joshua Johnson: 22:53

Yeah, what's the path for two year

Ronald Rolheiser: 22:56

program for that, you know, there's certain things to it, you know, like, let me just list this to few, and I can list them as principles. They're not that that like, for instance, I have six movements. I said one of the movements you have to move from bitterness and anger to gratitude, from bitterness and anger to gratitude. You know, Morris, West Australia, novelist. He wrote an autobiography, which you published when you're 75 years old. It's a great little book. You know, these are the first words of the book. He said, When you get to be 75 there should only be three phrases left in your vocabulary. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you. If that isn't your down to then you have a lot of inner work to do. See, as we go through our youth, and you pick up some scars and unfairness and all kinds of stuff, and it's so easy to age into a bitter, angry old man or old woman and so on. So that our first task is you got to move towards gratitude, where, when you're 75 and you write your autobiography, you would say, thank you, thank you. Thank you. You know, you know, it's interesting when you look at the four Eucharistic words of Jesus and receive, give thanks. Break and share. He doesn't say receive, break and share. You know, like real love has to come out of gratitude. Or one of the stories we use this and maybe readers have read that you ever in 1997 Frankie McCourt, United States American, wrote this famous book, Angela's Ashes, in which he, you know, it's a brilliant book. It's funny, but a book with a lot of lamenting, you know, poor me and this and that and so on and well, Andrew Greeley, other sixth generation Irishman, he wrote a review on that for Commonweal, and it was a very good review. He said, Stop with the whining. But when he ended the review by saying this, said, Frank. He said, You and I are both men now at 70 years old, said we're soon to fish our maker. Both have died since, so I'll give you some advice. Said, before you die, I said, forgive your father for his alcoholism, forgive your mother that she couldn't protect you, forgive the poverty that you grew up in. He said, to forgive yourself for becoming an alcoholic and ruining two marriages. He said, then forgive God, because life isn't fair, he said, so that you don't die an angry, bitter person. He said, because that's the only moral imperative there is. That's a good line. We always tell people, when you get a little older, you CAN SLIM your spiritual vocabulary down to two words, gratitude and forgiveness. You don't want to exit the planet bitter, angry, because, you know, we're supposed to be at a backward table with everybody. A friend of mine, a theologian, I love this expression. He says, The heavenly backward table is open to everyone who's willing to sit down with everyone. So if I die and I can't be a table with these other 10 people, he can't have separate tables in heaven. You know, otherwise you have Earth. The biggest thing is, you know, spiritually is to let go of anger, of bitterness and so on. We don't get angry when we get old. I was once at a psychiatrist conference, and someone asked a psychiatrist, I said, how come so many people get angry when they get old? Never happens. Sit up in 40 years, it never happens. I think what you're talking about is an angry person getting old. See, the anger is always in there. It just comes out in spades. You know? The next one is also, as we get older, certain things that you get you're more marginalized culturally. You're more marginalized in terms of power. Oftentimes there's physical stuff, physical disabilities and so on, that that beset you, okay, and so on. Like to handle those in such a way that they deepen and mellow your soul rather than than make your soul bitter. James Hillman has a great image. He has a book on aging, and he says, starts the book. He says, Why does God or nature design life in this way that just when you get to the peak of your mental powers, your body starts breaking down, you're in your 70s and so on, and now that's the peak of your powers. And then you're seeing a doctor every day, you know? And he has a great image. He said, You know why? He. Said, the best wines have to be aged and cracked old barrels. He said, That's mellowing your soul. See, in the same even right now, like you said to anyone you're tired, that's mellowing your soul. In fact, you know, I'm in my late 70s, and one of my mentors, you know, like and I used to be president of a school and our general counsel in Rome and and now I have no power to whenever I sit to myself, like, let it go. Let it go. Let it go. It's just basically, you know, you're no longer there. You got to accept that, you know, like, you become more marginalized. You're stepping away, you know. And the same with physical ailments and so on. You know when, when you're in assisted living, you know something, it's it's a great way. Put it this way, when Jesus become like little children, you can enter the kingdom of heaven. He wasn't talking about the innocence of a child, which you can't imitate. He's talking about the helplessness. When you're in assisted living, you're helpless. You're a child. You die, you go straight to heaven. You know, you know, you have no illusion of self sufficiency. Again, with the story, like I was doing the story a priest friend of mine, I went to the funeral of his dad. And his dad died at age 90, you know, and he had been a strong man, very successful, you know, in high school, the captain football team, everything. And then he very successful. Raised a big family, big company, very always in charge of everything. And he died at age 90. So his son, who was a priest, was preaching at the funeral, and he said, Well, he said, Here lies our dad died at age 90, and scripture says 70 is the sum of a man's ears. 80 for those who are strong. He said, No, he left the extra 20 years. Why is it no accident? He said, It took God another 20 years to mellow him out. Said he was too cantankerous and strong, did I at 70 or 80? Said, but the last years of his life were years of massive diminishment. His wife died, broke his heart, then he had a stroke. He needed a walker, and then he had another stroke, and then he was bedridden. Said, by the time he died, he said he could take your hand and say, help me. He couldn't say that since he was seven years old, like he said, said now he said, When he got to the other side, he just said, help me. Said, 10 years ago they told Saint Peter, let me tell you how to run this place. There's a lot of improvements you should be making here. You know, you know what John of the Cross calls the dark night of the Spirit. You know, like the well, he said you can enter that proactively, but mostly it's going to be done to us. You know what he's that's, that's what the dark night spirit looks like, diminishment so on. And see it our task. When that happens, we can become bitter and angry, or we can let it mellow our soul.

Joshua Johnson: 30:08

I think that's, that's beautiful. And you say you write in your book, to grow old is to grow transparent until the light shines through. And that feels like that mellowing journey, the journey of letting go and surrendering, feels like, Oh, I could be transparent. Is there a way to structure or to include elders in communities, faith communities, so that the wisdom of elders as the light is shining through. Can we can start early with gratitude and forgiveness and letting go while we're still being generative and full of service? How can we incorporate elders, not put them to the side, but have them integral to the life of a faith community.

Ronald Rolheiser: 31:03

Well, you put your finger on something important, that's what should be happening. Sadly, our culture is moving the opposite direction, where we isolate individual the agent. They go to their own place, you know, and they have key to communities and assisted living and so on. And, you know, I lived in Italy for six years, and there, at least back in the, you know, 25 years ago, these most of the elderly still lived with their families. I think that's healthy. Well, we don't have any more. We don't have two, three generations in the same family, in the same house, you know, see, so we, we are separated from our elders. I mean, not entirely. So we see some of it still with grandparents. You know, anthropologists, I taught anthropology, and they said that grandparenting is the purest experience of love on this planet. It dropped, you know, they said, you know, and with your own kids and your own spouse, you're so close there's always tension. There's always some tension with grandparents, it's perfect and see as when you become a grandparent, you'll be able to give your grandkids a blessing in such a way that their parents can't quite do. So there's wisdom, there's also blessing. I write on that in in sacred fire and so on. But the problem is, you put your finger on the problem, I don't know what the solution is. Since we, we, we put our elderly into homes, you know, and, and so consequently, they get penalized because they don't have contact with young people, and we get penalized that we're not getting their wisdom and and even, living with their eccentricities is healthy for us. Living with a cracky old uncle, you know, or grandfather, it's like a stone in the river. The water has to go around them, you know, and it it makes less smoothness, but makes for character. Our culture is missing something by not having, you know, grandparents and elders and stuff in the house. And maybe we have to get more deliberate, you know, say, in in faith communities of, you know, setting up evenings, you know, or something where you bring people from seniors homes and young kids, you know, I just did a workshop in Tucson, Arizona. I do a lot of workshops with this one. It was organized by the youth group, but they brought the older people there. And it was one of the, the more interesting things of you know. So they, it was organized by the see if the old that organized tried to bring the young, they wouldn't account. But the youth organized, they brought the old. And it was a wonderful intergenerational periods, you know, for both, you know, but see, I think we need to do things like that. We need to proactively set those things up. Because right now, the culture we have apartheid,

Joshua Johnson: 33:51

that's true, we do. We also have a culture where we have a bunch of billionaires trying for anti aging don't want to get older. They're trying to stay young forever. They're actually even moving towards transhumanism, like, hey, we want to be more than human. What would you say to a culture that is moving towards that end? What is the gift of aging for us, and why, as humans, we should embrace it and surrender and trust, instead of try to go out the opposite direction and stop it.

Ronald Rolheiser: 34:30

You know, it's interesting. There are some pretty good books written on that already a generation ago. I'm trying to think of his name, Denial of Death. Death. Ern specker wrote a book thing. He said, we're in a culture where we deny death, just we don't think about it's not going to happen, you know. And he said, we pay a price for that psychologically. And then earlier, Heidegger, the great German theologian, written the book being on to death in German science, who told them, but basically they say that you pay a price that they weren't speaking spiritually, but you pay a price psychologically, and that's this. So let me give you an example, like Heidegger would have imagine Joshua that you have a very dear, dear friend coming, and you're going to meet him at the airport. He's between flights, and you only have two hours, so you know what's going to happen. You're not going to enjoy the two hours. Could you look into your wristwatch 15 minutes ago? You know? See, see that the fact that you're not facing the fact that it's only two hours, you don't enjoy the two hours, you know, and see, they're saying that there's this unconscious thing that the fact that we're afraid of dying, actually, we don't live our lives the way we should. I'll give you a personal example in I've been a cancer survivor now for 14 years, and in 2014 and I'm healthy now, but you know, my doctor told me, you have two years left to live. And I saw got a second opinion. He said, No, that's optimistic. You don't have two years left to live, you know. So I wrote myself a creed, you know. But basically, you know something, these 700 years have been the best years of my life. My life is dealt out to me now in six months in treatment, good cancer. Well, you're good for six months. We don't, can't guarantee anything after that, so we don't. That makes for a great six months. No, you no longer take life for granted. You no longer take anything for granted. See when, when you when you don't accept mortality. Which is part of our human nature. It's the way God build us. Then we're there's going to be something wrong with our psyche. You know, now, when we're younger, you should think you're going to live forever. You get to an age where it's important to face your death, and it'll make your life richer. Otherwise, you're still gearing up to live. But plus, I wish them luck. They're not going to get 200 years, and if you do, they're not going to be great years anyway,

Joshua Johnson: 37:09

looking back at your earlier work, you know, looking back at the holy longing and sacred fire has your understanding of disciple. Ship matured as you've entered into this last final stage of reflection. Is there anything that surprised you? Is there anything that has matured looking back now from this vantage point? Well,

Ronald Rolheiser: 37:29

you know, I never asked myself that question. It's partly just off the cuff. I'd say no, because it kind of like you're growing. These three books are also a story of my own growth and life and so on, so that, you will. And they're written over a period of 25 years. I wrote the holy longing in 1997 I wrote sacred fire just a year or two ago, you know. So that's, that's 2530 years, you know. You know, I'd have to think a little bit to the question like, What do I see differently now than I saw, say, 25 years ago, or even 30 years before that, when I wrote a book called The Restless Heart, you know, like as a young person 30 years old, about struggling with youthful loneliness and so on, I guess it would still say everything I said there I would still stand behind it's not that I'd look back now. It's the holy longing while I wrote some stuff that was the young me and was immature. It may well be immature, but it was, it would still be immature, you know. But I haven't had, like, some breakthroughs of consciousness where I thought, No, I didn't realize that. I think probably the biggest piece is the cancer diagnosis the last 10 or 15 years where you're facing like for the last, certainly for the last since 2014 11 years. I see doctors every few months and they say, well, you're going to be it for another two months, or whatever. You know that that, I think has changed me and and put a different perspective to life.

Joshua Johnson: 38:59

Do you think that has changed the way that you follow Jesus in your life, or is it has it changed into like every day is a gift I'm gonna I'm going to receive the gift that God has given me. How do you think that has has shifted even your own discipleship journey.

Ronald Rolheiser: 39:19

No on first, you know, with the Jesus thing. You know I am praying now much more consciously to be ready to accept my death when he comes. You know that I want to do this with dignity, with faith, with whatever you know, like Paul says, To cross the finish line like, see, so I pray for that every day. And also, it's made me a whole left, a whole lot less scared of death. I'm, I, I'm scared of the process of dying, you know, but, but not of death itself, you know, like, I think that it's, it's made me, in my prayer, much more confident in Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit, and so that you almost look forward to what's going to be there. I don't look forward to the process of getting there, dying process, in any way, from cancer, whatever is. You know, in fact, sometimes we have a little joke like to say, like, how do you want to die? I want to die like Archbishop of Marana be shot in church. You know what? It's, it's, it's over in a second. You know, not die over two years of cancer and the body decaying and so on. But no, it's definitely brought me closer to Jesus and less afraid of death, more looking forward to meeting Jesus. And my prayer right now is a whole lot intentionally, like, make me ready for this when he comes now. Ivan Illich, the great philosopher, he once said, he said, I always pray, said, and let me not miss the hour of my death. Amen, I don't want to miss the hour of my own death, you know. So that's part of my daily prayer now. But the center there is Jesus, you know, kind of like, what

Joshua Johnson: 41:06

do you think the role of beauty and silence and contemplation play in learning to see the world with elder eyes?

Ronald Rolheiser: 41:15

Very important question, like beauty. I just want to call him on that. You know, remember dufte? Yes, he said, the world will be saved by beauty. So let's look at beauty first. Beauty, you know, we say God has four attributes, four transcendent therapeutics. God is one true, good and beautiful. So they go by by beauty you are actually you're honoring God. God is the author. So that's important. Silence and completion are important, but they need a nuance. Okay, let me talk about that. You know, Meister Eckhart, a famous, famous mystic, once said nothing so much approximate the language of God, as does silence. He said, It's God's language, and there's some truth in that. You know, there are certain things of soul, inner work you can only do in silence. But and while, particularly the Catholic Church and mystics have always pushed that, I say. Have to also be careful with that, and that is that we need two things. We need silence and we need community. So that silence can make you, make you deep, but it can make you deep in sick ways. The Unabomber lived in silence can also make you weird. See your interaction with people grounds you you know, you know it basically they it keeps your sanity going. So you need a healthy need a healthy interplay with family, with community and so on. And then you need to be able to pull away. You know, I worry today about our culture, where someone's got a phone in their hand, 24 hours a day, you know, like they're grounded, but there's no depth and so on. I push silence, but with that caveat thing, but also make sure you have good interaction. Too much, too much silence and aloneness can make you weird and and too little of it can make you superficial and and without depth, that's the paradox. You need silence for depth. You need community for grounding, for sanity. I

Joshua Johnson: 43:28

mean, we live in an individualistic society. We see isolation of older people there. Feels like the community aspect is is more difficult to engage with in those times the silence is probably easier to engage with. How can people outside of the individual person? How can I see personally, people that need community, that have been silent for too long, and move towards them. How do we as a culture move towards each other in community instead of being isolated and alone and individual?

Ronald Rolheiser: 44:06

Well, it comes back to your other question again about you're right. It's just but today, our problem is we've isolated these things. We're doing apartheid. The young live in one planet, the old live on another planet. So I think we need to do some kind of proactive, intentional, you know, setting up things, whether it's a Bible study or dance night or something where you it's going to have to be programmed, because it's not happening naturally anymore. It used to happen naturally. It live in families and through the participants. Participating in family life, you know, now they're given a cat to smoke in there and so on, which is better than nothing. Even like in ministry, did you get young people to volunteer to go in to spend a few hours with these people and so on? As a ministry,

Joshua Johnson: 44:58

you did say, and we've been talking about this a lot in this conversation, that faith at the end is not clarity but surrender, the willingness to stand inside the darkness and call it light. So my question is, If faith is finally about surrender, the end, what does it mean to live and to die with her hands open.

Ronald Rolheiser: 45:19

Okay, you got a lot of pieces there. First of all, let's start surrender. I work back to faith. You know, you know, I'm struck by the verb that they use when Jesus died in Mark's gospel, Mark says, Then he bowed his head and he gave over his spirit. Surrender is different than resignation. See, resignation of despair. The bully has you penned. And finally you say, I give up. See, that's not surrender. Surrender is you're giving it over in love, and that's the final move that you got to give yourself over. But notice you are giving yourself over. Nobody's twisting your arm, nobody's it's very important to distinguish surrender from resignation. I'm all left nothing to live for. I may as well give it over. You know, somebody said, No, that's, that's a, that's an act of faith. You know. Now, the second thing about faith, and again, this is a piece we try to work with, a big piece with, with forest dwelling, and that is, I think we, we often mistake faith for the images we have of faith. Give you one of my little analogies here. I always say, imagine this. Imagine you're a mother fish at the bottom of the ocean 300 feet down, and these baby fish come up and say, Mother, what is this water? Everybody talks about, okay, you're 300 feet down. And how do you give them? Well, today, the mother fish could set up a power projector and show slides of water, Niagara Falls, that water tap or rain. And you know, these fish would be very intrigued with these pictures of water. But notice that's not water. Those are pictures of water. You know, at a certain point, the mother fish would turn off the projectors. You know, you've seen the pictures. That's not water. Just sit in the water, let it flow through you, you know. See, that's faith. See, we can, can confuse faith with the pictures and with fervor, I believe it, I believe it, and so on. It's not. That that's bad, but that's that's not faith. Faith, of faith is it's something beyond that, and that is why, precisely, sometimes you get these dark nights where said, I don't know where they believe anymore. You know something, they've shut the projector off. You know, all the pictures, the images we have of God, are not God. They're pictures. So I'll ask you this question, or ask you your people, you know, imagine you come home from some church service or something, and you just, you really feel like you'd walk on water. Jesus is real, and so on. And some other night, you wake up in bed and you stare in the ceiling. I don't know if I can believe in God. I can't imagine God existing, you know. Does that mean once you have a strong faith and once you have a weak faith, though, it means once you have a strong imagination, and once you have a weak imagination, see, see, God is ineffable. You can't imagine God. You can't speak. You can know God. And so as we get older and mature, a lot of times, the fervor the images become less helpful to us, and it can be very disturbing. Say, God, you know, I used to have, I used to be able to walk on water, and now I can't. You know? No, you're moving more into the projectors shutting off. Now you're just sitting in the water. As Paul says, In Him, we live and move and breathe and have our being. Or the Luke said that as we get older, we have to understand the dynamics of faith. You know, the mystics call that dark nights, where we're basically, and that's the opposite of fervor. No fervor is real. It's good. You know, like, usually when, when people first, when we're young, or we're converting and so on. You can get some periods and and they say, God gives that to you, that's, that's, that's to get you started. That's your little honeymoon in prayer and so on, where you can walk on water. And then the longer you go, the more at a certain point that disappears. And now you're just visiting your mother, and you trust the deep things are happening on the surface. And then, like your wife, you just show up. You show up, you know, and, and, and that's the depth of it, you know, we tend to confuse faith with the imagination. I can imagine God. I can picture God. Well, first of all, you can't, because God is infinite. I always tell students, I'll tell you what think of this. Think of the highest number it's possible to count to. And tell me what it is, you'll never get there. You know, see, infinity. It has no beginning, has no end. So you can't circumscribe it. To think God, you'd have to circumscribe so theologians say you can know God. You know God, but you can't think God. We can think of images of God. We can have a slide projector on and say, this is this and but always this, this is a PowerPoint presentation. Even scripture is a PowerPoint presentation. And inspired one about God. God is still like faith is underneath that.

Joshua Johnson: 50:17

And so this conversation has been incredible. I have a couple of quick questions here at the very end that I like to ask. And one is, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give

Ronald Rolheiser: 50:29

good question I would give this, stay with it. Stay with it. Whatever a commitment. You know, make a commitment. First of all, make some commitment. You know, today, a lot of people struggle to make a commitment, you know, like commit, whether it's to a marriage to whatever, and then, unless it's completely dysfunctional. So stay with it. Stay with it. Just don't leave it because, well, it's not fulfilling and so on. Keep showing up. Keep showing up in your faith and so on. Keep going to church, keep praying, not because it's meaningful, because that means something. It's meaningful itself, you know, like, stay with the rituals. Ritual has held me, you know, that's why I love so much. Like that line from Bonhoeffer, he said, you know, your love is going to save, save your marriage. Your marriage is going to save your love, you know, see, and your fervor is going to save your faith. You know, the rituals are going to save your faith. Going to church on Sunday is a ritual, you see, doing it, you know, you know, and that's going to save us. And some Sundays, you're in it. Some Sundays, you're not back, you're forth.

Joshua Johnson: 51:37

Yeah, that's so good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend.

Ronald Rolheiser: 51:42

I'm always reading something right now, I'm actually reading the letters of Dorothy Day, the great Catholic Booker thing you know, which you know, pushes me in terms of the poor. I'm an academic, and I teach that you teach theology students. And, you know, we have street people come here and I give them $20 but I don't dollars, but I don't think that's what Jesus meant about having real contact with the poor and so on. But books that theologically, let me recommend a couple. Are you familiar with it with a which is they're popular and they're deep. So they're popular and they're both. They're not simplistic. Are you familiar with a woman called Rachel Held Evans Evangelical, sadly, died at age 37 or 38 you know, from a reaction to an antibiotic, but, but her books, I would recommend to anybody of any denomination. You know, she's good as a Roman Catholic, I also like Richard Rohr, Richard Rohr writings and so on, probably just in terms of books that that have some depth and are accessible. You know, there's no sense of like some of the theologians. You know, they say read Karl Barth. When you can't read Karl Marx, you need courses on these people, but I'd say read Rachel How Evans, you know,

Joshua Johnson: 53:01

excellent well. And same for the light. Your new book is available anywhere books are sold you go. What hope do you have for this book? What would you like to like leave your readers with?

Ronald Rolheiser: 53:13

Well, first of all, it was one of it's part of a trilogy. I want people have a structure for spirituality. But with this, it's as we're aging, there isn't a lot out there for us. You know, otherwise, you know they're kicking you out of the culture that you know they're trying to get you into a seniors home. They're, you know, all your power and stuff is gone and so on. Unless you're like, those can be the best years of your life and and you can still, it's interesting Abraham and Isaac. I mean, Abraham and Sarah, they had their real kid when he was 100 and she was 90. Maybe you're real Isaac, maybe when you really need to give to the world, Josh, it's only going to happen when you're 80 years old. You know, like, right now, you're doing some partly good work, but who knows what the 80 year old Joshua can give to the world. You know, so read the book and contemplate what's going to be your post menopausal pregnancy. Or how am I going to or just more practically, how am I going to resist the getting angry and bitter as I get older. How can I understand aging so I don't get angry and bitter as they get older and get more marginalized? Excellent.

Joshua Johnson: 54:28

Well, Father Ron, well, thank you for this conversation. It was it was fascinating. It was deep. I really prayed that a lot of people would get something out of it, so that they can actually surrender, give their deaths away, that could they could move into a place where they could grow transparently so the light can shine through. So thank you so much. It was

Ronald Rolheiser: 54:49

wonderful. Thanks to and prayers for your own work. Joshua, thank you. Okay. You you.