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WHAT
OTHERS ARE SAYING . . . .
To have met Fr. Richard and
to have heard his lecture was a valuable addition to my
life. Since then, my life has begun to change in different
ways. I have two sons, 15 and 17 years old, and I always
want their best, but I was sad about some of my acts in
the past. With your help, I wholeheartedly know now, that
all should be like it is. And so the communication with
my sons began to change positively and our relations get
deeper every day.
Especially in the term of initiation I
learned from you, that we adult men have to do it first.
It would be irresponsible, if we do not initiate our children,
especially boys, when they live in a world without enough
initiated men they can follow. So I will work primarily
on my own spiritual way, having hopes to be a good example
to my and other kids.
Thanks for your inspiration and your new
book. With all my love,
Erich (38), Vienna,
Austria
I´m mother of two sons, who were
born in 1987 and 1988. When our children grew up I again
felt this deep wound, a deep, but unanswered yearning within
me, as if something was “missing” – as
if there was something I couldn´t talk to with my
sons, but which I should talk about with them; something
which I shoul know, but which I didn´t – consciously
– know.
It was the same feeling of “something missing”
I so often had felt when I myself had been growing up; something,
I couldn´t give a name to, a longing I most of all
felt in the evenings, when looking for the stars in the
sky.
I was born in 1963 in Vienna, Austria; in a country that
was one of the losers of World War II and in a time in which
people liked to think of themselves as victims (of Hitler´s
aggression), being without any personal guilt, responsibility
or ability. I was educated in a strict, one-sided Catholic
way and I turned away from church after my mother died from
cancer and all the holy words of priests were not able to
give me help nor hold – I was 14, when my mother died,
I was 17, when I decided to search a different way, one
that would not betray my heart. In my world, at that time,
no one showed me how to cope with my emotions, with my fears,
with my experiences of serious disease and death.
Being a mother myself, and being again confronted with this
feeling of “something missing” I started searching
– we (my husband, too) started searching. The words
of Richard Rohr are a central answer to this search. Listening
to his speech in St.Pölten left me with deep gratitude,
for now, at last, my husband and I, as the parents of our
sons, succeeded in finding a way that can be gone by our
sons, so they choose to do so (my husband took part in a
vision quest in August 2004). A way that will lead them
to truth so they decide to not wanting to be deluded any
more.
The speech of Richard Rohr left me with
the happy and content feeling, that now, at last, the way
is open - that now, at last, the way is not buried any more.
Richard Rohr has explored the old rituals of manhood and
is now bringing them (back) into our Christian culture,
freeing the words of Jesus from their theoretical environment,
giving them depth and connection with our modern society,
making it clear what it means to be human. I can only say
“thank you” to Richard Rohr, that he followed
his own intuition and that he now finds the courage to speak
his experiences out loudly.
There is a deep truth in the words of Richard
Rohr, they are courageous and simple. I, too, do think,
that I as a human being and that we as human beings do have
responsibility of what we are doing and of how we are living.
I do believe, that we are no victims of the circumstances,
but that we have the choice of how we are living.
When I should find a single word for the
many thoughts and feelings, that were touched inside me
during the speech of Richard Rohr, than I would take out
his expression of a “New Reformation” that is
going on in our days: a movement inside the church, not
characterized by aggression, but by the deep wish to understand
the own religion. A movement wherein people don´t
use their energies to rebel against anybody or anything,
but where they use their energies to search ways, to find
ways; ways to cooperate, ways to find peace in the world
and in themselves.
Regina Hackl
Vienna, Austria
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