The Reality of What Is

"We don't live in our bodies, where we can feel our own feelings and trust or own experience. Instead, through commercials and advertisements and jingles we live in images and appearances. We let the media and passing material objects define success. The self, therefore, is always outside, and we live in constant dissatisfaction. What a tortured way to live! We suffer, quite frankly, from a lack of contact with reality; we lack what philosophers call ontological mooring. Contemplation provides that mooring, that contact; it is an appreciation of and response to what is real right here and now.

Until we break the material world's hold on us and reestablish contact with reality, we will never be happy. We will live our lives through these beautiful models that we can't live up to, with their perfect bodies, trim waistlines, even teeth, and zit-free faces! What a terrible tragedy that people should be seduced into imitating and desiring what we are not and can never be."

(Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999, 2003, p. 70-71)

Preoccupation with Performing

"In recent years I have become more and more aware of my own tendency to think that the value of my presence depends on what I say or do. And yet it is becoming clearer to me every day that this preoccupation with performing in fact prevents me from letting God speak through me in any way he wants, and so keeps me from making connections prior to any special word or deed." (Henri Nouwen, The Living Reminder, New York: Seabury Press, 1977, p. 30)