The Divine Dance by Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell dives into the theology of The Trinity and how reexamining this aspect of Christianity can transform the way we live.
This is not just another book parroting the standard mainstream Christian doctrine of The Trinity and telling you to stop questioning and just believe it because it’s established doctrine. No. This book breaks open The Trinity to reveal profound insights into the nature of reality and relationships and shows how these insights can inspire a whole new way of living that is more compassionate and less judgmental than the way most Christians have been living.
Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest and the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the author of numerous books including many best-sellers in the genres of theology and spiritual practice. In 2011 he was named one of the most popular spirituality teachers in the world by PBS. His works emphasize what is called “orthopraxis” rather than orthodoxy. Which means that he focuses on teaching righteous living and transformative spiritual practices over propositional declarations of belief. So his books focus less on what you should believe than on how you should live. But he also shows how your beliefs affect your actions and how some beliefs produce more loving and more compassionate behavior than others. I agree with this approach whole-heartedly. Beliefs should be judged on their fruits not simply their origin. After all, the KKK was a biblically based organization. What you profess to believe doesn’t matter. What matters is how you treat your neighbor, your family, and even how you treat those who wrong you. That is a very Franciscan perspective but it’s also exactly what Christianity needs right now (and it also happens to be a much better way to spread the gospel!).
Just take a look at Matthew 25:31-46 if that sounds strange to you. It’s very straightforward. Treating people with compassion results in eternal life. The opposite results in eternal damnation.
This is why The Divine Dance doesn’t just focus on the three persons of The Trinity but on the relationship between them and how that relationship provides a beautiful model for our relationship with God, our interpersonal relationships and even our political structures. Richard never stops at the level of propositions he always takes it further and makes things practical. He praises the beauty and uniqueness of Christianity while being fully aware of its failures and shortcomings in the past. And, contrary to one reviewer who said that he rarely references scripture, the book is absolutely filled with footnotes (301 footnotes in a 217 page book to be exact) for references and further reading most of which are bible verses.
This book is on the leading edge of both philosophy and science as both contemplatives and physicists have recently begun realizing that “the foundational nature of reality is relational: everything is in relationship with everything else.” The relational nature of reality is seen at the micro level in the protons, electrons, and neutrons that make up atoms and at the macro level in the planets that revolve around stars in space and every level in between. And in The Divine Dance Richard shows how this fundamental aspect of reality was intuited by the early church fathers and codified in the theology of The Trinity.
It’s very easy as a Christian to focus too much on the one person of The Trinity who is most easy to understand, namely Jesus Christ, and forget about the other two, let alone the relationship between them. In this book Richard asks us to reforge our relationships with the rest of The Trinity and to join them in their “Divine Dance”. He reminds us that God is community, an all-vulnerable, all-embracing communion and that we are invited to join. We have a seat at the table waiting for us and we should leave a seat open for any and all who wish to join us.
He also ends the book with instructions for seven powerful Christian contemplative practices which would honestly make this a worthwhile book to buy if that were all it contained. The Christian tradition has produced many powerfully transformative spiritual practices but these have all been forgotten today. The lack of personal spiritual practices is one of my biggest critiques of modern Christianity but it doesn’t have to be that way. As he says, “The future of mature Christianity will be practice-based more than merely belief-based, which gives us nothing to argue about until will try it for ourselves.” We just have to rediscover the practices of our past and learn to incorporate them into our lives today and Richard is a master at this. The seven practices he teaches in The Divine Dance are:
- The Sign of the Cross
- Walking Meditation
- Mirroring the Divine Gaze
- Breathing the Divine Name
- Lectio Divina
- Invocation Using Names of God
- Wisdom Sparks (A dialogical communal practice.)
These seven form what professor John Vervaeke would call an ecology of practices for the cultivation of wisdom and meaning and I’ve created variations of a few of these myself. They are all very powerful, pulled from our Christian heritage, and together they form a very solid foundation for any modern contemplative. This is by far the most interesting and practical appendix to a book I’ve ever seen. DO NOT skip this section when you read the book. The whole book is a treasure but here lies the most valuable gems. As Richard says:
“Let’s be honest: reading about the divine dance that animates the cosmos and draws us in is nice, but to really be grounded in our daily experience, we have to put this into practice!”
If that sounds interesting to you and you’re interested in picking up a copy of The Divine Dance yourself, you can use the affiliate link below to purchase a copy and small portion of the money will go to me to help with the costs of hosting my website.
Thanks for reading and thank you for your support!
Love,
Justin
❤️🙏☀️
Link to purchase: The Divine Dance