In his book, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, Fr. Richard Rohr writes about personal transformation and how the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not simply a historical event but is a present reality in which we are all called to participate. As Paul writes, we are crucified with Christ and Christ was raised from the dead so that we too might walk in a new and transformed life. Rom 6:4-11. Particularly during the Easter season we are called to die to our old ego-centric “False Self”, and be resurrected and transformed into a new Christ-centric “True Self.” It is this Christ-centric True Self that is Rohr’s Immortal Diamond. This Eastertide study covers six weeks.
(Easter 2019)
Immortal Diamond – Introduction
This book is about transformation and how the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not simply a historical event, but, more importantly, is a present reality in which we can participate.
Immortal Diamond – The Invitation
Rohr speaks to us on Easter morning, in the light of the Resurrection of Christ in which death and evil and victimhood are left behind and a new, transformed, and resurrected creation has arisen.
Immortal Diamond – What is the True Self?
The discovery of our True Self is found in our discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven as described by Jesus.
Immortal Diamond – What is the False Self?, pt.1
The false self is the “trappings of the ego that we all use to get us through an ordinary day.” It is the identifying characteristics you share when meeting someone for the first time.
Immortal Diamond – What is the False Self? pt.2
One of the great falsehoods of the False Self is the individuality of the self – that each of us is wholly unique, special, superior, and self-adequate
Immortal Diamond – What Dies and Who Lives?
If your religion does not transform your consciousness to one of compassion, it is more of a problem than a solution.
Immortal Diamond – The Knife Edge of Experience
When we reduce Jesus to simply a historical figure, then we miss out on the greater understanding of the universal Christ in whom we all live, and move, and have our being.
Immortal Diamond – Thou Art Thou, pt.1
The existential gap between the Divine Reality and our Human Condition is closed only through the union of the Human and the Divine in Jesus Christ. And in the closing of that gap, we find our True Self.
Immortal Diamond – Thou Art Thou, pt.2
God’s agapic love to and for all things is also his erotic love of moving all things towards himself, and our agapic self-abandonment of all things to God is our erotic acquisition of him.
Immortal Diamond – It it is True, it is True Everywhere
Whenever we put forth a truth statement, that statement must be true to all people, at all times, in all places, and in all disciplines. Rohr’s basic point is that God’s pattern and presence is everywhere and so discoverable by anyone.
Immortal Diamond – Enlightenment at Gunpoint
For the Franciscans, the Cross doesn’t change God’s opinion of us (as damnable sinners who need to be redeemed), rather it changes our opinion about God (not as a deity demanding a sacrifice but as an eternally loving reality that desires communion with us despite our brokenness).
Immortal Diamond – Intimate with Everything
This intimacy with God is not a matter of us searching out and finding God, but simply allowing ourselves to be open to being found by God.
Immortal Diamond – Love is Stronger than Death
Like the Risen Christ, we may still bear wounds and will still encounter the problems of being in this world, however, the Divine Love is there to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things with and for us.