Description
In the first hal f of life, we are naturally and rightly
preoccupied with establishing our identities – climbing,
achieving, and performing. But those concerns will not serve
us as we grow older and begin to embark on a further journey,
one that involves challenges, mistakes, loss of control,
broader horizons, and necessary suffering that shocks us out
of our comfort zones. Eventually, we need to see ourselves in
a different and more life-living way. This message of ‘falling
down’ – that is in fact moving upward – is the most resisted
and counterintuitive of messages in the world’s religions,
including and most especially Christianity.
In Falling Upward, Father Richard Rohr offers a new paradigm
for understanding one of the most profound of life’s
mysteries: how our failing can be the foundation for our
ongoing spiritual growth. Drawing on the wisdom from timehonoured
myths, heroic poems, great thinkers, and sacred
religious texts, the author explores the two halves of life to
show that those who have fallen, failed, or ‘gone down’ are
the only ones who understand ‘up’. We grow spiritually more
by doing it wrong that by doing it right.
With rare insight, Rohr takes us on a journey to give us an
understanding of how the heartbreaks, disappointments
and first loves of life are actually stepping stones to the
spiritual joys that the second half of life has in store for us.