’ve been thinking about life’s teachable moments. When is it that we are likely to learn something that will change our lives? Under what circumstances can a person’s life be transformed?
Richard Rohr wrote about this in 2002 shortly after 9/11:
“Tragedy is the cauldron of transformation, the belly of Jonah’s whale. We are being chewed up and spit out on new shores ... It seems that pain is the only thing strong enough to destabilize the imperial ego and the cultural certitudes. When it comes, most of us will flee to quick formulas to avoid that destabilization. Suffering is, I am sorry to say, the most efficient means of transformation, and God makes full use of it whenever God can ... Much of our understandable anger is actually disguised and denied sadness. Life should not be this way, but it always has been for most of humanity. Now this absurdity, this paschal mystery, has reached the shores of North America. This is a teachable moment, par excellence.” (Richard Rohr in “Grieving as Sacred Space,” Sojourners, January-February, 2002.)