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If You’re Not Living On The Edge…
Where do you want to live: where evil hides? or where creativity thrives?
“Evil can hide in systems much more readily than in individuals.”
Richard Rohr writes this in reference to Francis and Clare of Assisi, who he says “found both their inner and outer freedom by structurally living on the edge of the inside of church and society”.
I feel that this edge-ness has a lot to do with where we are as a world right now, in relation to racial justice, COVID, and climate change. I will attempt to explain.
Rohr goes on to say:
“By “living on the edge of the inside” I mean building on the solid Tradition (“from the inside”) from a new and creative stance where you cannot be co-opted for purposes of security, possessions, or the illusions of power (“on the edge”).”
In other words, they had one foot in each of the two worlds: they had one foot in the old order, because if they left that order entirely, they couldn’t be a force for change. But they also had one foot in the unknown realm of newness, outside of the status quo, from which they could objectively see the strengths but also very much the weaknesses of the old system, and start to imagine a better new world.
