Backdoor Prophets

Prophets have a hard lot, at least authentic prophets, anyway.

There are plenty of folks -- especially loud, religious folks -- who run around spouting this thing and spewing that thing, blasting this person and that cause with a pious veneer, anxious to tear down and strip away without any notion of building up or making solid. I'm not talking about those self-appointed, so-called "prophets."

Authentic prophets, if the Hebrew scriptures are any indication, usually moved into that vocation kicking and screaming. They didn't want to proclaim the difficult message God had given them. They knew how people would react. They knew how messengers get ostracized for their message. Yet they stepped into the task, anyway.

Prophets are not afraid of speaking to power. They have a heightened sensitivity to the plight of those on the underside of life. They speak forthrightly to social issues and structures that keep people bound up unjustly. They deal often in the realms of politics, economics and social systems. Their words rub those who have the wrong way, even as they are celebrated by those who have not.

So I read with interest when Richard Rohr used the word "prophet" to describe a Benedictine of the past generation. From what I can tell, the man he called "prophet" was not involved in social issues. Among his many books, he didn't speak to larger, global concerns. He taught prayer and meditation. In fact, his entire life and ministry was given to a life of prayer and to leading others into prayer.

And perhaps that is where he was most prophetic. I think he knew that the deeper prayer of meditation and contemplation is transformative. Over time those practices re-make the interior of a person. They change the way we see and interact with God, the way we view ourselves and other people, and the stance we have toward the created world. I've witnessed it over and over . . . the journey into prayer is a transformative journey.

And transformed people transform the world.

Prayer alters our politics. It changes how we feel about economic systems. It adjusts our loyalty systems. It re-shapes our allegiances. It changes how we relate to the ones called by the world "the little and the least." It shifts our social agendas.

Sometimes people flippantly say, "Prayer changes things!"

YES, prayer changes ME! Prayer changes US!

I'm guessing that this man was a "prophet" in a backdoor kind of way . . . not your usual, in-your-face prophet, but a prophet who knew that if you taught people to pray deeply, to meditate, and to offer themselves in contemplative openness to God, they would be so shaped inwardly that they would carry healing and peace, mercy and love into the world.

He was a prophet by indirection, a prophet who addressed the hurt of the world indirectly, inwardly, through the back door, equipping a vast legion of persons who would have the inner drive and resources to bring God's light to the world.

It's the kind of backdoor, indirect work that Emily Dickinson called "telling all the truth, but telling it slant."


Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

(Emily Dickinson)