2006年NPR美国国家公共电台十二月-Utterly Humbled by Mystery

I believe in figuring out my own way to do things.
I believe in the power of numbers.
I believe in barbecue.
Well, I believe in friendliness 1.
I believe in mankind.
This I Believe.

For our series This I Believe we hear today from Richard Rohr. He was ordained 2 as a Franciscan priest 36 years ago. Father Rohr lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the center for action and contemplation which he founded. Here's our series curator, independent producer Jay Allyson.

A priest thinks about belief every day. When asked to summarize his conviction in a short statement, Father Richard Rohr said he had to peel away layer after layer until he got to the center. Then, he wrote quickly. Here is Richard Rohr with his essay for This I Believe.

I believe in mystery and multiplicity. To religious believers, this may sound almost pagan, but I don't think so. My very belief and experience of a loving and endlessly creative God has led me to trust in both. I've had a good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world. This life journey has led me to love mystery, and not to feel the need to change it or make it unmysterious. This has put me at odds 4 with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything. Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity 5. "Hints and guesses" as T.S.Eliot would say. I often spend the season of Lent in a hermitage, where I live alone for the whole forty days. And the more I am alone with the Alone, the more I surrender to ambivalence 6, to happy contradictions and seeming inconsistencies, in myself and almost everything else, including God. Paradoxes 7 don't scare me any more.

When I was young I couldn't tolerate such ambiguity. My education had trained me to have a lust 8 for answers and explanations. Now at age 63, it’s all quite different. I no longer believe this is a quid pro 3 quo universe. I have counselled too many prisoners, worked with too many failed marriages, faced my own dilemmas 9 too many times and been loved gratuitously 10 after too many failures. Whenever I think there's a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say "only" or "always", someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like principles of uncertainty 11 in dark holes. They're willing to live inside of imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution, clarity while thinking that we are people of faith. How strange that the very word "faith" has come to mean its exact opposite! People who have really met the holy are always humble 12. It’s the people who don’t know who usually pretend that they do. People who have had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly 13 humbled 14 before mystery. They are in awe 15 before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity 16 and depth and a love which is incomprehensible to the mind. It is a litmus test for authentic 17 God experience and is quite, sadly, absent from much of our religious conversation today.

My belief and comfort is in the depth of mystery, which should be the very task of religion.

Richard Rohr with his essay for This I Believe. We welcome statements of personal conviction from everyone. You can contribute yours and find all the essays that have been submitted at our website npr.org. For This I Believe, I'm Jay Allyson
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Franciscan
A member of a religious mendicant 18 order founded by Saint Francis of Assisi in 1209 and now divided into three independent branches.
圣方济各会修士或修女：1209年由圣方济各建立、现已分作三个独立分支的一宗教行乞修道团的成员
adj.（形容词）
Of or relating to Saint Francis of Assisi or to the order founded by him.
圣方济各的：属于或关于圣方济各或他建立的修道团的
hermitage
偏僻的寺院
Lent is a season
Lent is a season of soul-searching and repentance 19. It is a season for reflection and taking stock. Lent originated in the very earliest days of the Church as a preparatory time for Easter, when the faithful rededicated themselves and when converts were instructed in the faith and prepared for baptism. By observing the forty days of Lent, the individual Christian 20 imitates Jesus' withdrawal 21 into the wilderness 22 for forty days. All churches that have a continuous history extending before AD 1500 observe Lent. The ancient church that wrote, collected, canonized, and propagated the New Testament 23 also observed Lent, believing it to be a commandment from the apostles. (See The Apostolic Constitutions, Book V, Section III.)
The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings, such as love and hate, toward a person, an object, or an idea.
ambivalence
矛盾情绪，双重人格：对人、对物或对观点的相对立态度或感情的共存，如爱和恨
quid pro quo
An equal exchange or substitution.
替代物：一种平等的交换或替代