Below is a recent book review I wrote for "Spiritual Directors International" (www.sdiworld.org)

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The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See
By Richard Rohr
New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009
181 pages, US $19.95

Typically when I receive a review copy it gets a quick flip-through and then a quicker toss into my “to-do in the coming weeks” pile.  The Naked Now was different.  About the time it arrived in my mailbox, Christmas lights were being packed in their January-November box, and my initial flipping bumped-up against the following line: “If you let people concentrate too much on special times, feasts, services, and seasons, they forget that it is always now and here when God happens.  They stop living in the naked now and wait for Christmas or Easter, Sunday morning, or some far-off future day of enlightenment (see Colossians 2:16-19)” p 76.  Suffice it to say, I was hooked into a reading session that devoured an afternoon and a third of Richard Rohr’s latest treasure.

No stranger to conversations of spiritual transformation, Rohr is renowned as a Franciscan priest, author, speaker and founder of “The Center for Action and Contemplation.” His work has girded much of what we know as the modern spiritual formation movement.  And yet, his latest work doesn’t cease to be one of fresh insight and innovative perspective.

“Unfortunately, so much religious seeking today is immature transcendence, dualistically spilt off from any objective experience of union with God, self, or others” (p 18), versus one where, “…God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea (p 23).  Presence is experienced in a participative way, outside the mind.  The mind by nature is intent on judging, controlling, and analyzing instead of seeing, tasting, and loving.  This is exactly why it cannot be present or live in the naked now…The overly verbal religion of the last five hundred years does not seem to understand this at all and tends to be afraid of any silence whatsoever.  It cannot follow Jesus and go into the desert for forty days, where there is nothing to say, to prove, to think, or to defend” (p 54). 

Rarely can a book captivate laymen as deeply as it does the staunchly religious.  And rarely can an author speak articulately, and confidently, regarding his/her belief, while simultaneously opening others to their own.  In The Naked Now, however, Richard Rohr does both.  “I am a man of one major idea,” he says, “immediate, unmediated contact with the moment is the clearest path to divine union; naked, undefended, and nondual presence has the best chance of encountering the Real Presence” (p 105).  Via ancient and modern approaches, and religious, scientific and psychological viewpoints as wide as the globe, Rohr has done a superb job of laying-out this path, and humbly inviting us to join.

Abbie Smith is an author, speaker and spiritual director based in Savannah, Georgia.  She holds degrees in Religion (Emory University ‘03) and Spiritual Formation and Soul Care (Talbot Seminary ’09) and can be contacted at abbiepsmith@hotmail.com.