Standing in Solidarity  🔗 **Source:** [Standing in Solidarity](https://cac.org/daily-meditations/standing-in-solidarity/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [contemplative-spirituality, theology-of-suffering, richard-rohr, liberation-theology, deconstruction] > author: Richard Rohr, OFM > source: Center for Action and Contemplation — Daily Meditations > reference: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/standing-in-solidarity/ > date created: 2026-08-31 16:40 > --- > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > # 🏷️ Title: Standing in Solidarity > ## 🧭 Table of Contents > - [📝 Summary](#-summary) > - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) > - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) > - [📚 References](#-references) > - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) > - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) > - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) > - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) > - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) > - [❓ Questions](#-questions) > - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) > - [💡 Implications](#-implications) > - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) > - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) > - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > ### 🔗 References > - Source: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/standing-in-solidarity/ (Monday, 2026-08-31, 577 words) > - Weekly theme: Becoming Disciples · Annual theme: Good News for a Fractured World > - Companion video referenced in the email: Randy Woodley, "How Western Christianity Got It Wrong" — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC5gwnDGBGk > ## 📝 Summary > **What this is.** A 577-word Daily Meditation from Richard Rohr, OFM, assembled by CAC editors from two of his books. Its argument: the cross is not a transaction that satisfies an angry God, but a voluntary act of solidarity — God entering human suffering rather than observing it from outside. Discipleship, on this reading, is accepting an invitation into that same solidarity. > **The central distinction.** Rohr separates *pain* from *suffering*. Pain is the given — "the rent we pay for being human." Suffering is what resistance, denial, and the sense of wrongness add on top. He calls suffering "usually optional." > **Why it matters.** This is a compact statement of the contemplative, post-punitive strand of Christian theology that has become the main off-ramp for people leaving high-demand or triumphalist traditions. It relocates the meaning of the cross from penal substitution to divine solidarity, and it relocates the meaning of "Christian" from belonging to transformation. For anyone whose formation was in a victory-and-dominion framework, this is close to the exact inversion of that theology. > **Stakeholders.** Readers in deconstruction or reconstruction; UCC and mainline congregations working with contemplative material; anyone doing pastoral care around suffering; and — read critically — anyone who has been harmed by a "we're all sinners equally" flattening of accountability. > **Risks, named plainly.** Two lines in this meditation can wound if applied without care. "Suffering is usually optional" can land as blame on people whose suffering is chronic illness, disability, poverty, or abuse — conditions where the suffering is structural, not attitudinal. And God being "on the side of suffering wherever it is found, including... both the victims and the oppressors" sits in real tension with liberation theology's preferential option for the poor. Rohr knows this is contested — he says so — but he does not engage the counterargument, and in a devotional register the assertion passes unexamined. > **Bottom line.** Genuinely nourishing on the cross as solidarity rather than transaction, and honest enough to admit its hardest claim "pleases very few people." Read the pain/suffering distinction as an invitation, never as a diagnosis handed to someone else. The both-sides line needs a companion text, not a rebuttal. > ## 📖 Main Content > The meditation moves through four claims. > **First, a definition.** Rohr distinguishes pain from suffering. Pain is physical discomfort and, more broadly, the unavoidable cost of embodied existence. Suffering is the additional layer produced by resistance, denial, and the judgment that this should not be happening. He grounds this autobiographically — "I know that is very true for me" — which matters, because it frames the distinction as testimony rather than as a rule for others. > **Second, a redefinition of discipleship.** Accepting the invitation into solidarity with the world's pain is "what it means to be 'a Christian.'" Rohr is careful to make this non-coercive: it is "an option, a choice, a call, a vocation," and "we are totally free to say yes or no or maybe." He explicitly removes the transactional motive — "We do not have to do this to make God love us. That is already taken care of." The reason offered is reciprocal love, not credit. > **Third, the theological core.** The "crucified God" reveals a God who is always on the side of suffering wherever it appears. Rohr extends this deliberately past the comfortable boundary: to wounded troops on both sides of every war, and to both victims and oppressors. He immediately concedes the reception — "frankly, this pleases very few people." He then names what he sees as organized resistance to suffering: the gun lobby, the permanent war economy, resistance to profit-sharing with the poor, and the demand for constant entertainment. He closes the section on courage, offering "cor-agere, an action of the heart" as its derivation. > **Fourth, the consequence.** If God participates in suffering rather than merely tolerating it, "that changes everything" — though Rohr limits the claim to "those who are willing to 'gaze' contemplatively." The transformation is not self-generated: "Jesus then does it in us, through us, with us, and for us," producing a "new creation." > The piece is structurally a devotional, not an argument. It asserts, testifies, and invites. That is the genre working as intended, and it is also why the contestable claims travel without their objections attached. > ### 🗒️ Notes > Not a transcript; no timestamps apply. Segmented by paragraph movement. > #### ¶1 — The pain/suffering distinction > Solidarity with the world's pain produces "various 'crucifixions.'" Suffering is located in resistance and denial rather than in the pain itself. "Pain is the rent we pay for being human, it seems, but suffering is usually optional." The cross is framed as voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering — an act of total solidarity. > #### ¶2 — Discipleship as free vocation > Accepting the invitation is what constitutes being a Christian. Emphasis on inner freedom and on the absence of any earning transaction. Baptism "into his death" and resurrection (Romans 6:3; Philippians 3:10–12) is contrasted against Christianity as "a mere belonging system" versus "a transformational system that will change the world." > #### ¶3 — The crucified God, and its cost > God sides with suffering universally — including combatants on both sides, and both victims and oppressors. Rohr concedes this "pleases very few people." Resistance to suffering is named as "an entire industry," instanced by the gun lobby, the permanent war economy, resistance to profit-sharing with the poor, and constant entertainment. Courage is offered as the foundational virtue, with the derivation "cor-agere, an action of the heart." > #### ¶4 — Divine participation, not observation > God "participating in human suffering, instead of just passively tolerating it and observing it" changes everything — qualified to those willing to gaze contemplatively. All humble suffering souls learn this; the Christian Scriptures named it publicly. > #### ¶5 — Not alone > Transformation comes through identification with "the Crucified One and crucified humanity," accomplished by Jesus "in us, through us, with us, and for us," yielding a "new creation" (Galatians 6:15). > #### Apparatus — sources, image, community > Two book citations, both hyperlinked to the CAC store. Image credit to Jenna Keiper, CAC campus, Albuquerque. A community story Becoming Disciples *Father Richard considers how Jesus’s choice to go to the cross reveals God’s solidarity with suffering:* When we try to live in solidarity with the pain of the world—and don’t spend our lives running from necessary suffering—we will encounter various “crucifixions.” Many say pain is physical discomfort, but suffering comes from our resistance, denial, and sense of injustice or wrongness about that pain. I know that is very true for me. This is the core meaning of suffering on one level or another, and we all learn it the hard way. Pain is the rent we pay for being human, it seems, but suffering is usually optional. *The cross was Jesus’s voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering as an act of total solidarity with the pain of the world.* Reflecting on this mystery of love can change our lives. I think the acceptance of that invitation to solidarity with the larger pain of the world is what it means to be “a Christian.” It takes great inner freedom to be a follower of Jesus. *His life is an option, a choice, a call, a vocation* for us, and we are totally free to say yes or no or maybe. *We do not have to do this to make God love us*. That is already taken care of. We do it to love God back and to love what God loves and how God loves! We either are baptized “into his death” and “resurrection” (Romans 6:3; Philippians 3:10–12), or Christianity is largely a mere belonging system, not a transformational system that will change the world. The “crucified God” as personified in Jesus revealed that *God is always on the side of* *suffering wherever it is found*, including the wounded and dying troops on both sides in every kind of war, and both the victims and the oppressors of this world; frankly, this pleases very few people. Our resistance to suffering is an entire industry now, perhaps symbolized by the total power of the gun lobby and the permanent war economy in the United States, the fear of any profit sharing with the poor, or the need to be constantly entertained. Maybe that is why some have said that the foundational virtue underlying all others is courage (*cor-agere*, an action of the heart). It takes immense courage to walk in solidarity with the suffering of others, and even our own. [1] *If God is somehow participating in human suffering, instead of just passively tolerating it and observing it*, that changes everything—at least for those who are willing to “gaze” contemplatively. All humble, suffering souls learn this from God, but the Christian Scriptures named it and revealed it publicly and dramatically in Jesus. We can’t do it alone at all, but only by a deep identification with the Crucified One and crucified humanity. Jesus then does it in us, through us, with us, and for us. Then we have become a “new creation” (Galatians 6:15), a true disciple of Jesus, and a very different kind of human being. [2] **References:** [1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, *[**Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi**](https://store.cac.org/products/eager-to-love-the-alternative-way-of-francis-of-assisi-new-edition-copy)* (Franciscan Media, 2024), 21, 22–23, 24. [2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, *[**Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality**](https://store.cac.org/products/things-hidden-scripture-as-spirituality-1)* (Franciscan Media, 2022), 202, 203, 223. **Image credit and inspiration**: Jenna Keiper, *[CAC Environment](https://cac.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2019-10-09_CACEnvironment_CAC_Keiper-15.jpg)*, 2019-10-09, Photograph, CAC campus, Albuquerque NM. *What does it look like to lay down burdens and die to ourselves while still on the path to becoming?*  , Standing in Solidarity, Richard Rohr, OFM, 01m1cv6hndh2rgd5wtkwzmm3md.