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Thank you. Many Voices, One Journey. Sounds True.com. You're listening to Insights at the Edge. Today I speak with Father Richard Roar. I wasn't quite

sure what to call Father Roar, but he said,

please just call me Richard. Richard is a Franciscan priest and prolific author. Sounds True recently

released a six-part audio learning series with Richard entitled The Art of Letting Go, the Wisdom of St. Francis, in which Richard explores the life and teachings of this beloved figure and offers ways we can incorporate his wisdom in our lives.

In this Insights at the Edge episode, Richard and I spoke about the relevance of St. Francis in today's world,

what he calls a spirituality of subtraction,

Jesus' teachings on non-duality,

and what is genuine contemplation?

Here's my conversation with Father Richard Roar.

Richard, to begin with, I'd love to meet you the person when you were a teenager,

and you were somehow drawn to join the Franciscan order.

What was happening inside of you and what forces were happening in your life that such an event would happen?

Wow. Let's see if I can go back there. I'm 66 now, so that's some years ago.

But, you know, I was what we would call in the Catholic Church, a pre-Vatican-2 Catholic. That was the great council that tried to reform the church, update the church in the early 1960s. I was born in the early 40s, so grew up very much in what we would call the old church,

where we didn't even have the distinctions of liberal and conservative.

We were all happily conservative together.

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