By Richard Rohr

Paperback, ISBN:9780281068913, SPCK Publishing, £11.99

Review by Keith Beasley

This is a book for anyone who has been thinking that life, what passes for humanity’s best endeavours, is somehow lacking. It is a book for anyone who has been asking “what’s wrong?” or “where next?”.

The basic premise of this carefully written and insightful publication is that life has, or at least should have, if we live it properly, two distinct phases. In the first we find ourselves as a physical, thinking human: we acquire wealth, possessions, a family, a home. We seek to belong somewhere, somehow, according to some set of principles, to which we are drawn.

Look around at human society and we see that pretty much everyone is totally engaged in this striving.

Richard Rohr argues convincingly that this is not and never has been our intended endpoint … and that is why so few of us feel deeply fulfilled.

Having achieved our first homecoming, to then find our deeper, inner, home, Richard explains, we then need to give it all up. We need to question its meaning and seek something more profound: our spiritual home, our soul.

Whilst Father Rohr, as a Franciscan priest, speaks from a Christian background, he intersperses quotes and wisdom from across faiths, the literary world, psychology, anthropology and other disciplines, that illustrate the perennial philosophy. That is, we all have within us a need to connect to that which is beyond us. This is, or should be, what the second part of our life is about: to belong, not as this, that or the other, but just to belong. But how many of us even begin such a journey?

Falling Upward remind us that we often learn most by failing. Inner growth, as opposed to material growth, tends to be about letting go, relinquishing control. Whist this book may be a pleasure to read, it being so well written, its message, whilst deeply resonant perhaps, may not be so easy to accept. The chapter Necessary Suffering, for example, offers many insights as to the painful truths (typically about the unreality of the first stage of life) that many of us will have to face. To do so, Rohr suggests, is the only way of moving on, even if it does bring with it a “bright sadness and a sober happiness”.

Perhaps anyone who does brave their second-stage journey is more akin to Homer’s Odysseus and other great heroes of ancient legends, to whom Rohr refers. At least this book gives us some indication as to what our journey is all about and what it might entail. We are most unlikely to find our true home in the quick fixes of modern society. But we may find them by falling upwards.

This book is packed with references and notes in the style of an academic text. But it would be a mistake to treat it as such though, as to do so would miss the whole point: this is not a book to be read intellectually but rather a guide for our personal development. The full depth, breadth and range of nuances within this text cannot be appreciated by reading it cover to cover in a few sittings. This is a book for reading a few pages and then reflecting for a few hours, days or weeks. Ideal, perhaps, for reflective study during Lent …