Clare protects and offers us a contemplative spirituality for both women and men, for celibates and partnered, for extroverts and introverts (although, I admit, more for introverts), for people with souls and bodies, and even people both Christian and non-Christian. Using our “beyond the birdbath” metaphor, Clare’s kind of wisdom helps us take flight in a very different way. Her life was so uncluttered, with such depth and clarity in choosing and facing human limitation, that she created a lifestyle that made both depth and divine encounter highly possible, emotionally necessary, and normally inevitable. That would summarize my admiration of her and her chosen lifestyle, and why she ends up grounding the whole Franciscan enterprise in truth and in depth.
—from the book Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
by Richard Rohr
