Quotes from Richard Rohr

We ended up spreading our national cultures under the rubric of Jesus, instead of a universally liberating message under the name of Christ.

All creation is groaning in one great act of giving birth. — ROMANS 8:22 I still have many things to say to you, but they would be too much for you now. — JOHN 16:12

You will know salvation through the mystery of forgiveness" (Luke 2:77).

We do not really know what it means to be human unless we know God. And, in turn, we do not really know God except through our own broken and rejoicing humanity.

Say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys as a penance" still perpetuated a de facto notion of a juridical exchange instead of any deep experience of healing forgiveness or unearned grace. You cannot deal with spiritual things in a courtroom manner. It does not achieve its purpose; it does not work at a deep level. We forgot our own unique job description as people of the Gospel and imitated courts of law instead.

We actually respond to one another's energy more than to people's exact words or actions. In any situation, your taking or giving of energy is what you are actually doing. Everybody can feel, suffer, or enjoy the difference, but few can exactly say what it is that is happening. Why do I feel drawn or repelled? What we all desire and need from one another, of course, is that life energy called eros! It always draws, creates, and connects things.

In many ways what we're seeing as we explore the Bible is an observing of the development of human consciousness and human readiness for God. That's why we do see some difference between the earlier and later Scriptures: There's been a development in consciousness. In

When you are concerned with either attacking or defending, manipulating or resisting, pushing or pulling, you cannot be contemplative. When you are preoccupied with enemies, you are always dualistic. You can take that as axiomatic: in most cases, you become a mirror image of both what you oppose and what you love (see Ephesians 5:14).

I believe that there are two necessary paths enabling us to move toward wisdom: a radical journey inward and a radical journey outward. For

In the Sermon on the Mount it's quite clear that these are the three great barriers we have to overcome to understand Jesus and the Reign of God. But in Christianity we have always been concerned with ecclesiological questions, sacramental questions, sacerdotal questions, and, needless to say, sexual questions – questions that Jesus practically never bothered with.

Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure.

Your image of God creates you. Your image of God creates you. Your image of God creates you.

Before transformation, sin is any kind of moral mistake; afterward, sin is a mistake about who you are and whose you are.

As physicist Albert Einstein frequently said in a different way: No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused the problem in the first place.

Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity but to change the mind of humanity about God. It is "simple and beautiful;" as Einstein said great truth would always have to be.

The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it. So

In short, good leaders must have a certain capacity for non-polarity thinking and full-access knowing (prayer), a tolerance for ambiguity ( faith), an ability to hold creative tensions (hope), and an ability to care (love) beyond their own personal advantage.

Someone has to make clear to us that homes are not meant to be lived in—but only to be moved out from.

They've gotten so used to these gatherings not being meaningful that they no longer know how to allow them to touch their heart or change their mind. The Holy Spirit is again the Missing Person of the Blessed Trinity.

the eyes with which you will look back at God will be the same eyes with which God first looked at you.

the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control.

The spiritual man in mythology, in literature and in the great world religions has an excess of life, he knows he has it, makes no apology for it, and finally recognizes that he does not even need to protect or guard it. It is not for him. It is for others. His life is not his own. His life is not about him. It is about God.

Stinking thinking" is the universal addiction. Substance addictions like alcohol and drugs are merely the most visible form of addiction, but actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality.

Governments encourage this pacification by various distractions, what used to be called "bread and circuses." They know it will keep us small, content, and uninterested in those "weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and good faith" (Matthew 23:23) that have attracted all great souls. A