Quotes from Richard Rohr

This marvelous anthology of books and letters called the Bible is all for the sake of astonishment! It's for divine transformation (theosis), not intellectual or "small-self" coziness.

We have been shown how to fight hate without becoming hate ourselves. We have been given a Companion and a Friend and not just a good idea. We have been given joy in the midst of failure, and not just a way of winning or being right.

As Bill Plotkin, a wise guide, puts it, many of us learn to do our "survival dance," but we never get to our actual "sacred dance.

The Dalai Lama said much the same thing: "Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.

To take the Scriptures seriously is not to take them literally. Literalism is invariably the lowest and least level of meaning. Most

It is the egoic illusion of our own perfect rightness that often allows us to crucify others.

to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us. If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything-is-beautiful attitude, we are in fact going to be trapped by the darkness because we

greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection.

Without meaning we are surely less than human and deeply discontented. Most meaning is largely preconceptual and not subject to words, and in that sense it is nonrational, but meaning lies in wait to appear and grab onto the right symbol in the right moment.

often the rich, the religious, and the self-sufficient know nothing about self-surrender. Jesus

I believe the contemplative mind is the mind of Christ.

Scholars say that ceremonies normally confirm and celebrate the status quo and deny the shadow side of things (think of a Fourth of July parade), whereas true ritual offers an alternative universe, where the shadow is named (think of a true Eucharist). In the church, I am afraid we mostly have ceremonies.

This resistance to change is so common, in fact, that it is almost what we expect from religious people, who tend to love the past more than the future or the present.

I doubt if you can see the image of God (Imago Dei) in your fellow humans if you cannot first see it in rudimentary form in stones, in plants and flowers, in strange little animals, in bread and wine, and most especially cannot honor this objective divine image in yourself.

Likewise, an intellectual belief that Jesus rose from the dead is a good start, but until you are struck by the realization that the crucified and risen Jesus is a parable about the journey of all humans, and even the universe, it is a rather harmless—if not harmful—belief that will leave you and the world largely unchanged.

Over time, we move beyond a dualistic view of God being "up there" while we are "down here" to a vision where God is up there, down here, in others, and within ourselves, all at the same time. "We are all en Cristo" (page 43). In taking this view, we start to see that all things are sacred, including the masks we wear, the shadows we seek to hide, the wounds we carry, and the parts of ourselves we consider profane. Every thing is sacred.

Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Most

Clearly, you are participating in a Love that's being given to you. You are not creating this. You are not generating this. It is being generated through you and in you and for you. You are participating in something larger than yourself and you are just allowing it and trusting it for the pure gift that it is.

All societies are addicted to themselves and create deep codependency on them.

Until and unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, conflict, or relationship that you cannot "manage," you will never find the True Manager. So, God makes sure that several things will come your way that you cannot manage on your own.

Love is a paradox. It often involves making a clear decision, but at its heart, it is not a matter of mind or willpower but a flow of energy willingly allowed and exchanged, without requiring payment in return.

You eventually have to return there to get most ordinary jobs done, but even those you will now do in a less compulsive or driven way.

A true believer is eating what he or she is afraid to see and afraid to accept: The universe is the Body of God, both in its essence and in its suffering.

The very meaning of the word universe is to "turn around one thing." I know I am not that one thing. There is either some Big Truth in this universe, or there is no truth that is always reliable; there is we hope, some pattern behind it all (even if the pattern is exception!), or it begins to be a very incoherent universe, which is what many postmodern people seem to have accepted. I just can't.