Quotes from Richard Rohr

As the Dalai Lama says, "My religion is kindness; my only religion is kindness.

Every time you take in a breath, you are repeating the pattern of taking spirit into matter, and thus repeating the first creation of Adam. And every time you breathe out, you are repeating the pattern of returning spirit to the material universe. In a way, every exhalation is a "little dying" as we pay the price of inspiriting the world.

God is not bound by the human presumption that we are the center of everything, and creation did not actually demand or need Jesus (or us, for that matter) to confer additional sacredness upon it.

A.A. is the only group I know that is willing and honest enough to just tell people up front, "You are damn selfish!" Or, "Until you get beyond your massive narcissism you are never going to grow up.

Isn't that ironic? The point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by its finality in the cross, which is God's great act of solidarity instead of judgment.

working hypothesis, can move forward with theory, while

A heaven you created by yourself will never be heaven for long.

They look like the oppressors, but have no doubt they are really the oppressed.

Only the spacious, contemplative mind can see so broadly and trust so deeply. The small calculating mind wants either/or, win or lose, good or bad.

I further believe that a free and loving God would create things that continue to recreate themselves, exactly as all parents desire for their children.

light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything else.

Only later in life can we perhaps join with Thomas Merton, who penned one of my favorite lines, "If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted."7

The Crucified and Risen Christ uses the mistakes of the past to create a positive future, a future of redemption instead of retribution. He does not eliminate or punish the mistakes. He uses them for transformative purposes.

Allow yourself to be fully known, and you will know what you need to know.

Make ready for the Christ, whose smile like lightning, sets free the song of everlasting glory that now sleeps—in your paper flesh. Thomas Merton

Organized religion is an accountability system that holds your feet to the fire long enough to know what the issues really are, who God might just be, and what your own limitations might also be.

Faith in any religion is always somehow saying that God is one and God is good, and if so, then all of reality must be that simple and beautiful too.

There is no such thing as a nonpolitical Christianity. To refuse to critique the system or the status quo is to fully support it—which is a political act well disguised. Like Pilate, many Christians choose to wash their hands in front of the crowd and declare themselves innocent, saying with him, "It is your concern" (Matthew 27:25). Pilate maintains his purity and Jesus pays the price.

We must be honest and humble about this: Many people of other faiths, like Sufi masters, Jewish prophets, many philosophers, and Hindu mystics, have lived in light of the Divine encounter better than many Christians. And why would a God worthy of the name God not care about all of the children?

Like any true spiritual master, Jesus exposed the root causes of evil (almost always some form of idolatry), and did not waste time punishing the mere symptoms, as moralistic people usually do.

Christians shrunk our image of both Jesus and Christ, and our "Savior" became a mere Johnny-come-lately "answer" to the problem of sin, a problem that we had largely created ourselves.

Step 8 is a marvelous tool and technology for very practical incarnation, which keeps Christianity grounded, honest, and focused on saving others instead of just ourselves. "Anyone who claims to be in the light, but hates his brother or sister, is still in the dark" (1 John 2:9). Until religion becomes flesh, it is merely Platonic idealism instead of Jesus radicalism.

Without an inner life, our outer prayer will soon become superficial, ego-centered, and even counterproductive on the spiritual path.

I worry about "true believers" who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all, as Thomas the Apostle and Mother Teresa learned to do. People who are so certain always seem like Hamlet's