Quotes from Richard Rohr

Some form of alternative consciousness is the only freedom from these addictions and from cultural lies. If the universal addiction is to our own

Have you ever experienced the embarrassed and red-faced look of shame and self-recognition on the face of anyone who has been loved gratuitously after they have clearly done wrong? This is the way that God seduces us all into the economy of grace—by loving us in spite of ourselves in the very places where we cannot or will not or dare not love ourselves.

Human sympathy is the best and easiest way to open the heart space and to make us live inside our own bodies. God never intended most human beings to become philosophers or theologians, but God does want all humans to represent the very Sympathy and Empathy of God. And it's okay if it takes a while to get there. Our central message again bears repeating: God loves things by becoming them. We love God by continuing the same pattern.

Truly enlightened people see oneness because they look out from oneness, instead of labeling everything as superior and inferior, in or out. If you think you are privately "saved" or enlightened, then you are neither saved nor enlightened, it seems to me!

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Without a transcendent connection, each of us is stuck in his own little psyche, struggling to create meaning and produce an identity all by himself. When we inevitably fail at this-because we can't do it alone-we suffer shame and self-defeat. Or we try to pretend that our small universe of country, ethnicity, team, or denomination is actually the center of the world.

The ability to stand back and calmly observe my inner dramas, without rushing to judgment, is foundational for spiritual seeing.

Jesus is never upset with sinners. He is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners.

The biblical revelation is about awakening, not accomplishing. It is about realization and not performance principles.

Most of us tend to think of the second half of life

Mere obedience is far too often a detour around actual love. Obedience is usually about cleaning up, love is about waking up.

favorite metaphors. I love the image of fire, not for its seeming destructiveness, but as a natural symbol for transformation—literally, the changing of forms. Farmers, forestry workers, and Native peoples know that fire is a renewing force, even as it also can be destructive. We in the West tend to see it as merely destructive (which is probably why we did not understand the metaphors of hell or purgatory).

Church" in any form should be a "laboratory for resurrection

Contemplation is waiting patiently for the gaps to be filled in, and it does not insist on quick closure or easy answers.

It is the primary form of "dying to the self" that Jesus lived personally and the Buddha taught experientially. The growing consensus is that, whatever you call it, such calm, egoless seeing is invariably characteristic of people at the highest levels of doing and loving in all cultures and religions.

The most effective organizations, I am told, have both a "good boss" and a "bad boss," who work closely together. One holds us strongly, while the other speaks hard truth to us and sets clear goals and limits for us.

you must first "go into the tomb" with Jesus (Romans 6:4)

Once your life has become a constant communion, you know that all the techniques, formulas, sacraments, and practices were just a dress rehearsal for the real thing—life itself—which can actually become a constant intentional prayer.

Those who are too carefully engineering their own superiority systems will usually not allow it at all. It is much more done to you than anything you do yourself, and sometimes nonreligious people are more open to this change in strategy than are religious folks who have their private salvation project all worked out.

I wondered if God might have an easier time using animals to communicate who God is, since they do not seem as willful and devious as we are.

It is interesting to me that very clear passages describing both God's conditional love and also God's unconditional love are found in the same Scriptures...The only real biblical promise is that unconditional love will have the last word!

Am I willing to walk into the wilds of my interior life without knowing what I'll find?

this preoccupation with order, control

We have always made it hard for God to give away God for free.