Quotes from Richard Rohr

Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all.

We have spent centuries of philosophy trying to solve the problem of evil, yet I believe the much more confounding and astounding issue is the problem of good. How do we account for so much gratuitous and sheer goodness in this world? Tackling this problem would achieve much better results.

The shape of evil is much more superficiality and blindness than the usual list of hot sins. God hides, and is found, precisely in the depths of everything.

Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self.

Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God—but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control. You tend to create a God who is just like you—whereas it was supposed to be the other way around.

Only hour by hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.

all mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning.

Remember, mystery isn't something that you cannot understand—it is something that you can endlessly understand! There is no point at which you can say, "I've got it." Always and forever, mystery gets you!

The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong!

Jesus praised faith and trust – even more than love. It takes a foundational trust to fall, or to fail, and not to fall apart.

Basically, the first half of life is writing the text, and the second half is writing the commentary on that text.

As any good therapist will tell you, you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge, and what you do not consciously acknowledge will remain in control of you from within, festering and destroying you and those around you.

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.

We are usually on bended knee before laws or angrily reacting against them, both immature responses.

Right words make all of us feel falsely important. Right action keeps all of us forever beginners.

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.

There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. For Jesus and for his followers, the crucifixion became the dramatic symbol of that necessary and absurd stumbling stone.

True spirituality is not taught, it's caught. Once our sails have been unfurled to the Spirit, henceforth our motivation for the journey toward holiness and wholeness is immense gratitude.

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.

Love is not something you do; love is someone you are. It is your True Self.8 Love is where you came from and love is where you're going. It's not something you can buy. It's not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit—or what some theologians name uncreated grace.

In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good.

Our starting place was always original goodness,10 not original sin. This makes our ending place—and everything in between—possessing an inherent capacity for goodness, truth, and beauty.

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.

If you try to assert wisdom before people have themselves walked it, be prepared for much resistance, denial, push-back, and verbal debate.