Quotes from Richard Rohr

our fear of death is actually our fear of God. If we resolve one, we normally resolve the other. To totally resolve the God issue would be to totally resolve the death issue. And we have the full wherewithal to do just that! That wherewithal we call Trinity, which is saying that God is an outpouring in one direction. God is only for and never against.

Stinking thinking' is the universal addiction." This is one of the most stunning, succinct, and profound sentences I've ever read. And this is indeed a book for anyone and everyone who cannot stop creating trances and numbness via alcohol, drugs, sex, workaholism, or toxic, obsessive thinking.

The incarnational worldview grounds Christian holiness in objective and ontological reality instead of just moral behavior.

God will always give you exactly what you truly want and desire. Desire deeply, desire yourself, desire God, desire everything good, true and beautiful.

True religion is always a deep intuition that we are already participating in something very good, in spite of our best efforts to deny it or avoid it.

There is only one thing more dangerous than the individual ego and that is the group ego.

if you believe Jesus's main purpose is to provide a means of personal, individual salvation, it is all too easy to think that he doesn't have anything to do with human history—with war or injustice, or destruction of nature, or anything that contradicts our egos' desires or our cultural biases.

Surely God was not just waiting for Orthodox Jews, Roman Catholics, and American evangelicals to show up, which is in the last nanosecond of known time.

In the practical order, we find our Original Goodness when we can discover and own these three attitudes or virtues deeply planted within us: A trust in inner coherence itself. "It all means something!" (Faith) A trust that this coherence is positive and going somewhere good. (Hope) A trust that this coherence includes me and even defines me. (Love)

So many of us accept either a successful or a negative self-image inside of a system of false images to begin with!

God takes away the shame we have by giving us back to ourselves—by giving us God! You don't get any better than that. Human love does the same thing. When someone else loves you, they give you not just themselves, but for some reason they give you back your own self, but now a truer and better self. This dance between the Lover and the beloved is the psychology of the whole Bible, which we will see poetically described in the wonderful single book, the Song of Songs.

If you don't walk into the seond half of your own life, it is you who does not want it.

God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change.

If our postmodern world seems highly subject to cynicism, skepticism, and what it does not believe in, if we now live in a post-truth America, then we "believers" must take at least partial responsibility for aiming our culture in this sad direction. The best criticism of the bad is still the practice of the better.

Wholeness and holiness will stretch us beyond our small comfort zone. How could they not? There are few in our religious culture who understand the necessity of mature internalised conscience. So wise guides are hard to find. You will have more Aarons building you golden calves than Moses leading you on any Exodus.

There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong "container" or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold. The first task we take for granted as the very purpose of life, which does not mean we do it well. The second task, I am told, is more encountered than sought; few arrive at it with much preplanning, purpose, or passion.

As we often tell newcomers at our meetings, give it a try—and if, after a month or so, you are not feeling happier and more peaceful, we will gladly refund your misery. And if you do give the path described in this book a try, buckle up, because Brother Rohr may just take you to places you've both avoided and longed for, to truth, union, joy, laughter, and, greatest of all, to your own precious self, here on earth with us, child of God. —Anne Lamott

Grace is always a punishment for us.

We are a "first-half-of-life culture," largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably most cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first half of their own development up to now

But it takes us much longer to discover "the task within the task," as I like to call it: what we are really doing when we are doing what we are doing.

There is a good and needed "narcissism," if you want to call it that. You have to first have an ego structure to then let go of it and move beyond it.

I'll say it again: God loves things by becoming them.

In any situation, your taking or giving of energy is what you are actually doing.

Thérèse, almost counter to reason, says: "Whoever is willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to herself, that person is a pleasant place of shelter for Jesus.