Richard Rohr Quotes

Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.

...religion either produces the very best people or the very worst.

...organized religion is no longer good news for most people, but bad news indeed. It set us up for the massive atheism, agnosticism, hedonism, and secularism we now see in almost all formerly Christian countries.

Faith for Jesus is the opposite of anxiety. If you are anxious, if you are trying to control everything, if you are worried about many things, you don’t have faith, according to Jesus. You do not trust that God is good and on your side. You’re trying to do it all yourself, lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.

Jesus was trying to present value of a life of vulnerability in which one would have practical and needed experience of the same. It would be a life without baggage, so one would learn to accept others and their culture instead of always carrying along our own country's assumptions and calling them the Gospel.

Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.

Perhaps the True Self-and the full Christ Mystery (not the same as organized Christianity)-will always live in the backwaters of any empire and the deep mines of any religion.

every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us.

Life is all about practicing for heaven." p 101.

With improved historical records, and easier access to them, we actually have better reasons for hating one another, for anger and violence toward one another.

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

When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us.

Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.

The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.

A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.

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.

God seems to be about turning our loves around and using them toward the great love that is their true object.

Once you see that your skin and your gift are two sides of the same coin, you can never forget it. It preserves religion from any arrogance and denial.

People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place.