Quotes by Richard Rohr

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Those who are not true leaders or elders will just affirm people at their own immature level, and of course immature people will love them and elect them for being equally immature. You can fill in...”

“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 pr...”

“If we seek spiritual heroism ourselves, the old ego is just back in control under a new name. There would not really be any change at all, but only disguise, just bogus self-improvement on our own ...”

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

“Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody els...”

“...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 Chri...”

“Knowing without loving is frankly dangerous for the soul and for society. You'll critique most everything you encounter and even have the hubris to call this mode of reflexive cynicism "thinking" (...”

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

“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.”

“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 j...”

“A lot of us pray as if prayer is really twisting the arm of God or convincing God to do something. We think by saying more words well talk God into it. We think, If I say it one more time, God will...”

“The people who know God wellmystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find Godalways meet a lover, not a dictator.”

“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 dont have faith, according to Jesus. You do not tr...”

“This seems to have been St. Augustine's very notion of "memory," not just nostalgia for some past moment, but connecting past, present, and future in one complete contemplative knowing.”

“Forgiveness becomes central to Jesus teaching, because to receive reality is always to bear it, to bear with reality for not meeting all of our needs. To accept reality is to forgive reality for be...”

“The way to transmute the pain of life is to reveal the wounded side of things, evil, even, and then place the wound inside of sacred space. The Bible is about naming, facing, and then forgiving the...”