Quotes from Fr. Richard Rohr

The world is more magical, less predictable, more autonomous, less controllable, more varied, less simple, more infinite, less knowable, more wonderfully troubling than we could have imagined being able to tolerate when we were young. —JAMES HOLLIS, FINDING MEANING IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE

The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

I would wonder if you could be a hero or heroine if you did not live in deep time, that is, Past, present, and future all at once.

Loving God, allow me to be a sheep at least once in a while, and never let me forget that most of my life I have been a goat."       Tuesday

Given our present evolution of consciousness, and especially the historical and technological access we now have to the "whole picture," I now wonder if a sincere person can even have a healthy and holy "personal" relationship with God if that God does not also connect them to the universal. A personal God cannot mean a smaller God, nor can God make you in any way smaller—or such would not be God.

If religion cannot find a meaning for human suffering, humanity is in major trouble. All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. Great religion shows you what to do with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If

Your True Self is that part of you that knows who you are and whose you are, although largely unconsciously. Your False Self is just who you think you are—but thinking doesn't make it so.

St. Irenaeus (125—203), The Scandal of the Incarnation, and St. Athanasius (297—373), On the Incarnation, are two early classics that set a bar of good theology that we have since seldom matched or even understood. The mystery of incarnation is the unique trump card that Christianity adds to the deck of world religions.

Remember, anthropologically, religion begins with the making of a distinction between the pure and the impure. Jesus consistently ignores such a distinction. In fact, it is at the heart of almost half of his gospel actions!

life seems to be a collision of opposites.

True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other.… Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house."266