Quotes from Fr. Richard Rohr

This marvelous anthology of books and letters called the Bible is all for the sake of astonishment! It's for divine transformation (theosis), not intellectual or "small-self" coziness.

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.

As Bill Plotkin, a wise guide, puts it, many of us learn to do our "survival dance," but we never get to our actual "sacred dance.

The Dalai Lama said much the same thing: "Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.

To take the Scriptures seriously is not to take them literally. Literalism is invariably the lowest and least level of meaning. Most

It is the egoic illusion of our own perfect rightness that often allows us to crucify others.

to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us. If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything-is-beautiful attitude, we are in fact going to be trapped by the darkness because we

greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection.

often the rich, the religious, and the self-sufficient know nothing about self-surrender. Jesus

I believe the contemplative mind is the mind of Christ.

Scholars say that ceremonies normally confirm and celebrate the status quo and deny the shadow side of things (think of a Fourth of July parade), whereas true ritual offers an alternative universe, where the shadow is named (think of a true Eucharist). In the church, I am afraid we mostly have ceremonies.

This resistance to change is so common, in fact, that it is almost what we expect from religious people, who tend to love the past more than the future or the present.