Quotes from Fr. Richard Rohr

The pressed clay or "dust" of Adam has then become the immortal diamond that is Christ.

If we do not recognize that we ourselves are the problem, we will continue to make God the scapegoat—which is exactly what we did by the killing of the God-Man on the cross. The crucifixion of Jesus—whom we see as the Son of God—was a devastating prophecy that humans would sooner kill God than change themselves. Yet the God-Man suffers our rejection willingly so something bigger can happen.

We cannot jump over this world, or its woundedness, and still try to love God. We must love God through, in, with, and even because of this world. This is the message Christianity was supposed to initiate, proclaim, and encourage, and what Jesus

God's grace cannot be a random problem solver doled out to the few and the virtuous—or it is hardly grace at all!

you no longer need to protect or defend the mere part. You are now connected to something inexhaustible.

Both Catholics and Protestants have failed our people by mystifying the very notion of mysticism. The word itself has become relegated to a "misty" and distant realm that implies it is only available to very few and something not to be trusted, much less attractive or desirable. For me, the word "mysticism" simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, as opposed to book knowledge, secondhand knowledge, or even church knowledge.

How do you sell emptiness, vulnerability, and nonsuccess?

want to propose that we are both sent and drawn by the same Force, which is precisely what Christians mean when they say the Cosmic Christ is both alpha and omega. We are both driven and called forward by a kind of deep homesickness, it seems. There is an inherent and desirous dissatisfaction that both sends and draws us forward, and it comes from our original and radical union with God. What appears to be past and future is in fact the same home, the same call, and the same God

We cannot heal what we do not first acknowledge.

It's heaven all the way to heaven. And it's hell all the way to hell. Not later, but now.

For all who have tried to know Jesus without Christ, many of the core church teachings offered a disembodied Christ without any truly human Jesus, which was the norm for centuries in doctrine and in art. Art is the giveaway of what people really believe at any one time.

Our institutions and our expectations, including our churches, are almost entirely configured to encourage, support, reward, and validate the tasks of the first half of life.