Quotes from Fr. Richard Rohr

Religion is lived by people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is lived by people who have been through hell.

How you do life is your real and final truth, not what ideas you believe.

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.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

God for us, God alongside us, God within us.

a person must pass the lessons learned on to others—or there has been no real gift at all.

Integrity largely has to do with purifying our intentions and a growing honesty about our actual motives.

I have often wondered why people never want to put a stone monument of the Eight Beatitudes on a courthouse lawn. Then I realize that the Eight Beatitudes of Jesus would probably not be very good for any war, any macho worldview, the wealthy, or our consumer economy.

One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their own contradictions, and making friends with their own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting. We tend to endure them more than communicate with them, because they have little to communicate.

Yes, transformation is often more about unlearning than learning, which is why the religious traditions call it "conversion" or "repentance.

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.

It is almost impossible to fall in love with majesty, power, or perfection. These make us fearful and codependent, but seldom truly loving. On some level, love can only happen between equals, and vulnerability levels the playing field. What Christians believe is that God somehow became our equal when he became the human Jesus, a name that is, without doubt, the vulnerable name for God.