Quotes from Fr. Richard Rohr

The Gospel is not a fire insurance policy for the next world, but a life assurance policy for this world.

When you first discharge your loyal soldier, it will feel like a loss of faith or loss of self. But it is only the death of the false self, and is often the very birth of the soul.

Women stuff' is the hidden energy behind almost all the justice issues. The movement toward nonviolence and disarmament, the movements that deal with homelessness and refugee problems, with the raping of the earth and its resources, with sexual and physical abuse issues, with the idolatry of profit and the corporation, and with the rejection of the poor will not move beyond the present impasse until the underlying issues of power, prestige, and possessions are exposed for the lie that they are.

God seems to have created things that continue to create and recreate themselves from the inside out. It is no longer God's one-time creation or evolution; rather, God's form of creation precisely is evolution. Finally God is allowed to be fully incarnate, which was supposed to be Christianity's big trump card from the beginning! It has taken us a long time to get here, and dualistic thinkers still cannot jump the hurdle.

This needed work is indeed "spiritual warfare," as the desert monks called it, since it takes conscious and sustained struggle to be aware of the shadow self—which only takes ever more subtle disguises the "holier" you get.

For Scotus, as for Bonaventure, the Trinity is the absolute beginning point—and ending point too. Outpouring Love is the inherent shape of the universe, and when we love, only then do we fully exist in this universe. We do not need to "understand" what is happening, or who God is, before we can live in love. The will to love precedes any need to fully understand what we are doing, the Franciscan School would say.

Life is a luminous pause between two great mysteries, which themselves are one.

A person who has found his or her True Self has learned how to live in the big picture, as a part of deep time and all of history. This change of frame and venue is called living in "the kingdom of God" by Jesus, and it is indeed a major about-face.

Far too many people just keep doing repair work on the container itself and never "throw their nets into the deep" (John 21:6)

Like the Christ Mystery itself, the deep feminine often works underground and in the shadows, and—from that position—creates a much more intoxicating message. While church and culture have often denied the Divine Feminine roles, offices, and formal authority, the feminine has continued to exercise incredible power at the cosmic and personal levels.

So God, life, and destiny have to loosen the loyal soldier's grasp on your soul, which up to now has felt like the only "you" that you know and the only authority that there is. Our loyal solider normally begins to be discharged somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, if it happens at all; before that it is usually mere rebellion or iconoclasm.

The great commandment is not thou shalt be right. The great commandment is to be in love.