Quotes from Fr. Richard Rohr

Ken Wilber described the later stages of life well when he said that the classic spiritual journey always begins elitist and ends egalitarian. Always!

whatever that takes, and then has plenty left over for others. True heroism serves the common good, or it is not really heroism at all.

Life moves first toward diversity and then toward union of that very diversity at ever higher levels. It is the old philosophical problem of "the one and the many

But grace is not a late arrival, an occasional add-on for a handful of humans, and God's grace and life did not just appear a few thousand years ago, when Jesus came and a few lucky humans found him in the Bible. God's grace cannot be a random problem solver doled out to the few and the virtuous - or it is hardly grace at all!

Threats of hell are unfortunately more memorable to people than promises of heaven.

Eric Hoffer, the street philosopher, put it this way: "In times of great change [which is always], learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.

Up to now we have been more in love with elitism than with any egalitarianism; we liked being the "one," but just did not know how to include the many in that very One.

He does not know the outcome ahead of time, or his confidence would be in himself and God to pull it off, which would then largely be a matter of the willpower of belief. Faith is so much more than strong willpower

he just tells him to "descend" from his power position, "go away and get rid of all your possessions." Money is only the metaphor here; the real possession he has to get rid of is his ego.

The human art form is in uniting fruitful activity with a contemplative stance—not one or the other, but always both at the same time.

God was consistent in working through one man to reveal himself everywhere, as well as through the other parts of His creation, so that nothing was left devoid of his Divinity and his self-knowledge…so that 'the whole universe was filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters fill the sea.

The denied sins that are really destroying the world are much more the sins that we often admire and fully accept in our public figures: pride, ambition, greed, gluttony, false witness, legitimated killing, vanity, et cetera. That is hard to deny.