Quotes from Fr. Richard Rohr

We must discover a source of inner security before we can withstand the insecurities that every life holds. Children are not ready for this, nor are teenagers, nor are young adults. Honest soul work is usually done in the second half of life, although it is forced on some much earlier through imprisonment or family tragedy.

Your heart needs to be broken—and broken open—at least once to discover what your heart means and to have a heart for others.

Anne Wilson Schaef

Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it now, and about its healing now. It is rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were "worthy"—as if any of us are.

By the feminine principle I mean everything vulnerable, interior, powerless, subtle, personal, intimate, and relational. By the masculine principle I mean everything clear, rational, linear, ordered, in control, bounded, provable, and hard. Both the feminine and masculine are good, but they must balance each other.

The second insight about steps and stages is that from your own level of development, you can only stretch yourself to comprehend people just a bit beyond yourself.

Unfortunately, the notion of faith that emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of certain mental beliefs, rather than a calm and hopeful trust that God is inherent in all things, and that this whole thing is going somewhere good.

The global issues of injustice, the culture of death that we are a part of, the sufferings of the oppressed, all of these demand t hat we bring the Voice of the Spirit to these well-denied and disguised situations, and not just our own tiny judgments or anger. This i the difference between true Gospel and mere political correctness or Band-Aid liberal responses. We are holding out for the great Gospel...

It seems we are not that free to be honest, or even aware, because most of our garbage is buried in the unconscious. So, it is absolutely essential that we find a spirituality that reaches to that hidden level. If not, nothing really changes.

Jesus is precisely giving us his full bodily humanity more than his spiritualized divinity!

For some few, the split is seemingly overcome in the person of Jesus; but for more and more people, union with the divine is first experienced through the Christ: in nature, in moments of pure love, silence, inner or outer music, with animals, a sense of awe, or some kind of "Brother Sun and Sister Moon" experience. Why? Because creation itself is the first incarnation of Christ, the primary and foundational "Bible" that revealed the path to God. The

do not find our own Center; it finds us. The body is in the soul. It is both the place of contact and the place of surrender.