Richard Rohr
Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.Collection: Pain
When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us.Collection: Humanity
Every time you choose to love, you have also just chosen to die.Collection: Love You
Men must learn how to grieve, or they are inevitably angry or controlling, and they don't even know why.Collection: Men
The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.Collection: Humble
When you don't need to play the victim or create victims you are FREECollection: Play
There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments-and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it.Collection: Sacred
Because I am a part of the Big Picture, I do matter and substantially so. Because I am only a part, however, I am rightly situated off to stage right—and happily so. What freedom there is in such truth! We are inherently important and included, yet not burdened with manufacturing or sustaining that private importance. Our dignity is given by God, and we are freed from ourselves!Collection: Important
We are just a little tiny flicker of a much larger flame that is Life itself, Consciousness itself, Being itself, Love itself, God’s very self.Collection: Self
Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.Collection: Opposites
Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you.Collection: Differences
The greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order.Collection: Order
The phrase, 'You must die before you die,' is found in most of the world religions. If you don't learn how to die early, you spend the rest of your life avoiding failure. When you can free your True Self, the whole spiritual life opens up.Collection: Spiritual
The spiritual world is hidden and perfectly revealed in the physical world.Collection: Spiritual
There has to be a womp on the side of the head that defeats and undercuts this game of performance. It has to fall apart. Now unfortunately, that very often does not happen until what I call the second half of life, when there's been enough death in the family and you start experiencing your own physical deterioration.Collection: Fall
A person who can laugh and go with life does not demand to be in control, which is why the most controlling people may be sarcastic but lack an authentic sense of humor.Collection: Sarcastic
Religion has in fact outdone culture in dualistic thinking - we've become as violent, as hateful toward our enemies, damning them to hell and whatever else, that the world doesn't look to us for wisdom, because we're trapped in the dualistic mind, instead of the mind of Christ that we were supposed to have.Collection: Thinking
Our culture is almost entirely prepared to not just help you create your false self, but to get very identified with it and attached to it. So, without some form of God experience, which teaches you who you are apart from that - we would say in the religious world, who you are "in" God, in the mind and heart of God - there's almost no way to get out of it.Collection: Religious
Transformed people transform people.Collection: Wisdom
God, give me a good humiliation every day. It's good for the soul and it's good for the ego.Collection: Giving
It seems we are suffering from a very narrow and self serving reading of the Gospel right now.Collection: Reading
Mature prayer always breaks into gratitude.Collection: Gratitude
Moralism is always the cheap substitute for mysticism.Collection: Substitutes
In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.Collection: Pain
Your false self is always that which is passing away. Your true self doesn't go up or down, it's constant - it's a rock. Once you learn how to live there, what others say about you, your failures or successes - these don't send you on a roller coaster ride down or up. It's really the only way to peace. There's no other way to be peaceful except in the true self.Collection: Rocks
Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.Collection: Growing
We all remain who we are. But on the way to healing or liberation we have to do what the Romans called agere contra: we have to act against the grain of our natural compulsions. This requires clear decisions. Because it does not happen by itself, it is in a way "unnatural" or "supernatural" . . . (we) simply have to cut loose now and then, and in the process . . . make mistakes.Collection: Mistake
G.K. Chesterton, who was part of a Catholic conservatism that was kind and loving, not reactionary or hateful, said "We're all in the same boat in a stormy sea and we owe each other a terrible loyalty." I think that's profoundly true, yet it's difficult to have civil dialogue right now with other Christians, so how can we possibly talk to "all the nations"?Collection: Christian
It’s the freedom of the children of God. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody.Collection: Children
Silence is the necessary space around things that allows them to develop and flourish without my pushing.Collection: Space
We find it hard to love imperfect things so we imagine God is just as small as we are. If we expect or need things to be perfect or to our liking ( including ourselves) we have created a certain path for a very unhappy life.Collection: Happy Life
Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.Collection: Religious
Many people who attack me know so little of that larger Tradition, and end up being not very traditional at all. When you invoke the whole and great Tradition, you end up scaring people who call 1950 America "traditional" Christianity. It is just what they are used to in their one limited lifetime.Collection: America
In the second half of life, people have less power to infatuate you. But they also have much less power to control you or hurt you.Collection: Hurt
Many people I know who are doing truly helpful and healing ministry find their primary support from a couple of enlightened friends, and only secondarily, if at all, from the larger organizations.Collection: Couple
I think it's almost necessary for most people to have the freedom to pull back, and then re-enter at an adult level, where they are neither playing the victim nor creating victims, but just participating in calm, adult behavior. Because an awful lot of churches just aren't there at adult Christianity, this seems to be the norm anymore.Collection: Thinking
One time, a Protestant minister said, "We made Jesus blonde haired and blue eyed and very cute. We made Jesus somehow a much more feminine figure." And there's probably truth to that.Collection: Cute
I think most human beings are dualistic thinkers. It gets them through the day. It gives them a sense of superiority and security - that's what the ego wants.Collection: Thinking
You do need some successes as a young person. They don't inflate the ego necessarily, they just give you identity and ego structure. But, don't construct your life around creating those. Or you will become narcissistic and ego-centric. That won't get you anywhere.Collection: Creating
In the last years, I've been reading the Eastern fathers, the older mystical writings, a rich, deep, and truly traditional Christianity which most Western Christians know almost nothing about. It is very mystical and prayer centered Christianity, with a strong social conscience.Collection: Christian
When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself. Most of our mainline Christian denominations, in my opinion, don't do the first or second halves very well. We don't really give people a good container, we give them a bunch of legalisms.Collection: Christian
Ancients knew that you need guidance, patronage and protection as you move from one place or state to another, whenever you cross a bridge. You had better know what you are doing when you leave one group or place to join another.Collection: Moving
If you try to assert wisdom before people have themselves walked it, be prepared for much resistance, denial, push-back, and verbal debate.Collection: People
One is struck in the study of saints, angels and gods by a pattern that seems quaint and harmless. Yet, it is so common that I know there must be a deeper meaning. There always seem to be guardians and spirits of doors, bridges, exits and entranceways.Collection: Angel
Having a school really is the fulfillment of a longtime dream of mine.Collection: Dream
The Eucharist becomes a microcosmic moment of belief and power in which we say we believe in the real presence of God in Jesus, in this bread, and in this wine.Collection: Jesus
If you work with such people almost on the level of spiritual direction, you see that they are people who prefer a world view of order and even punitiveness. And for some reason, there's a feeling that the male psyche is going to give that to them. And if that's your view of religion, which it is for many people, if they've never come to the mystical level, religion is for social order and to maintain social order.Collection: Spiritual
When you look at the dominance of Notre Dame, the love of Mary in almost every European country, psychologically, had to come from this recognition of the feminine mediating divine love. And for many people in history, it was clearly the preferred way because women raised most people, not men, so their first experience of unconditional love, of touch, of caring, of nurturing very often came from a woman - that got easily transferred to Mary.Collection: Country
When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself.Collection: Half