Richard Rohr quotes

Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor. (Richard Rohr)
Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people. View quote
Richard Rohr
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. View quote
Richard Rohr
Transformed people transform people. View quote
Richard Rohr
The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo-even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future. View quote
Richard Rohr
Jesus is much more concerned about shaking your foundations, giving you an utterly alternative self image, world image, and God image, and thus reframing your entire reality. Mere inspiration can never do this. View quote
Richard Rohr
there is no path to peace, but peace itself is the path. View quote
Richard Rohr
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. View quote
Richard Rohr
In solitude, at last, we're able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined-by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence. View quote
Richard Rohr
When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us. View quote
Richard Rohr
The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems. (Richard Rohr)
The big truth for men is that often we have to leave home in the first half of life before we can return home at a later stage and find our soul there. View quote
Richard Rohr
... religion either produces the very best people or the very worst. View quote
Richard Rohr
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. View quote
Richard Rohr
I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona. View quote
Richard Rohr
Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had. View quote
Richard Rohr
We have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That's not primal freedom. That's a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances. That's what great religion offers us. That's what real prayer offers us. That's why the saints could be imprisoned and not lose their souls. They could be put down and persecuted like Jesus and still not lose their joy, their heart, or their perspective. Secular freedom is having to do what you want to do. Religious freedom is wanting to do what you have to do. View quote
Richard Rohr
Group-think is a substitute for God-think. The belief is that God is found only by our group. The next step is to establish that identification with our group as the only way to serve God. View quote
Richard Rohr
Prayer must lead us beyond mind, words, and ideas to a more spacious place where God has a chance to get in. View quote
Richard Rohr
Power should be entrusted only to those who do not seek it. View quote
Richard Rohr
God does not love you because you are good, God loves you because God is good. (Richard Rohr)
Religion has not tended to create seekers or searchers, has not tended to create honest, humble people who trust that God is always beyond them. We aren't focused on the great mystery. Religion has, rather, tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers. That's why so much of the West is understandably abandoning religion. People know the great mystery cannot be that simple and facile. View quote
Richard Rohr
So much is happening on earth that cannot be fixed or explained, but it can be felt and suffered. I think a Christian is one who, along with Jesus, agrees to feel, to suffer the pain of the world. View quote
Richard Rohr
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. View quote
Richard Rohr
The people who know God well-mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God-always meet a lover, not a dictator. View quote
Richard Rohr