Richard Rohr > Quotes

“There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it's enough.”
― Richard Rohr

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”
― Richard Rohr

“It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of Christian maturity, because once you know that your “I” is great and one with God, you can ironically be quite content with a small and ordinary “I.” No grandstanding is necessary. Any question of your own importance or dignity has already been resolved once and for all and forever.”
― Richard Rohr

“Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.”
― Richard Rohr

“The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection—and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth. ”
― Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See

“One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking… The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.”
― 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.”
― Richard Rohr

“there is no path to peace, but peace itself is the path.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“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.”
― Richard Rohr

“Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change.”
― Richard Rohr

“The fears that assault us are mostly simple anxieties about social skills, about intimacy, about likeableness, or about performance. We need not give emotional food or charge to these fears or become attached to them. We don’t even have to shame ourselves for having these fears. Simply ask your fears, “What are you trying to teach me?” Some say that FEAR is merely an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real.”

From Everything Belongs, p. 143”
― Richard Rohr

“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!”
― Richard Rohr

“every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“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”
― Richard Rohr

“What some now call 'emerging Christianity' or 'the emerging church' is not something you join, establish, or invent. You just name it and then you see it everywhere- already in place! Such nongroup groups, the 'two or three' gathered in deep truth, create a whole new level of affiliation, dialogue, and friendship...”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“If we don't learn to mythologize our lives, inevitably we will pathologize them.”
― Richard Rohr

“Let’s state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway.”
― Richard Rohr

“The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.”
― Richard Rohr

“Men as a class appear to be "at risk," maybe even at high risk.”
― Richard Rohr

“THE MALE JOURNEY t some point in time, a man needs to embark on a risky -journey. It's a necessary adventure that takes him into uncertainty, and it almost always involves some form of difficulty or failure. On this journey the man learns to trust God more than he trusts a sense of right and wrong or his own sense of self-worth.”
― Richard Rohr