Nick > Nick's Quotes

“Good poetry doesn’t try to define an experience as much as it tries to give you the experience itself, just as good liturgy should do. It tries to awaken your own seeing, hearing and knowing. It does not give you the conclusion as much as teach you a process whereby you can know for yourself. It does not “overexplain and destroy astonishment.” Jesus does the same, particularly with the parables, and even says so at both the beginning and end of his parabolic discourse (see Matthew 13:13, 51–52). That’s why the long standing language of religion was poetry, aphorism and sacred storytelling, never merely prose or linear doctrines.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“Great spirituality, on the other hand, is always seeking a balance between opposites, a very subtle but creative balance. As William Johnston, s.j., once said, “Faith is that breakthrough into that deep realm of the soul which accepts paradox with humility.”2 When you go to one side or the other too much, you find yourself either overly righteous or overly skeptical and cynical. There must be a healthy middle, and I hope that is what we are looking for here, as we try to hold both the needed light and the necessary darkness.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“We must approach the Scriptures with humility and patience, with our own agenda out of the way, and allow the Spirit to stir the deeper meaning for us. Otherwise we only hear what we already agree with or what we have decided to look for! Isn’t that rather obvious? As Paul will say, “We must teach not in the way philosophy is taught, but in the way the Spirit teaches us: We must teach spiritual things spiritually” (1 Corinthians 2:13). As Tobin Hart says, this mode of teaching is much more about transformation than information. That changes the entire focus and goal.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“People are always trying to build temples and churches for God. And what is God trying to do? He is trying to build us into a temple, a living temple, a temple of the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).”
― Richard Rohr, The Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament

“In the decades before his ministry begins and in the forty wilderness days, Jesus is willing to wait, and his example calls us to cultivate that same posture before the Father.”
― Alan Fadling, An Unhurried Life: Following Jesus' Rhythms of Work and Rest

“The Spirit will lead us to places where we live out our trust in God by waiting, not acting.”
― Alan Fadling, An Unhurried Life: Following Jesus' Rhythms of Work and Rest