Things Hidden Quotes

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

“Think of the many, many stories about God choosing people. There are Moses, Abraham, and Sarah; there are David, Jeremiah, Gideon, Samuel, Jonah, and Isaiah. There is Israel itself. Much later there are Peter and Paul, and, most especially, Mary.

God is always choosing people. First impressions aside, God is not primarily choosing them for a role or a task, although it might appear that way. God is really choosing them to be God’s self in this world, each in a unique situation. If they allow themselves to experience being chosen, being a beloved, being somehow God’s presence in the world, they invariably communicate that same chosenness to others. And thus the Mystery passes on from age to age. Yes, we do have roles and tasks in this world, but finally they are all the same—to uniquely be divine love in a way that no one else can or will.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“Mystery is not something that you cannot understand, but it is something that is endlessly understandable! It is multilayered and pregnant with meaning and never totally admits to closure or resolution.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“The mystery of presence is that encounter wherein the self-disclosure of one evokes a deeper life in the other. There is nothing you need to “think” or understand to be present; it is all about giving and receiving right now, and it is not done in the mind. It is actually a transference and sharing of Being, and will be experienced as grace, gratuity and inner-groundedness. Thus there is always a great leap of inner authenticity that is associated with true mutual presence, because in being received graciously, we are able to receive ourselves at an ever-deeper level yet recognize that we are both part of something Greater itself. It gives one great happiness and deep joy. We really are socially contagious human beings, but we settle for “human doings.” It is at the being level that life is most vitally transferred.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“If religion cannot find a meaning for human suffering, humanity is in major trouble. All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. Great religion shows you what to do with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“forgiveness always heals; it does not matter whether you are Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Jewish. Forgiveness is one of the patterns that is always true, it is part of The Story. There is no specifically Catholic way to feed the hungry or to steward the earth.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“Our temptation now and always is not to trust in God but to trust in our faith tradition of trusting in God.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“The trouble is that we have made the Bible into a bunch of ideas—about which we can be right or wrong—rather than an invitation to a new set of eyes. Even worse, many of those ideas are the same, old tired ones, mirroring the reward and punishment system of the dominant culture, so that most people don’t even expect anything good or anything new from the momentous revelation that we call the Bible. The”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“The British-American author D.H. Lawrence said that “the world fears a new experience more than anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“God’s greatest ally is reality itself. God’s greatest revelation is what is (see Romans 1:20)—not what we want it to be, and not even what it should be—not abstract theories but concrete encounters.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“With a lack of mysticism and any contemplative mind in some denominations, I find that many Christians still have no knowledge of the soul's objective union with God (1 John 3:2, 2 Peter 1:4). They often actually fight me on it, quoting to me that "all things human are evil and depraved" or "humans are like piles of manure, covered over by Christ." Such a negative starting point will have a very hard time creating loving or responsive people, just as when Rome tells homosexual persons that they are "intrinsically disordered". How do you ever undo such foundational damnation?”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“True transcendence always includes the previous stages and does not dismiss them or punish them, as most reforms and revolutions have done in history. This is true reconciliation, healing or forgiveness and always characterizes mature believers. They afterward seem to thank God for the pain and the trial.   good”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“In many ways what we’re seeing as we explore the Bible is an observing of the development of human consciousness and human readiness for God. That’s why we do see some difference between the earlier and later Scriptures: There’s been a development in consciousness. In”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“This marvelous anthology of books and letters called the Bible is all for the sake of astonishment! It’s for divine transformation (theosis), not intellectual or “small-self” coziness.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“I would ask you to consider the crucifix as a homeopathic image, like those medicines that give you just enough of the disease so you could develop a resistance and be healed from it. The cross dramatically reveals the problem of ignorant killing, to inoculate us against doing the same thing.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“the eyes with which you will look back at God will be the same eyes with which God first looked at you.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“God does not change, but our readiness for such a God takes a long time to change.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“our pattern of ignorant killing, attacking, and blaming is, in fact, history’s primary illusion, its primary lie.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“We cannot prepare for love by practicing fear.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“As long as we remain inside of a win-lose script, Christianity will continue to appeal to low-level and self-interested morality and never rise to the mystical banquet that Jesus really offers us.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity; Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“As long as we remain inside of a win-lose script, Christianity will continue to appeal to low-level and self-interested morality and never rise to the mystical banquet that Jesus really offered us.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“evil is always sure of itself, and goodness is not.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

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

“Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“The unprayerful heart will always twist reality to its own liking.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“There are no dead ends in the economy of grace.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“The biblical revelation is about awakening, not accomplishing. It is about realization and not performance principles.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

“There is only one thing more dangerous than the individual ego and that is the group ego.”
― Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality