Richard Rohr

It's true all the time everywhere or it's not true! And that one truth is always Mystery.

Once you see that your skin and your gift are two sides of the same coin, you can never forget it. It preserves religion from any arrogance and denial.

God seems to be about turning our loves around and using them toward the great love that is their true object.

When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us.

Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy.

It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE _ IS _ HARD.

Final authority in the spiritual world does not tend to come from any kind of agenda success but from some kind of suffering. Insecurity and impermanence are the best spiritual teachers.

Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn__ the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these moments of profound human presence, we are awakened to the divine presence and see that the kingdom of God is coming and yet is already here.

People who have been initiated "broke through in what felt like breaking down".

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self.

You can unlock spiritual things only from within.

It is crucial that Jesus is led by the Spirit. There are two wildernesses, two darknesses in the spiritual journey. One you go into by your own stupidity, by your sin, blindness, ignorance and mistakes. We all do that. But there__ another darkness. The holy darkness is the darkness that God leads us into, through and beyond. This is a necessary darkness for the journey. In a certain sense, God__ darkness is a much better teacher than light. There comes a time when you have to either go deeper into faith or you will turn back, when you have to live without knowing or you lose faith altogether. So we have the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness, to face the essential darkness.

This seems to have been St. Augustine's very notion of "memory," not just nostalgia for some past moment, but connecting past, present, and future in one complete contemplative knowing.

True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways.

The way to transmute the pain of life is to reveal the wounded side of things, evil, even, and then place the wound inside of sacred space. The Bible is about naming, facing, and then forgiving the wounds of history.

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.