Richard Rohr

Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.

Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.

God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history.

If our love of God does not directly influence, and even change, how we engage in the issues of our time on this earth, I wonder what good religion is.

When 'happiness' eludes us - as, eventually, it always will - we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again.

Nature is the one song of praise that never stops singing.

The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.

Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you.

A mystic doesn__ say __ believe._ They say __ know._ A true mystic will ironically speak with that self-confidence but at the same time with a kind of humility. So when you see that combination of calm self-confidence, certitude, and humility all at the same time you have the basis for mysticism in general.

A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.

The ego hates losing _ even to God.

If this inner and critical voice has kept you safe for many years as your inner voice of authority, you may end up not being able to hear the real voice of God.

The soul needs meaning as much as the body needs food.

Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events.

Seventy times seven" is a medicine for a healing community, not for a community with all the answers beforehand and all the appropriate punishments afterwards.

If the mystery of the Trinity is the template of all reality, what we have in the Trinitarian God is the perfect balance between union and differentiation, autonomy and mutuality, identity and community.

Men as a class appear to be "at risk," maybe even at high risk.

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.