Richard Rohr Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

Prayer is not about changing God, but being willing to let God change us.

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
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.

Richard Rohr
The world, the system, moves forward out of fear. That's why they have to threaten us to play the game. We're threatened with loss of job, money, reputation, or prestige. It's all based on fear.

Richard Rohr
I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona.

Richard Rohr
Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity; Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God

Richard Rohr
Religion either produces the very best people or the very worst.

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

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
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
People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place.

Richard Rohr
Life is not, nor ever has been, a straight line forward... Life is characterized much more by exception and disorder than by total or perfect order.

Richard Rohr
It is in falling down that we learn almost everything that matters spiritually.

Richard Rohr
So much is happening on earth that cannot be fixed or explained, but it can be felt and suffered. I think a Christian is one who, along with Jesus, agrees to feel, to suffer the pain of the world.

Richard Rohr
Being informed is different from being formed, and the first is a common substitute for the second.

Richard Rohr
When I am not king, then THE Kingdom has its best chance of breaking through.

Richard Rohr
The Gospel is not a fire insurance policy for the next world, but a life assurance policy for this world.

Richard Rohr
True gospel authority, the authority to heal and renew things and people, is not finally found in a hierarchical office, a theological argument, a perfect law, or a rational explanation. The Crucified revealed to the world that the real power that changes people and the world is an inner authority that comes from people who have lost, let go, and are re-found on a new level.

Richard Rohr
Every time you choose to love, you have also just chosen to die.

Richard Rohr
Salvation is not a divine transaction that takes place because you are morally perfect, but much more is an organic unfolding, a becoming who you already are, an inborn sympathy with and capacity for the very One who created you.

Richard Rohr
Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had.

Richard Rohr
In terms of the ego, most religions teach in some way that all of us must die before we die, and then we will not be afraid of dying. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as whenever you are not in control.

Richard Rohr
I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken open, at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.

Richard Rohr
Those who are not true leaders will just affirm people at their own immature level.

Richard Rohr
If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it.

Richard Rohr
Many people I know who are doing truly helpful and healing ministry find their primary support from a couple of enlightened friends, and only secondarily, if at all, from the larger organizations.

Richard Rohr
Power should be entrusted only to those who do not seek it.

Richard Rohr
Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go; split people see and create splits in everything and everybody.

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
Religion has not tended to create seekers or searchers, has not tended to create honest, humble people who trust that God is always beyond them. We aren't focused on the great mystery. Religion has, rather, tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers. That's why so much of the West is understandably abandoning religion. People know the great mystery cannot be that simple and facile.

Richard Rohr