Quotes by Richard Rohr

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The best criticism of bad is to show how to do it better.

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In relationships, the man must bring the aspect of separation and distance and learn closeness and attachment from the woman. The woman has to teach us something about closeness and community, and the man has to teach the woman something about mandate and mission.

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Jesus describes the Christian journey with a word that is self-evident to the male soul: Jesus is talking about a way, namely the way of the cross, which consists in the fact that love always leads to pain. If you love, you will suffer for it. If you really love me and really indulge yourself, then you will also suffer the separation. The female temptation: to maintain love at all costs, to strive for closeness at all costs, the desire to always look into each other's eyes.

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True initiation teaches the young man that it is impossible to fix everything. The dragon cannot and must not be killed; but it can be tamed. This is the wisdom that we either learn halfway through life - or we always build our tower higher and higher towards the sky, which then becomes more and more dangerous and more and more only imaginary. The result is the old, stiff, embittered man who lives only in his head, who always knows the right answers, but who is not wise, who uses the law and the gospel as a method of self-control, but that is not surrender to him who knows everything about truth, but he knows nothing about love. True initiation teaches us that life has an essentially tragic dimension. We often encounter this in the secret of love.

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Perfection for us is that we lack the imperfect. But the Indians understand perfection differently, who, like Jesus, prefer to think in a holistic way, for them perfection is the integration of the imperfect. Some Native American tribes have the perfect rug with a bug woven into it. Because perfection comes with the ability to accept the imperfect.

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We must descend to great depths to find the blessing. If we descend into the deep, we will discover the possibility of sitting on our own throne and knowing who we are in God.

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The father is the first encounter with the non-self. Our father's acceptance or rejection is our first clue as to whether or not we can trust the outside world.

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The man who has not discovered his own femininity and has not made friends with it, hates the woman hidden in his subconscious, but projects it outwards as contempt for weakness and rage against women. The hatred and fear of homosexuals also stems from immature and unfulfilled sexuality. The essence of this hatred is the lack of connection between the man's body and soul.

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As Carl Jung put it, a real encounter with God always involves the annihilation of the self! It is like when Perseus comes face to face with Medusa's serpent head; as when Jesus feels betrayed by Peter, Judas, the crowd and finally his own Father, as when modern man faces his own shadow, through failure, captivity or persecution. For the man to be born, the boy must die.

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Enlightenment is not knowledge rather than knowledge; not learning rather than learning. A second, a chosen naivety without completely forgetting the contradictions and complexities we have learned in the meantime. Giving rather than concluding, trusting rather than organizing, but mostly grace. There is no known program, ritual, or moral practice to bring us to enlightenment.

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Trust in death means we accept that it exists and is part of life. Accepting death is the gateway to life. The mystery of the cross and resurrection is the mystery of trust. Jesus was able to trust in life, that's why he was able to sacrifice his life. The psalmist prays: "Remember that we must die, so that our minds may be enlightened." By death, I mean not only physical death, but also all the smaller deaths that we have to constantly experience. Every loss, every farewell practices death. Anyone who can look death in the eye and recognize it as such is able to say "holy no". When Jesus died and accepted his own death, well, it was such a holy "no" to death and "yes" to life.

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People are not converted by sermons, but by circumstances. What actually happens is not that we think ourselves into a new form of life, but that we live into a new form of thinking. That is why it is important to present ourselves in situations and challenges in which we do not already have the means to control and solve the situation well in advance, where we do not enter as a victorious general, and where it is not even certain that we will show our best form.

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A world without a Father is hard, cold and tired. However, Jesus came to tell us that we have an unconditionally loving Father. We don't need to be intellectuals to understand this. We don't need to be German theologians to explain this. This is good news for all people in the world. This is a Gospel that is so simple and simple that we are afraid to preach it. I suppose we're afraid we won't seem particularly witty while advertising it. And yet this is the only thing for which man lives, and for which it is worth dying: we were created for love, and we will never, anywhere find ourselves other than in the love of God.

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The soul is a journey, a journey that we must make ourselves, guided by grace. If we act from the heart, we will act instead of merely reacting. When we move from our center, we do not act out of fear or guilt.

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A lover who lives completely in the present, in the here and now. All the present is his and he enjoys it. The present - contemplative presence. Everything I need is here. Why should I always be ahead and worry about the future? The lover is the enjoyer of the present, who siphons the divine nectar from everything that is.

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The lover in us seeks the good, the true and the beautiful; and you can enjoy it for yourself. It is the ability to be happy about everything, and not because things bring me something, but because they exist. If we notice that we are smiling, if we see something, then this is the lover in us. We look at a small animal and we are happy because it is there. Why did God create this strange animal? It is simply there, for free, without being necessary. And that's why it's amazing. The lover is looking for ways to express this. He composes, plays music, dances, writes poetry, kisses and tastes.

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A lover must learn to love consciously; you must decide to learn to love; you must want to be loved. Love does not happen by itself, it does not fall into one's lap. Love is art. We have to practice, we have to trust ourselves. Love is a decision. "I want to love, even if it doesn't bring anything tangible at the moment." Love has to become concrete, specific, it has to live somewhere. Otherwise, it will be too airy, abstract and metaphysical. This danger threatens the one who lives in celibacy. Man loves humanity, but he loves no one in particular. The steeper road is the road to marriage. When we entered the order, we were told that we were on the hard way; but today I don't believe that. The steeper path is the path of marriage, fidelity, and staying at home.

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I often feel like the conductor of a runaway train running up and down the cars warning people to get off before it's too late, but they just stare in amazement at this obvious mess. We cannot liberate anyone who is not convinced that they need liberation.

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Our culture presents men with the illusion of decision-making, but in reality deprives them of the ability to actually chart new directions outside of and beyond the daily grind. Men have little opportunity to make decisions that actually change their lives or the world around them. They cannot exit the game or they will not receive their reward.

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We men are not free to really be real, close friends because we are so afraid of homosexuality. We're afraid that others might think we're gay if we hug another man. And this is sad: first of all, it is sad that we are afraid of being thought of as homosexual; secondly, it is sad that we are afraid to express and experience a normal relationship between people.

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Jesus always did two things. He spoke and healed. And Christianity has lost so much of its strength and power, among other things, because we no longer believe in healing. And maybe the reason we no longer believe in healing is because we are afraid of touch, because we are afraid that our body could be a mediator of the spirit.

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Christianity is perhaps the only world religion that believes that God became flesh. We should think that if there is any religion that has a positive attitude towards the body, it can only be Christianity. (...) Because obviously the material world is the place to meet the divine. And yet it is a scandal; and even disappointed us that this might be so. We would much rather go to heaven than see God incarnate.

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The part of us that is ashamed of enthusiasm destroys the lover. The part of us that is ashamed of carnal pleasures is the polar opposite of a lover. The part of us that is in love counts on surprises and finding something good and meaningful. You can wonder. He is the eternal boy, the puer aeternus, who looks at everything with the bright eyes of a child. If the look becomes dull, because the person no longer expects anything, then the lover is lost.

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The lover is the part of us that takes the risk of becoming addicted. A person who remains distant throughout his life because he knows that he will suffer if he makes himself dependent is not in love. A lover is not afraid to take this pain upon himself.

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The puer, the uninitiated youth, is characterized by his naivety about power. Having grown up without real male role models, this young man distrusts authority and will even hate it, and he never misses an opportunity to show how much he despises power and authority. The puer aeternus, the eternal boy, never grows out of this stage. Most of humanity consists of such people.

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There is no path to manhood. Masculinity is the way. So: name the wound! Feel it and cry! Look for the sight of the father! This is not passivity, this is activity. Take full responsibility for your life and your actions! Don't complain, don't hide in your shame, don't wait for warm feelings or miracles! Act as if! Hit the road! Risk something!

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Masculine spirituality favors action over theory, community service over religious and theological debate, truth-telling over social decorum. He values ​​justice more than harmony. Without these additional male virtues, spirituality is too "feminine" (in a bad way!), because it is characterized by too much intimacy and too much interest in relationships; spirituality in such cases is the quagmire of unclear emotions and constant preoccupation with oneself.

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It is easy to write off a man who lacks his feminine side. He deals exclusively with the external, surface world, and his head becomes a watchtower. He builds things, explains them, uses them, fixes them, regulates them, arranges them and plays with them - if he bothers to touch them at all. Because the inside of things is foreign to him. He is afraid of them. That is why the watchtower, in which reason and order keep watch, is constantly working overtime. For him, this is the only way to have a sense of security and importance. He is a prisoner of a partial truth, which is dangerous precisely because he believes it to be the whole truth. He is trapped in false masculinity. And this became the collective myth of the Western world. Mostly men are responsible for this, who hold the power, money, economy, church, army in their hands and control morals. What we call reality, on which we are almost completely dependent, is for the most part a fiction, a concoction of men who have never met their inner world. These men have never come to their senses, they know neither trust nor vulnerability; neither prayer nor poetry. For the most part, these men are not yet ready, even sick, along with the culture we inherited from them.

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The apostle Paul says: "There is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ." The new humanity towards which we are moving is not genderless, neither same-sex, nor overly gendered, all of which is ruled out by love. In Christ we are whole, one, united and holy. This is the completed work of God, who reconciles everything with everything, and invites us to participate in this reconciliation.

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Many men find out in mid-life that they actually married their own mothers. This is always a big surprise and a big disappointment. Because the mother's world is the emotional world in which we are at home - even if it is neurotic. We always follow the same beaten path - in the hope that at some point things will turn out right. Those who have suffered abuse usually choose a spouse who abuses them. Although it is strange, it is very common and perhaps a kind of death wish.

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Most Christians think that we should pray to Jesus instead of being Jesus ourselves. Jesus did not come to earth to found a religion and tell us to pray to him. He came to show us his Father, and to show us how we too can recognize ourselves in the eyes of the Father.