The Goal

We all tend to aim for the goal instead of the journey itself, but spiritually speaking, how we get there is where we arrive.

Just Say Yes

If we ourselves try to “manage” God, or manufacture our own worthiness by any performance principle whatsoever, we will never bring forth the Christ but only ourselves. Mary does not manage, fix, control or “perform” in any way. She just says “yes!” and brings forth the abundance that Isaiah promises (“ river,” “waves,” sands of the seashore). This is really quite awesome!

Matthew 25

He says in effect: “There is only one thing you have to do. You must have the freedom to recognize me where you didn’t expect me; otherwise you aren’t free. And you will be judged on a single question: ‘Could you recognize me in the least of your brothers and sisters?’

The Addiction

For Anne Wilson Schaef there is one addiction that over-arches all these quite private addictions and dependencies: our addiction to the system itself. Our chief dependency is the dependency on our hallowed explanations. Could there be a world not built on competition? We can’t imagine it. Could there be a world not built on power? On money and control? On militarism? We can’t imagine it –which shows how dependent we are on our systems.

Religion and Spirituality

We always said, “Religion is for people who are afraid of hell or afraid of God, whereas spirituality is for people who have been through hell and ‘undergone’ God.”

Jesus, The Process

Jesus is a person and at the same time a process. Jesus is the Son of God, but at the same time he is “the Way.” He’s the goal, but he’s also the means, and the means is always the way of the cross.

A Call To Live Differently

We don’t think our way into a new life; we live our way into a new kind of thinking. The Gospel is before all else a call to live differently, so that life can be shared with others. In other words, the Gospel is ultimately calling us to a stance of simplicity, vulnerability, dialogue, powerlessness, and humility. These are the only virtues that make communion and community and intimacy possible.

Ego

Some have cleverly said that ego is an acronym for “Edging God Out.”

Prayer

In simple words, prayer is not changing God’s mind about us or anything else, but allowing God to change our mind about the reality right in front of us—which we are usually avoiding or distorting.

Richard Rohr, Just This

To See

How we see is what we see is a rather clear message from both Jesus and Buddha, but most of us never had the observational maturity, the psychology, and the insights of nuclear physics to actually understand this. We do now.

Richard Rohr, Just This