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.”
Tag: Richard Rohr
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
Gospel Of Capitalistic Assumptions
It’s amazing how quickly a spirituality of subtraction becomes evident to people. I believe we’re in the process of recognizing our shadow side, our addiction to addition.
Incarnation
No monotheistic Jewish girl at that time could ever have been prepared for the Incarnation. God is perfectly transcendent and beyond everything. And if she believed the rabbis’ teaching that God comes in words, in the Torah and in the Commandments, then nothing prepared her for believing that God could become flesh and body. The Incarnation had nothing to do with theology. It was rather about vulnerability, about letting go, about emptiness, about self-surrender –and none of that is in the head.
Nothing Gained By Accusing
The painful mystery of things, the injustice of it all, the mixed blessing, just is. Nothing is gained by accusing or avoiding, except a false sense of control.
Spirituality of Change
Metanoia, Jesus’ first message upon beginning his ministry (Mark 1:15, Matthew 4:17), is unfortunately translated with the moralistic word repent. Metanoia literally means change or even more precisely “Change your mind!” So it is strange that the religion founded in Jesus’ name has been resistant to change and has tended to love and protect the past and the status quo much more than the positive and hopeful futures that could be brought about by people open to change. Maybe that is why our earth is so depleted and our politics are so pathetic. We have not taught a spirituality of actual change or growth, which is what an alternative orthodoxy always asks of us.
Learning From Others, Seeking The Way 