Ability to laugh at evil, to relativize symbols without dismissing them is usually a sign of a rather healthy person. Puritans and reformers can never laugh.

— Richard Rohr

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.

— Richard Rohr

A lot of us pray as if prayer is really twisting the arm of God or convincing God to do something. We think by saying more words we’ll talk God into it. We think, “If I say it one more time, God will agree with me.” That very attitude is an alienating attitude. It keeps us in the role of doing it “right” or often enough to convince an unready or unwilling God. Wrong, wrong, wrong!19 minutes ago

— Richard Rohr

A mystic doesn’t say “I believe.” They say “I 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.

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— 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 have 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.

— Richard Rohr

Church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus. We invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolves every question even when it is not entirely true over the mercy and grace of God.

— Richard Rohr

Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy.

— Richard Rohr

Every missed rite of passage leads to a new acidification of the personality.

— Richard Rohr