In the second half of life, people have less power to infatuate you. But they also have much less power to control you or hurt you.

— Richard Rohr

It is crucial that Jesus is led by the Spirit. There are two wildernesses, two darkness in the spiritual journey. Once you go into by your own stupidity, by your sin, blindness, ignorance and mistakes. We all do that. But there’s another darkness. The holy darkness is the darkness that God leads us into, through and beyond. This is a necessary darkness for the journey. In a certain sense, God’s darkness is a much better teacher than light. There comes a time when you have to either go deeper into faith or you will turn back, when you have to live without knowing, or you lose faith altogether. So we have the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness, to face the essential darkness.

— Richard Rohr

It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on.

— Richard Rohr

It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE – IS – HARD.

— Richard Rohr

It's true all the time everywhere, or it's not true! And that one truth is always Mystery.

— Richard Rohr

I would wonder if you could be a hero or heroine if you did not live in deep time, that is, Past, present, and future all at once.

— Richard Rohr

Jesus was trying to present value of a life of vulnerability in which one would have practical and needed experience of the same. It would be a life without baggage, so one would learn to accept others and their culture instead of always carrying along our own country's assumptions and calling them the Gospel.

— Richard Rohr

Knowing without loving is frankly dangerous for the soul and for society. You'll critique most everything you encounter and even have the hubris to call this mode of reflexive cynicism "thinking" (whereas it's really your ego's narcissistic reaction to the moment). You'll position things to quickly as inferior or superior, "with me" or "against me," and most of the time you'll be wrong.

— Richard Rohr

Life is all about practicing for heaven." p 101.

— Richard Rohr

Men as a class appear to be "at risk," maybe even at high risk.

— Richard Rohr