Shelleyc > Shelleyc's Quotes

“No" is a complete sentence.”
― Annie Lamott

“If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal advantage as if it were God.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“What some now call 'emerging Christianity' or 'the emerging church' is not something you join, establish, or invent. You just name it and then you see it everywhere- already in place! Such nongroup groups, the 'two or three' gathered in deep truth, create a whole new level of affiliation, dialogue, and friendship...”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“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, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“It has been acceptable for some time in America to remain "wound identified" (that is, using one's victimhood as one's identity, one's ticket to sympathy, and one's excuse for not serving), instead of using the wound to "redeem the world," as we see in Jesus and many people who turn their wounds into sacred wounds that liberate both themselves and others.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Those who are not true leaders will just affirm people at their own immature level.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their own contradictions, and making friends with their own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting. We tend to endure them more than communicate with them, because they have little to communicate.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Truth is not always about pragmatic problem solving and making things “work,” but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“If we go to the depths of anything, we will begin to knock upon something substantial, “real,” and with a timeless quality to it. We will move from the starter kit of “belief” to an actual inner knowing. This is most especially true if we have ever (1) loved deeply, (2) accompanied someone through the mystery of dying, (3) or stood in genuine life-changing awe before mystery, time, or beauty.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God—but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control. You tend to create a God who is just like you—whereas it was supposed to be the other way around.”
― Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

“Only hour by hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater

“all mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning.”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater

“Remember, mystery isn’t something that you cannot understand—it is something that you can endlessly understand! There is no point at which you can say, “I’ve got it.” Always and forever, mystery gets you!”
― Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation

“Circling around” is all we can do. Our speaking of God is a search for similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve. We can say, “It’s like—it’s similar to…,” but we can never say, “It is…” because we are in the realm of beyond, of transcendence, of mystery. And we must—absolutely must—maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God.”
― Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation

“Basically, the first half of life is writing the text, and the second half is writing the commentary on that text.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Invariably when something upsets you, and you have a strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the moment, your shadow self has just been exposed. So watch for any overreactions or overdenials.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Sometimes it seems that half of the fairy tales of the world are some form of Cinderella, ugly duckling, or poor boy story, telling of the little person who has no power or possessions who ends up being king or queen, prince or princess. We write it off as wishful dreaming, when it is actually the foundational pattern of disguise or amnesia, loss, and recovery. Every Beauty is sleeping, it seems, before it can meet its Prince. The duckling must be “ugly,” or there will be no story. The knight errant must be wounded, or he will never even know what the Holy Grail is, much less find it. Jesus must be crucified, or there can be no resurrection. It is written in our hardwiring, but can only be heard at the soul level. It will usually be resisted and opposed at the ego level.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Right words make all of us feel falsely important. Right action keeps all of us forever beginners.”
― Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation

“In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.”
― Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

“When we lose the contemplative mind, or non-dual consciousness, we invariably create violent people. The dualistic mind is endlessly argumentative, and we created an argumentative continent, which we also exported to North and South America. We see it in our politics; we see it in our Church’s inability to create any sincere interfaith dialogue—or even intra-faith dialogue. The Baptists are still fighting the Anglicans as “lost” and the Evangelicals are dismissing the Catholics as the “Whore of Babylon,” and we Catholics are demeaning everybody else as heretics, and each of us is hiding in our small, smug circles. What a waste of time and good God-energy, while the world suffers and declines. We have divided Jesus.”
― Richard Rohr, Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation

“Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“As any good therapist will tell you, you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge, and what you do not consciously acknowledge will remain in control of you from within, festering and destroying you and those around you.”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater

“Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.”
― Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation

“In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Perhaps the True Self--and the full Christ Mystery (not the same as organized Christianity)--will always live in the backwaters of any empire and the deep mines of any religion.”
― Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

“The energy in the universe is not in the planets, or in the protons or neutrons, but in the relationship between them.”
― Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation

“In my experience, if you are not radically grateful every day, resentment always takes over.”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater

“Remember finally, that the ashes on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.”
― Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent