Breathing Underwater Richard Rohr Quotes

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 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.

...religion either produces the very best people or the very worst.

You cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge.

God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change.

Religion is lived by people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is lived by people who have been through hell.

How you do life is your real and final truth, not what ideas you believe.

Surrender will always feel like dying, and yet it is the necessary path to liberation.

all mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning.

Only hour by hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.

We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it.

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.

Forgiveness is to let go of our hope for a different or better past.

In my experience, if you are not radically grateful every day, resentment always takes over.

God brings us—through failure—from unconsciousness to ever-deeper consciousness and conscience.

One has to wonder, do we really want people to grow, or do we just want to be in control of the moment?

you are often most gifted to heal others precisely where you yourself were wounded, or wounded others.

All Mature Spirituality Is About Letting Go

Forgiveness is to let go of our hope for a different or better past.” It is what it is, and such acceptance leads to great freedom, as long as there is also accountability and healing in the process.

...organized religion is no longer good news for most people, but bad news indeed. It set us up for the massive atheism, agnosticism, hedonism, and secularism we now see in almost all formerly Christian countries.

Almost all true spirituality has a paradoxical character to it, which is why the totally rational or dualistic mind invariably misses the point, and just calls things it does not understand wrong, heresy, or stupid.

The game is over once we see clearly because evil succeeds only by disguising itself as good, necessary, or helpful.

Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure.

If we try to change our ego with the help of our ego, we only have a better-disguised ego!

most people do not see things as they are, they see things as they are!

Deep communion and dear compassion is formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure.

the Twelve Steps, however, believes that sin and failure are, in fact, the setting and opportunity for the transformation and enlightenment of the offender

All societies are addicted to themselves and create deep codependency on them. There are shared and agreed-upon addictions in every culture and every institution. These are often the hardest to heal because they do not look like addictions because we have all agreed to be compulsive about the same things and blind to the same problems. The Gospel exposes those lies in every culture: The American addiction to oil, war, and empire; the church’s addiction to its own absolute exceptionalism; the poor person’s addiction to powerlessness and victimhood; the white person’s addiction to superiority; the wealthy person’s addiction to entitlement.

Sacrificial religion was all exposed in Jesus’ response to any mechanical or mercenary notion of religion, but we soon went right back to it in many Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant forms, because the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control.

It seems we are not that free to be honest, or even aware, because most of our garbage is buried in the unconscious. So it is absolutely essential that we find a spirituality that reaches to that hidden level. If not, nothing really changes.

As my father, St. Francis, put it, when the heart is pure, “Love responds to Love alone” and has little to do with duty, obligation, requirement, or heroic anything. It is easy to surrender when you know that nothing but Love and Mercy is on the other side.

May the God of peace make you whole and holy, may you be kept safe in body, heart, and mind, and thus ready for the presence. God has called you and will not fail you” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

The New Testament called it salvation or enlightenment, the Twelve Step Program called it recovery. The trouble is that most Christians pushed this great liberation off into the next world, and many Twelve Steppers settled for mere sobriety from a substance instead of a real transformation of the self. We have all been the losers, as a result—waiting around for “enlightenment at gunpoint” (death) instead of enjoying God’s banquet much earlier in life.

Thomas Merton who said: “The will of God is not a ‘fate’ to which we must submit, but a creative act in our life that produces something absolutely new, something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation consists not solely in conforming to external laws, but in opening our wills to this mutually creative act.”5

When religion does not move people to the mystical or non-dual level of consciousness9 it is more a part of the problem than any solution whatsoever. It solidifies angers, creates enemies, and is almost always exclusionary of the most recent definition of “sinner.” At this level, it is largely incapable of its supreme task of healing, reconciling, forgiving, and peacemaking. When religion does not give people an inner life or a real prayer life, it is missing its primary vocation. Let me sum up, then, the foundational ways that I believe Jesus and the Twelve Steps of A.A. are saying the same thing but with different vocabulary:   We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it.   This counterintuitive wisdom will forever be resisted as true, denied, and avoided, until it is forced upon us—by some reality over which we are powerless—and if we are honest, we are all powerless in the presence of full Reality.

The reason we do anything one more time is because the last time did not really satisfy us deeply. As English poet W.H. Auden put it in “Apropos of Many Things”: “We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die.

Stinking thinking” is the universal addiction. Substance addictions like alcohol and drugs are merely the most visible form of addiction, but actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality.

Faith itself became a “good work” that I could perform, and the ego was back in charge. Such a mechanical notion of salvation frequently led to all the right religious words, without much indication of self-critical or culturally critical behavior. Usually, there was little removal of most “defects of character,” and many Christians have remained thoroughly materialistic, warlike, selfish, racist, sexist, and greedy for power and money—while relying on “amazing grace” to snatch them into heaven at the end.

As physicist Albert Einstein frequently said in a different way: No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused the problem in the first place.

the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control.

there is an early stage “holiness” that looks like the real thing, but it isn’t.

But which should come first, grace or responsibility? The answer is that both come first. All we can do is get out of the way and then the soul takes its natural course.

We have been graced for a truly sweet surrender, if we can radically accept being radically accepted—for nothing! “Or grace would not be grace at all”! (Romans 11:6).

Catholic confession became a pious devotional exercise and had little to do with the development of real conscience or societal maturity. All notions of social sin, offenses against the common good, the family, the neighborhood, the rest of creation, or the future were all forgotten in favor of a few “hot” sins and an endless laundry list of trivia that we barely felt guilty about. Half of all confessions are about “missing Mass on Sunday.” We used to say that hearing 90 percent of confessions was like being stoned to death with marshmallows!

Breathing Under Water,” a title taken from a telling poem by Carol Bieleck, r.s.c.j., which seemed to sum up so much of the common message. I quote it here in full:   “Breathing Under Water”   I built my house by the sea. Not on the sands, mind you; not on the shifting sand. And I built it of rock. A strong house by a strong sea. And we got well acquainted, the sea and I. Good neighbors. Not that we spoke much. We met in silences. Respectful, keeping our distance, but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand. Always, the fence of sand our barrier, always, the sand between.   And then one day, —and I still don’t know how it happened— the sea came. Without warning.   Without welcome, even Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine, less like the flow of water than the flow of blood. Slow, but coming. Slow, but flowing like an open wound. And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death. And while I thought the sea crept higher, till it reached my door. And I knew then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning. That when the sea comes calling you stop being neighbors Well acquainted, friendly-at-a-distance, neighbors And you give your house for a coral castle, And you learn to breathe underwater.3

Right Relationship With Life Itself Gerald May, a dear and now deceased friend of mine, said in his very wise book Addiction and Grace that addiction uses up our spiritual desire. It drains away our deepest and true desire, that inner flow and life force which makes us “long and pant for running streams” (Psalm 42). Spiritual desire is the drive that God put in us from the beginning, for total satisfaction, for home, for heaven, for divine union, and it just got displaced onto the wrong object. It has been a frequent experience of mine to find that many people in recovery often have a unique and very acute spiritual sense; more than most people, I would say. It just got frustrated early and aimed in a wrong direction. Wild need and desire took off before boundaries, strong identity, impulse control, and deep God experience were in place.2

We must be honest here, and not defensive; the issues are now too grave and too urgent. Our inability to see our personal failures is paralleled by our inability to see our institutional and national sins too. It is the identical and same pattern of addiction and denial. Thank God that Pope John Paul II introduced into our vocabulary words like “structural sin” and “institutional evil.” It was not even part of the conversation in most of Christian history up to now, as we exclusively concentrated on “personal” sins. The three sources of evil were traditionally called “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” We so concentrated on the flesh that we let the world and “the devil” get off scot-free.8

We are all spiritually powerless, however, and not just those physically addicted to a substance, which is why I address this book to everyone. Alcoholics just have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways, and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking.

Say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys as a penance” still perpetuated a de facto notion of a juridical exchange instead of any deep experience of healing forgiveness or unearned grace. You cannot deal with spiritual things in a courtroom manner. It does not achieve its purpose; it does not work at a deep level. We forgot our own unique job description as people of the Gospel and imitated courts of law instead.

In fact, I would say what makes so much religion so innocuous, ineffective, and even unexciting is that there has seldom been a concrete “decision to turn our lives over to the care of God,” even in many people who go to church, temple, or mosque. I have been in religious circles all my life and usually find willfulness run rampant in monasteries, convents, chancery offices, and among priests and prelates, ordinary laity, and at church meetings.

God resists our evil and conquers it with good, or how could God ask the same of us?! Think about that. God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change. Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure. Love is not love unless it is totally free. Grace is not grace unless it is totally free. You would think Christian people would know that by now, but it is still a secret of the soul.

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

We gave people these doctrines to believe, and then did not give them the proper software to process those very beliefs, and so ended up producing far too many atheists and former Roman Catholics and Evangelicals.

God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change.

Grace is always a punishment for us.

Walter Wink, a professor of biblical interpretation, calls it the mere “theological” worldview as opposed to the incarnational worldview, which is authentic Christianity.1 When all of you is there, you will know. When all of you is present, the banquet will begin.

People who know who they are find it the easiest to know who they aren’t.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, said that what he resented in most Christians was what he perceived as a constant underlying resentment: (1) a denied resentment toward God for demanding sacrifice, (2) toward others for not appreciating our sacrifice, (3) sacrificing as much as we sacrifice, (4) and a resentment toward others for not having to do it!

Ordinary people in times of shame and doubt needed an anamchara, or a “soul friend.” Soon

We are all spiritually powerless, however, and not just those physically addicted to a substance, which is why I address this book to everyone.

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 often gave them 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 am afraid.

our religious history has been too guilt-based and shame-based, and not enough of what some would call “vision logic,

Like apples of gold in a silver setting is a word that is aptly spoken. It is a golden ring, an ornament of finest gold, such is a wise apology to an attentive ear.” —Proverbs 25:11–12

We used to say that hearing 90 percent of confessions was like being stoned to death with marshmallows!

All societies are addicted to themselves and create deep codependency on them.

By the fourth century Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, which left us needing to agree on its transcendent truth claims (for example, Jesus is God, God is Trinity, Mary was a virgin, etc.), instead of experiencing the very practical “steps” of human enlightenment, the central message of our own transformation into “the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and bringing about a “new creation” on this earth (Galatians 6:15). It became theory over practice.

New Testament called it salvation or enlightenment, the Twelve Step Program called it recovery. The trouble is that most Christians pushed this great liberation off into the next world, and many Twelve Steppers settled for mere sobriety from a substance instead of a real transformation

God can help you get what you want, which is still a self-centered desire, instead of God’s much better role—which is to help you know what you really desire (Luke 11:13; Matthew 7:11).

gay marriage as the ultimate threat to society,

The body is like the ignored middle child in a family unit, and so now it is having its revenge through so much compulsive eating, sexuality, anorexia, and addiction, plus a wholesale disregard for the physical planet, animals, water, and healthy foods.

Gossip is not a right but a major obstacle to human love and spiritual wisdom. Paul lists it equally with the much more grievous “hot sins” (Romans 1:29–31), and yet most of us do it rather easily.

A.A. is the only group I know that is willing and honest enough to just tell people up front, “You are damn selfish!” Or, “Until you get beyond your massive narcissism you are never going to grow up.

Step 8 is a marvelous tool and technology for very practical incarnation, which keeps Christianity grounded, honest, and focused on saving others instead of just ourselves. “Anyone who claims to be in the light, but hates his brother or sister, is still in the dark” (1 John 2:9). Until religion becomes flesh, it is merely Platonic idealism instead of Jesus radicalism.

Have you ever experienced the embarrassed and red-faced look of shame and self-recognition on the face of anyone who has been loved gratuitously after they have clearly done wrong? This is the way that God seduces us all into the economy of grace—by loving us in spite of ourselves in the very places where we cannot or will not or dare not love ourselves.

The innocuous mental belief systems of much religion are probably the major cause of atheism in the world today, because people see that they have not generally created people who are more strong, caring, or creative than other groups—and often a lot worse.