All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.
Interpretation
Our spiritual growth hinges on how we handle our pain, as unprocessed pain can negatively affect others.
Richard Rohr emphasizes that the essence of spirituality lies in the way we deal with our suffering. He suggests that if we do not actively transform our pain into wisdom or understanding, we risk passing that unresolved pain onto others, potentially causing harm in our relationships and communities.
In practice
During a workshop on personal development, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of addressing emotional pain.
My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.
The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
Much of the Christian religion has largely become “holding on” instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
Being young and trying to catch a glimpse of the depths, of the true self, of the soul, or whatever human beings have called it over the centuries, we often find ourselves surrounded by bossy, hectoring voices trying to short-circuit our personal experience by super-imposing their own disappointments. Much of this bossiness masquerades as an education.
...and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man - though often it is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.
I tried to think of my knowledge, but it was a squirrel's heap of winter nuts. There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird.
I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow, I keep myself sane.
There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.
We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more.
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