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.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the balance between sharing knowledge globally and understanding one's personal experiences.
Richard Rohr expresses a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunity to teach and preach around the world. He contrasts this with his ongoing personal struggle to understand his own experiences, highlighting the idea that even those who share wisdom widely may still face challenges in making sense of their own lives. This duality underscores the complexity of human experience and the importance of introspection alongside outward teaching.
In practice
During a seminar on global learning, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of personal reflection in teaching.
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.
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.
How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
Sometimes the hardest thing to do in a pressure situation is to allow the tension to persist. The temptation is to make a decision, any decision, even if it is an inferior choice.
I'm proud of what I am and who I am, and I'm just going to be myself.
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others.
The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.
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