Our job as humans is to make admiration of others and adoration of God fully conscious and deliberate.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of being intentionally aware of our appreciation for others and our devotion to a higher power.
Richard Rohr suggests that as human beings, we have a responsibility to consciously acknowledge and appreciate the beauty and worth of those around us, as well as to cultivate a deliberate connection and devotion to God. This intentionality fosters deeper relationships and spiritual growth, urging us to move beyond passive admiration into a more active and thoughtful practice of gratitude and reverence.
In practice
In a motivational speech about gratitude during a community gathering.
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.
The longest journeyIs the journey inwards.Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest For the source of his being.
When life tends to get too complex, too fast, too cluttered, too deadline oriented, or too type A for you, stop and remember your own spirit. You're headed for inspiration, a simple, peaceful place where you're in harmony with the perfect timing of all creation.
Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.
Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.
If gratitude, when exerted towards another, naturally produces a very pleasing sensation in the mind of a grateful man, it exalts the soul into rapture when it is employed on this great object of gratitude to the beneficent Being who has given us everything we already possess, and from whom we expect everything we yet hope for.
Everything comes to us from others. To Be is to belong to someone.
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