We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The fruit for humanity has been rather limited, it seems to me - especially when I observe every day the extraordinary amount of unhappy and angry people in well educated and 'religious' countries.
Interpretation
The quest for truth and spirituality shouldn't rely solely on words, as it often leads to dissatisfaction.
Richard Rohr suggests that merely seeking God and truth through verbal communication and intellectual understanding is inadequate. This limitation has resulted in an excess of unhappy and angry individuals, even within well-educated and 'religious' societies, indicating that deeper, experiential connections are necessary for genuine fulfillment.
In practice
During a lecture on spirituality, this quote can be used to stress the importance of experiential knowledge.
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.
I'm sure I would still have anxiety even if I got a bunch of surgery, and was the most conventionally attractive, cis-passing woman in the world; I think those are traumas that never go away.
Every object you see before you at this moment -the walls, ceiling, and furniture, the book, your own washed hands and cut fingernails, bears witness to the colonization of Nature of Reason.
Wretched are those who are vindictive and spiteful.
We have contingency plans for war, but none for peace.
Real hunger is when one man regards another man as something to eat.
Our collective freedom... depends on our ability to defend the rights of others.
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