Spiritual Direction

The Risen Christ is, as Teilhard de Chardin tried to describe it, the divine lure, a blinking, brilliant light set as the Omega point of time and history that keeps reminding us that love, not death, is the eternal thing.

• Richard Rohr - Immortal Diamond

Jesus (a good person) still had to die for the Christ (the universal presence) to arise. It is the pattern of transformation . . . What has to die is not usually bad; in fact, it will often feel good and necessary.2

Can you see the necessity of healthy and mature religion? Why else would you take the jump from a safe, comfortable sense of self into

“A courageous heart will go forth and engage with life despite confusion and fear.”

— John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

“This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with

The initial basis for that inherent dignity is found in the beginnings of the book
of Genesis, where it says that human persons are actually created in the “image and likeness” of God (1:27)! I always say that, if we really believed it, we could save most people $10,000 in therapy bills! The Judeo-Christian tradition thus begins on an extremely posi

 We deserve the challenge of becoming all that we can become.

— John O'Donohue

Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness, like. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. So I think beauty in that sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life. - John O'Donohue

Father Richard Rohr describes the “eagerness to love” that characterized the life and spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226): 

If our only goal is to love, there is no such thing as failure. Francis of Assisi succeeded in living in a single-hearted way, in which his only goal was to love. This intense eagerness to love made his whole

God is never any object to be found or possessed as we find other objects, but the One who shares your own deepest subjectivity - or your ‘self’. We normally called it our soul. Religion called it ‘the Divine Indwelling.’

• Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond

More a Verb Than a Noun

The resolution comes in the Trinity, the outpouring of love in one direction. This is the Mystery of God who is always beyond any concept we can imagine. The mind cannot capture the Trinity, for the Divine can only be known in relationship. God is relationship itself: "Christians believe that God is formlessness (the Father),