Community!

What, singularly, are we missing today within Christianity that could make us credible to the world and to our own families? Community.… In the end people are as agnostic about faith, Christ and the church as they are about the experience of community. When there is a strong experience of community there is generally a strong faith.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 297

The real tragedy is…

Psychologist John Powell submits that there are only two potential tragedies in life, and dying young is not one of them.

These are the two potential tragedies: if we go through life and we do not love fully, and if we go through life and do not tell those we love that we love them.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 290

<idle musing>
Amen and amen! This truth should be emblazened on every parent's (especially) heart. Tell your kids you love them! And then live that love out. Tell your spouse you love them! And then live that love out.
</idle musing>

Real change needs to happen

The road to final victory on the issue of abortion is long, the task mammoth. Hearts need to change, relationships need to change, sexual patterns need to change, oppression needs to be recognized; and real villains and real victims must be more accurately named.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 266

When nobody shows up…

What kind of power may we seize upon to try to change this situation? Too many people, I am afraid, have placed their hopes in legal power, political power. The belief is that if we work hard enough we can get the laws changed, put abortionists on trial, close down abortion clinics…. And yet the only real solution is long-range. This battle, in the end, cannot be won legally and politically. Ultimately, more than laws, hearts need to be changed. Conversion is the only effective way of ultimately ending abortions. Abortion clinics will shut down when nobody shows up at their doors any more.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 264

"Normal" vs. the godly life

The human instinct is to define the normal by idiosyncratic preference and social consensus. We need to challenge this if religion is to have an agenda that includes celibacy, social justice or anything else which goes against what most people are in fact living.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 258

The demise of the common good

More important, though, the demise of hospitality has occurred because we have developed a sense of privacy and efficiency that militate against it.

Our culture is becoming ever more narcissistic and idiosyncratic, that is, more and more we have the attitude that things are our own. We speak of my space, my time, my family, my home, my community, my room, my stereo, my plans, my agenda, my friendships, my effectiveness, and even, in a way, of my church.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 235

Get up, dust yourself off!

As we get older the games, the bullying and the hurts become less physical, more psychological, more sophisticated. But one dynamic remains constant, most often we are not as hurt as we think. Invariably there is more self-pity than actual wound.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 214

True egalitarianism

What is the mind and heart of Christ? It is the acceptance of the fact that everyone is special and therefore all are equal. Nobody sits above the rest and nobody has a right to feel that he or she should sit above the rest. This is true for nations as well as for individuals.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 210

Mummify that beauty!

Like the ancient Egyptians, we attempt to mummify our youth and sexual attractiveness through contemporary forms of “embalming”: cosmetics, dyes, face lifts, pretense and lies about our age.

When we are fifty, sixty, seventy—or forty—and trying to be twenty, someone must challenge us: “Let go, for God’s sake! Be your age, it will be better then than it is now!”

Old age is hell for those who cling and want to be young at all costs. It can be peaceful and full of joys, if we are willing to receive its spirit.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 191

<idle musing>
As I near seventy, this is good advice. I've never been one to be overly concerned about physical appearance, but I confess that I have been a bit obsessed with staying in good physical condition. But, as I get older, my body doesn't recover as quickly as it used to. That's taken a bit of getting used to, but I'm learning to embrace it.

Those who know me, know that I've never been known for going slowly through life. But, I'm learning…
</idle musing>

No wall is strong enough!

By dying as he did, Christ shows that he loves us in such a way that he can descend into our private hells. His love is so empathetic and compassionate that it can penetrate all barriers that we construct out of hurt and fear and enter right into our despair and hopelessness.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 147

We need a theology that…

We need a theology that teaches us that God does not just give us one chance, but that every time we close a door he opens another one for us.

We need a theology that challenges us not to make mistakes, that takes sin seriously, but which tells us that when we sin, when we make mistakes, we are given the chance to take our place among the broken, among those whose lives are not perfect, the loved sinners, those for whom Christ came.

We need a theology which tells us that a second, third, fourth and fifth chance are just as valid as the first one.

We need a theology that tells us that mistakes are not forever, that they are not even for a lifetime, that time and grace wash clean, that nothing is irrevocable.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 145

But I've screwed it up too many times and too badly…

We have too much fear, in the end, of God. Ultimately we look at the scrambled egg, at our own mistakes and sins, and believe that the loss of a certain grace is irrevocable, that a mistake hangs us. Basically we do not believe that there is a second chance, let alone seventy-times-seven chances, that can be just as lifegiving as the first.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 144

Distraction is not a virtue!

Theologian Jan Walgrave commented that our present age constitutes a virtual conspiracy against the interior life. That is a gentle way of saying that, within our culture, distraction is normal, prayer and solitude are not. There is little that is contemplative within our culture and within our lives.

Why is this? We are not, by choice or ideology, a culture set against solitude, interiority and prayer. Nor are we, in my opinion, more malicious, pagan or afraid of interiority than past ages. Where we differ from the past is not so much in badness as in busyness, in hurriedness. We do not think contemplatively because we never quite get around to it.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 125

Leisure as virtue

David Steindl-Rast has commented that leisure is not the privilege of those who have time, but rather the virtue of those who give to each instant of life the time it deserves.

That is a valuable insight, especially today when everywhere life seems dominated by the constraints of time. Always, it seems, there is not enough time. Our lives are dominated by pressure, the rat race, demands which are all-absorbing. The plant has to run and, by the time that is taken care of, there is no time or energy for anything else.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 115

A textual criticism thought

if you follow the harder readings, you will end up with an unintelligible text; if you follow the shorter readings, you will end up with no text at all.—Edward Hobbs, “Introduction to Methods of Textual Criticism,” in The Critical Study of Sacred Texts, ed. Wendy Doniger, Berkeley Religious Studies Series 2 (Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union, 1979), 19.

Gratitude is the key

Gratitude is the key to all. We come to personal healing and to reconciliation with others to the exact extent that we are warmed and vitalized by gratitude.

To rid ourselves of resentment, bitterness, jealousy and paranoia requires a powerful fire. Only the gratitude that flows from knowing that we are loved, loved despite wound and sin, is a large enough flame to burn wound from our lives.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 99

Home!

Real love and real friendship are home—you do not go home from them! Whenever we experience love, however powerful, from which we need to go home, that love can be valuable and good in our lives, but it can never be a love upon which we can build a marriage or a truly intimate friendship.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 67

Nostalgia is death

Nostalgia is an unhealthy depression, an adolescent sentimentality which leaves us clinging to the past so as to be unable to enter the present with verve and vitality. In the end it is a mummification, an unnatural embalming of something which is dead.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 47

The prophet

To pray and do social justice is to be prophetic. But that’s a lonely and hard business. Prophets are persecuted, are powerless and are rejected. Because of this, it is all too easy to get angry, to feel self-righteous, to fill with bitterness, to become selective in our prophecy and to hate the very people we are trying to save.

When this happens, gratitude and joy disappear from our lives and we are unable to live without the need to be angry. Invariably, then, both our prayer and social action become perverse.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 34

A bit of a double standard, no?

Why is it that a Christian may not, in good conscience, ignore the teachings of Scripture and the church regarding prayer and private morality, and yet she or he may, in good conscience, ignore the social teachings of Scripture and the church?—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 33