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| Fr. Richard Rohr |
“Do not get rid of your hurts until you have learned all that they have to teach you. . . . trust [your] time in the belly of the whale, how to stay there without needing to fix, to control or even to fully understand it, and to wait until God spits you up on a new shore.”
“The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey. Up to that point, it is mostly religion. At the bottom, there is little time or interest in being totally practical, efficient, or revenue generating. You just want to breathe fresh air. The true Gospel is always fresh air and spacious breathing room.”
Carolyn Custis James 
Another powerful quote from “Falling Upward” that speaks about the spiritual growth process comes from page 136,
“One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their own contradictions, and making friends with their own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting.”
Rohr encourages believers to stick with the process of challenging the personas we've developed, our false selves, in order to find, claim and embrace our true selves, the persons God created us to be.
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I've been reading his daily blog. He definitely has me thinking and rethinking lots.
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Hi Carolyn. I know this post is a few months old, but Ive reciently purchased your book “when Life & Belief Collide”. I hadn't heard of you so I googled, & this is where I ended up. I've been pulling apart & rebuilding my beliefs after 4years of depression, triggered by unresolved (complicated) grief.
One of the things I'm struggling with is how many churches are embracing mysticism (like Richard Rohr) & beliefs like theophostic generational sin – I feel that they don't have enough Biblical evidence, and the difference between process & content is lost in pursuite of some “spiritual experience”. I guess what I'm asking is when does creative interpretation simply become a false teaching – or at the very least not a Biblical one? I'm finding this is very much effecting my faith & my trust in other christians, particulary as many of my previously held beliefs significantly contributed to my depression. – I'm loving your book by the way. And have been frustrated by the lack of deep theology women around me have – I seem to ask hard questions they'd never thought about! -Lynette
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