The Message is to You

In the spiritual life, there aren’t too many absolutes I can make, but this is certainly one. On the spiritual journey, the message is always to you. The message is always telling you to change.

Now, what most people do is they use religion to try to change other people. It’s always someone else that needs changing. No. Stop it. Once and for all. Whatever happens to you in your life is a message to you.

Oh the ego wants to avoid that. So we look for something out there to change–somebody not like me is always the problem.

 – Richard Rohr

Pete Enns shared the quote (twice, as it happens) from Rohr. It is definitely worth sharing, and is simply a restatement of the point of the parable of Jesus, about trying to remove the splinter from someone else’s eye, while ignoring the utility pole in one’s own.