Praise

Praise for Falling Upward

“Richard Rohr has been a mentor to so many of us over the years, teaching us

new ways to read Scripture, giving us tools to better understand ourselves,

showing us new approaches to prayer and suffering, and even helping us see

and practice a new kind of seeing. Now, in Falling Upward, Richard offers a

simple but deeply helpful framework for seeing the whole spiritual life—one

that will help both beginners on the path as they look ahead and long-term

pilgrims as they look back over their journey so far.”—Brian McLaren, author

of A New Kind of Christianity and Naked Spirituality (brianmclaren.net)

“The value of this book lies in the way Richard Rohr shares his own aging

process with us in ways that help us be less afraid of seeing and accepting

how we are growing older day by day. Without sugar coating the challenging

aspects of growing older, Richard Rohr invites us to look closer, to sit with

what is happening to us as we age. As we do so, the value and gift of aging

begin to come into view. We begin to see that, as we grow older, we are being

awakened to deep, simple, and mysterious things we simply could not see

when we were younger. The value of this book lies in the clarity with which it

invites us to see the value of our own experience of aging as the way God is

moving us from doing to being, from achieving to appreciating, from

planning and plotting to trusting the strange process in which as we diminish,

we strangely expand and grow in all sorts of ways we cannot and do not need

to explain to anyone including ourselves. This freedom from the need to

explain, this humble realization of what we cannot explain, is itself one of the

unexpected blessings of aging this book invites to explore. It sounds too good

be true, but we can begin to realize the timeless wisdom of the elders is

sweetly and gently welling up in our own mind and heart.”—Jim Finley,

retreat leader, Merton scholar, and author of The Contemplative Heart

“This is Richard Rohr at his vintage best: prophetic, pastoral, practical. A

book I will gratefully share with my children and grandchildren.”—Cynthia

Bourgeault, Episcopal priest, retreat leader, and the author of Centering

Prayer and Inner Awakening, Mystical Hope, and The Wisdom Way of

Knowing

“Falling Upward is a book of liberation. It calls forth the promise within us,

and frees us to follow it into wider dimensions of our spiritual authenticity.

This ‘second half of life’ need not wait till our middle years. It emerges

whenever we are ready and able to expand beyond the structures and

strictures of our chosen path, and sink or soar into the mysteries to which it

pointed. Then the promise unfolds—in terms of what we discover we are and

the timescapes we inhabit, as well as the gifts we can offer the world. With

Richard Rohr as a guide, the spunk and spank of his language and his

exhilarating insights, this mystery can become as real and immediate as your

hand on the doorknob.”—Joanna Macy, author World as Lover, World as Self

“Father Richard Rohr has gathered innumerable luminous jewels of wisdom

during a lifetime of wrestling with self, soul, God, the church, the ancient

sacred stories of initiation and its modern realities, and the wilder and darker

dimensions of the human psyche. His new book, Falling Upward, is a great

and gracious gift for all of us longing for lanterns on the perilous path to

psychospiritual maturity, a path that reveals secrets of personal destiny only

after falling into the swamps of failure, woundedness, and personal demons.

An uncommon, true elder in these fractured times, Richard Rohr shows us the

way into the rarely reached “second half of life” and the encounter with our

souls—our authentic and unique way of participating in and joyously

contributing to our miraculous world.”—Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., author of

Soulcraft and Nature and the Human Soul