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When 'happiness' eludes us - as, eventually, it always will - we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again.

Richard Rohr

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Richard Rohr
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: March 20
Catholic Priest
Motivational Speaker
Priest
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Choose
Programmed
Happiness
Responses
Power
Invitation
Always
Invitations
Examine
Eventually
Response
Eludes
Exercise
Elude

More quotes by Richard Rohr

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If God continues to give me health and a sane mind and verbal ability, I want to teach.
Richard Rohr
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Famine, poverty, abuse, you can't keep that all blocked out. If you let those things teach you, influence you, change you, those are the events that transition you without you even knowing it to become more compassionate.
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What we know about God is important, but what we do with what we know about God is even more important.
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To believe in Jesus, is to believe that the historic person who lived on this earth more than 2000 years ago was the image of the invisible God. That's a huge leap of faith, but it is my leap of faith, it's the act of faith of the Christian community.
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Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery.
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Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.
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Either you allow Holy Scriptures to change you, or you will normally try to use it to change--and clobber--other people. It is the height of idolatry to use the supposed Word of God so that my small self can be in control and be right. But I am afraid this has been more the norm than the exception in the use of the Bible.
Richard Rohr
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To the degree you have experienced intimacy with God, you won’t be afraid of death because you’re experiencing the first tastes and promises of heaven in this world.
Richard Rohr
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If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
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I think most human beings are dualistic thinkers. It gets them through the day. It gives them a sense of superiority and security - that's what the ego wants.
Richard Rohr
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The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime.
Richard Rohr
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every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us.
Richard Rohr
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Church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus. We invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolves every question even when it is not entirely true over the mercy and grace of God.
Richard Rohr
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Once God and grace move us to the second half of life, religion becomes a mystical matter, rather than a moral matter.
Richard Rohr
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Solitude is a courageous encounter with our naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure love.
Richard Rohr
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Being informed is different from being formed, and the first is a common substitute for the second.
Richard Rohr
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Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy.
Richard Rohr
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A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.
Richard Rohr
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A paradox is a seeming contradiction, always demanding a change on the side of the observer. If we look at almost all things honestly we see everything has a character of paradox to it. Everything, including ourselves.
Richard Rohr
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In terms of the ego, most religions teach in some way that all of us must die before we die, and then we will not be afraid of dying. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as whenever you are not in control.
Richard Rohr