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In solitude, at last, we’re able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined—by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence

Richard Rohr

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Richard Rohr
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: March 20
Catholic Priest
Motivational Speaker
Priest
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Nothing
Thou
Way
Relation
Demands
Always
Supposed
Define
Demand
Performance
Relationship
Defined
Lasts
Solitude
Last
Presence
Able
Performances

More quotes by Richard Rohr

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Religions should be understood as only the fingers that point to the moon, not the moon itself.
Richard Rohr
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People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.
Richard Rohr
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Ancients knew that you need guidance, patronage and protection as you move from one place or state to another, whenever you cross a bridge. You had better know what you are doing when you leave one group or place to join another.
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If we don't learn to mythologize our lives, inevitably we will pathologize them.
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When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself.
Richard Rohr
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There has to be a womp on the side of the head that defeats and undercuts this game of performance. It has to fall apart. Now unfortunately, that very often does not happen until what I call the second half of life, when there's been enough death in the family and you start experiencing your own physical deterioration.
Richard Rohr
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If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
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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God comes to us disguised as our life.
Richard Rohr
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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.
Richard Rohr
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Every viewpoint is a view from a point.
Richard Rohr
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Creation is a process that is still happening and we’re in on it! We are a part of this endless creativity of God.
Richard Rohr
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God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no . . . Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet.
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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God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history.
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 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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When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself. Most of our mainline Christian denominations, in my opinion, don't do the first or second halves very well. We don't really give people a good container, we give them a bunch of legalisms.
Richard Rohr
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If you stay in the mainstream of life, you let in the suffering of the world that invariably enters all of our lives by the time we're in our middle years, when we've experienced a few deaths and read a few headlines.
Richard Rohr
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There is a part of you that is Love itself, and that is what we must fall into. It is already there. Once you move your identity to that level of deep inner contentment, you will realize you are drawing upon a Life that is much larger than your own and from a deeper abundance.
Richard Rohr