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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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Richard Rohr
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: March 20
Catholic Priest
Motivational Speaker
Priest
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Small
Scripture
Word
Bible
Use
Supposed
Idolatry
Change
Allow
Scriptures
Self
Afraid
Norm
Right
Holy
Normally
Trying
Control
Exception
People
Either
Height

More quotes by 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.
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God comes to us disguised as our life.
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We grow up as natural optimists as Americans. Catholic priests were so hopeful as we watched the Vatican II experience. Yet, it's a punch in the belly to see what has happened in the church and the world. Dualistic thinking seems to have taken over the church and our politics to a really neurotic degree.
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Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go split people see and create splits in everything and everybody.
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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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The message of falling - failure, death, crucifixion, whatever you want to say - is not really that. Some sort of falling is really found in all the world's religions, just in different languages.
Richard Rohr
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The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God, not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong.
Richard Rohr
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Pope Francis insists that mercy is at the very top of the Christian hierarchy of great truths, and everything falls apart whenever mercy is displaced by anything else.
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When we can see the image of God where we don't want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.
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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.
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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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The phrase, 'You must die before you die,' is found in most of the world religions. If you don't learn how to die early, you spend the rest of your life avoiding failure. When you can free your True Self, the whole spiritual life opens up.
Richard Rohr
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Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had.
Richard Rohr
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It seems we are suffering from a very narrow and self serving reading of the Gospel right now.
Richard Rohr
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The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.
Richard Rohr
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I am who I am in the eyes of God- nothing more and nothing less.
Richard Rohr
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Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.
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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.
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People wanted to me to describe more about what I call the container, and then describe what the second half of life feels like.
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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