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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
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Topeka
Kansas
Right
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Normally
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People
Either
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More quotes by Richard Rohr

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Jesus is the very concrete truth revealing and standing in for the universal truth.
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.
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The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.
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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 you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself.
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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.
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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.
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One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action.
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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.
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I am who I am in the eyes of God- nothing more and nothing less.
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Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you.
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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.
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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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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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Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn't the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these moments of profound human presence, we are awakened to the divine presence and see that the kingdom of God is coming and yet is already here.
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We are just a little tiny flicker of a much larger flame that is Life itself, Consciousness itself, Being itself, Love itself, God’s very self.
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A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.
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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.
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I believe in mystery and multiplicity. To religious believers this may sound almost pagan. But I don't think so.
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If we don't learn to mythologize our lives, inevitably we will pathologize them.
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