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You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today.

Richard Rohr

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Richard Rohr
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: March 20
Catholic Priest
Motivational Speaker
Priest
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Keeps
Way
Eye
Negative
World
Around
Close
Become
Outside
Today
Stops
Persons
Walking
Cynical
Person
Tomorrow
Expecting
Better
Inside
Opening
Find
Eyes

More quotes by Richard Rohr

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Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.
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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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.
Richard Rohr
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I decided years ago that if I'm going to keep teaching contemplation, then the last years of my life should be contemplative.
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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You do need some successes as a young person. They don't inflate the ego necessarily, they just give you identity and ego structure. But, don't construct your life around creating those. Or you will become narcissistic and ego-centric. That won't get you anywhere.
Richard Rohr
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The journey never happens alone.
Richard Rohr
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When you haven't found inner meaning, you will always substitute outer performance. It's the only way to fill that void, that sense of significance - that I am significant. So almost the degree of outer performance can, in many cases, mirror the lack of inner alignment.
Richard Rohr
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Christianity is seen by more and more people as a negative message: anti gay, anti immigrant, anti abortion (as the only life issue), anti gay marriage, anti the Democratic party.
Richard Rohr
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Religion has in fact outdone culture in dualistic thinking - we've become as violent, as hateful toward our enemies, damning them to hell and whatever else, that the world doesn't look to us for wisdom, because we're trapped in the dualistic mind, instead of the mind of Christ that we were supposed to have.
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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What I wish I had said in the book [Falling Upward] is that part of the attraction of conservative religions, such as Mormonism, Mennonite, Amish, groups we would consider very traditional, is that they actually do the first half of life very well. They are often very happy people.
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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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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The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.
Richard Rohr
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The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.
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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I'm not trying to make political statements ,but theological statements. How can religion get itself so identified with one political party, exclusionary world views, or with pelvic morality as the defining issues of the Gospel? Jesus surely didn't. Jesus said to preach the gospel to all nations, which means we do not just talk to ourselve
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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Solitude is a courageous encounter with our naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure love.
Richard Rohr