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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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Richard Rohr
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: March 20
Catholic Priest
Motivational Speaker
Priest
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Moving
Second
Matter
Move
Life
Becomes
Grace
Moral
Rather
Half
Religion
Mystical

More quotes by 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
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Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.
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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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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It is only through the holes in our soul that we break out and God breaks through.
Richard Rohr
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The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.
Richard Rohr
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God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.
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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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.
Richard Rohr
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Once you experience being loved when you are unworthy, being forgiven when you did something wrong, that moves you into non-dual thinking. You move from what I call meritocracy, quid pro quo thinking, to the huge ocean of grace, where you stop counting or calculating.
Richard Rohr
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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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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 movement toward gratitude, authenticity, and union is the natural and organic inner work of the second half of our lives.
Richard Rohr
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What some now call 'emerging Christianity' or 'the emerging church' is not something you join, establish, or invent. You just name it and then you see it everywhere- already in place! Such nongroup groups, the 'two or three' gathered in deep truth, create a whole new level of affiliation, dialogue, and friendship.
Richard Rohr
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The same powerful Scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person. This is surely what Jesus means when he talks about the one who has being given more and those who have not losing what little they have.
Richard Rohr
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You cannot heal what you cannot acknowledge.
Richard Rohr
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If God is Trinity and Jesus is the face of God, then it is a benevolent universe. God is not someone to be afraid of, but is the Ground of Being and on our side.
Richard Rohr
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Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go split people see and create splits in everything and everybody.
Richard Rohr
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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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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