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You cannot be naïve about evil. You cannot be naïve to the reality that there are human beings and human situations which have totally identified with the dark side of reality. They are malicious. Realism teaches you to put up appropriate boundaries so that people can't do any more evil than possible. But that doesn't mean you do evil back to them.

Richard Rohr

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Richard Rohr
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: March 20
Catholic Priest
Motivational Speaker
Priest
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
People
Evil
Totally
Doesn
Beings
Malicious
Reality
Side
Identified
Cannot
Sides
Realism
Back
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Teaches
Human
Situation
Situations
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In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.
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I think it's important to remember that by the second half of our lives, we are meant to see in wholes, and no longer just in parts.
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Every viewpoint is a view from a point.
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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
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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.
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The ego hates losing – even to God.
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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.
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Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor.
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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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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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The important thing is the willingness to give back the gift that is you, not the perfection of the gift itself. Can you feel the difference?
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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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If you don't transform your suffering, you'll transmit it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.
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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.
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There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it's enough.
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We are usually on bended knee before laws or angrily reacting against them, both immature responses.
Richard Rohr