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If you do not transform your wounds you will transmit them.

Richard Rohr

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Richard Rohr
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: March 20
Catholic Priest
Motivational Speaker
Priest
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Transmit
Transform
Wounds

More quotes by Richard Rohr

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Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.
Richard Rohr
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God seems to be about turning our loves around and using them toward the great love that is their true object.
Richard Rohr
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Many people who attack me know so little of that larger Tradition, and end up being not very traditional at all. When you invoke the whole and great Tradition, you end up scaring people who call 1950 America traditional Christianity. It is just what they are used to in their one limited lifetime.
Richard Rohr
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Egoic consciousness is the one we all normally operate with, until we are told there is something else! Every culture teaches egoic consciousness in different ways. At that level it is all about me, my preferences, my choices, my needs, my desires and me and my group as the central reference point.
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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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
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Spirituality is about being ready. All the spiritual disciplines of your life - prayer, study, meditation or ritual, religious vows - are there so you can break through to the eternal. Spirituality is about awakening the eyes, the ears, the heart so you can see what's always happening right in front of you.
Richard Rohr
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One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action.
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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The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.
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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A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.
Richard Rohr
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Those who are not true leaders will just affirm people at their own immature level.
Richard Rohr
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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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It is only through the holes in our soul that we break out and God breaks through.
Richard Rohr
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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.
Richard Rohr
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If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
Richard Rohr
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As to his gospel, Jesus Christ came into the world as the image of the invisible God to communicate to us that not only did we not need to be afraid of God, but that God is more for us than we are ourselves or one another. God's love is infinite, and unstoppable, and will win!
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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Famine, poverty, abuse, you can't keep that all blocked out. If you let those things teach you, influence you, change you, those are the events that transition you without you even knowing it to become more compassionate.
Richard Rohr