Richard Rohr Quotes About Giving
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In silence all our usual patterns assault us ... That is why most people give up rather quickly. When Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things to show up were the wild beasts.
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If God continues to give me health and a sane mind and verbal ability, I want to teach.
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God, give me a good humiliation every day. It's good for the soul and it's good for the ego.
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The Gospel gives human suffering deep, personal, and cosmic meaning, by connecting our pain to the pain of others and, finally, by connecting us to the very "pain of God".
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The fears that assault us are mostly simple anxieties about social skills, about intimacy, about likeableness, or about performance. We need not give emotional food or charge to these fears or become attached to them. We don’t even have to shame ourselves for having these fears. Simply ask your fears, “What are you trying to teach me?” Some say that FEAR is merely an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real.” From Everything Belongs, p. 143
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People will often, almost always, prefer a male God. A male image of God gives them this sense of security, safety, order, no nonsense. So that's where their psyche is at. Probably it's something that they've got to go through. Not that there isn't a need for order in the world, but the mystical level seems to be the mature level of religion, and there the question is not order but union - divine union. And so, without some integration of the feminine, usually you never get to the mystical level.
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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.
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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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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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If you work with such people almost on the level of spiritual direction, you see that they are people who prefer a world view of order and even punitiveness. And for some reason, there's a feeling that the male psyche is going to give that to them. And if that's your view of religion, which it is for many people, if they've never come to the mystical level, religion is for social order and to maintain social order.
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The more one gives one's self in creative union with another, the more one becomes one's self.
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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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To give, and not demand that others receive . . . that is the crossover point to maturity. . .
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