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The way to transmute the pain of life is to reveal the wounded side of things, evil, even, and then place the wound inside of sacred space. The Bible is about naming, facing, and then forgiving the wounds of history.Richard Rohr
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All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.Richard Rohr
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Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.Richard Rohr
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True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways.Richard Rohr
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You can unlock spiritual things only from within.Richard Rohr
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Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self.Richard Rohr
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We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.Richard Rohr
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People who have been initiated "broke through in what felt like breaking down".Richard Rohr
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Final authority in the spiritual world does not tend to come from any kind of agenda success but from some kind of suffering. Insecurity and impermanence are the best spiritual teachers.Richard Rohr
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Jesus was trying to present value of a life of vulnerability in which one would have practical and needed experience of the same. It would be a life without baggage, so one would learn to accept others and their culture instead of always carrying along our own country's assumptions and calling them the Gospel.Richard Rohr
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True masters deconstruct as well as reconstruct.Richard Rohr
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Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.Richard Rohr
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Ability to laugh at evil, to relativize symbols without dismissing them is usually a sign of a rather healthy person. Puritans and reformers can never laugh.Richard Rohr
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Right words make all of us feel falsely important. Right action keeps all of us forever beginners.Richard Rohr
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I hope we can inaugurate a new humility in our use of religious language, which for me is the very proof that it is authentic.Richard Rohr
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True spirituality is not taught, it's caught. Once our sails have been unfurled to the Spirit, henceforth our motivation for the journey toward holiness and wholeness is immense gratitude.Richard Rohr
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With improved historical records, and easier access to them, we actually have better reasons for hating one another, for anger and violence toward one another.Richard Rohr
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If we know our original blessing, we can easily handle our original sin. If we rest in a previous dignity, we can bear insults effortlessly. If you really know your name is on some eternal list, you can let go of the irritations on the small lists of time. Ultimate security allows you to suffer small insecurity without tremendous effort. If you are tethered at some center point, it is amazing how far out you can fly and not get lost.Richard Rohr
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Men need men to keep their edges hot and clean, whereas women keep us warm and soft.Richard Rohr
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You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life.Richard Rohr
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You cannot contain evil by shaming it, or making people feel guilty, but only by revealing it toward it is, and then seeing the good as better.Richard Rohr
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Our religious institutions are not giving very many men access to credible encounters with the holy or even with their own wholeness. We largely give men mandates, signposts, scaffolding and appealing images that tend to create religious identity and boundaries, but from the outside.Richard Rohr
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If you do not acquire good training in detachment, you may attach to all the wrong things.Richard Rohr
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When I am not king, then THE Kingdom has its best chance of breaking through.Richard Rohr
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It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on.Richard Rohr
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Every missed rite of passage leads to a new rigidification of the personality.Richard Rohr
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His Kingship, precisely because it is so broad, so total, is doomed to be rejected by anybody who is still into tribalism, or small belonging systems. We don't really like the big Kingdom if it gets in the way of our smaller kingdoms, and it always does.Richard Rohr
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If the mystery of the Trinity is the template of all reality, what we have in the Trinitarian God is the perfect balance between union and differentiation, autonomy and mutuality, identity and community.Richard Rohr
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The soul needs meaning as much as the body needs food.Richard Rohr