A Quote by Richard Rohr
If our love of God does not directly influence, and even change, how we engage in the issues of our time on this earth, I wonder what good religion is.
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I don't [believe in God]. I have a problem with religion or anything else that says, 'We have all the answers,' because there's no such thing as 'the answers.' We're complex. We change our minds on issues all the time. Religion leaves no room for human complexity.
Why pray? Evidently, God likes to be asked. God certainly does not need our wisdom or our knowledge, nor even the information contained in our prayers ("your Father knows what you need before you ask him"). But by inviting us into the partnership of creation, God also invites us into relationship. God is love, said the apostle John. God does not merely have love or feel love. God is love and cannot not love. As such, God yearns for relationship with the creatures made in his image.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Our time on earth and our energy, intelligence, opportunities, relationships, and resources are all gifts from God that he has entrusted to our care and management. We are stewards of whatever God gives us. This concept of stewardship begins with the recognition that God is the owner of everything and everyone on earth. ... We never actually own anything during our brief stay on earth. God just loans the earth to us while we're here. It was God's property before you arrived, and God will loan it to someone else after you die.
If we spend most of our time concerned about things we cannot truly directly influence, what we can influence will be reduced. If we spend our energies on those things over which we can expect positive results, we will expand our influence.
Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.
God the Eternal Father did not give [the] first great commandment because He needs us to love Him. His power and glory are not diminished should we disregard, deny, or even defile His name. His influence and dominion extend through time and space independent of our acceptance, approval, or admiration."No, God does not need us to love Him. But oh, how we need to love God!"For what we love determines what we seek."What we seek determines what we think and do."What we think and do determines who we are—and who we will become.
Our moods may shift, but God's doesn't. Our minds may change, but God's doesn't. Our devotion may falter, but God's never does. Even if we are faithless, He is faithful, for He cannot betray himself. He is a sure God.
Outlawing religion form the political arena is not what the Founding Fathers intended when they drafted the First Amendment. We do a grave disservice to our country by removing the influence of religion. If you separate God from the public arena, inevitably you separate good from our government.
Our general repression of matters disgusting prevents us facing up to a serious health problem. If we are the 'god that shits,' then we are in full flight from ourselves. I even wonder whether religion itself and the whole idea of a god is produced by our self-disgust.
I don't think we've ever lived in such a dangerous time, on a range of different levels. We also live in an extremely exciting time with a multitude of opportunities for each and every one of us to engage our individual voices, to engage more effectively collectively, to tackle some of these issues that would have seemed beyond our reach just a few years ago.
There is more and more data that the biological molecules of aging are more under the influence of psychological factors than the chronological age that we usually associate with. Of course there are other things that influence our aging process, including how we perceive time. If you're constantly running out of time, then your biological clock speeds up, and you do run out of time with a heart attack or something like that. The quality of our self-esteem determines how we age. Our perception of our bodies as fields of energy or fields of matter influence how our body ages.
There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.
Jesus does not respond to our worry-filled way of living by saying that we should not be so busy with worldly affairs. He does not try to pull us away from the many events, activities, and people that make up our lives. . . . He asks us to shift the point of gravity, to relocate the center of our attention, to change our priorities. Jesus does not speak about a change of activities, a change in contacts, or even a change of pace. He speaks about a change of heart.
As we know, there are companies like Monsanto filling the Earth with their genetically-modified poison, which makes me wonder how many people share our belief that it's better to be good.We have to change the world!
("I love you," someone says, and instantly we begin to wonder - "Well, how much?" - and when the answer comes - "With my whole heart" - we then wonder about the wholeness of a fickle heart.) Our lovers, our husbands, our wives, our fathers, our gods - they are all beyond us.
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