Elizabeth Lesser Quotes
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Grief is good...it is a sign of how well we have loved.
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We think that maybe feminism isn't appropriate anymore, since Western women have really made enormous strides. But check out the rest of the world if you'd like to not be able to sleep tonight.
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If I pull from places of faith, joy and gratitude, then I have the wind of creativity behind me. And, my work in the world is much more effective.
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What do you want in your life? What do you want in your relationships? And if you say, I'd like them to be harmonious; I'd like them to be free; I'd like not to be in a state of blame all the time or shame. If you answer like that, then I would say, look at what's unforgiven. Look at where you know you did wrong and you would like to go to that person and say - I'm sorry. Can we start over? If you want to have a happier life, I would say, practice forgiveness.
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See what's happening to our sisters around the world. I'm very interested in the protection of women globally.
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The world needs women to redefine what it means to be a person of power.
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I pray that each one of us stays awake as we fall. I pray that we choose to go into the abyss willingly and that our fall is cushioned by faith--faith that at the bottom we will be caught and taught and turned toward the light. I pray that we don't waste precious energy feeling ashamed of our mistakes, or embarrassed by our flaws. After years of teaching, I know only a few things for sure. One of them is this: We are chunks of dense matter that need to be cracked open. Our errors and failings are chinks in the heart's armor through which our true colors can shine.
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The great loneliness- like the loneliness a caterpillar endures when she wraps herself in a silky shroud and begins the long transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. It seems we too must go through such a time, when life as we have known it is over- when being a caterpillar feels somehow false and yet we don’t know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change. And though we must make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly, soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive.
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We can be the one to take the first courageous step toward the other and to do something or to try to do something other than rejection or attack. We can do this with our siblings and our mates and our friends and our colleagues. We can do this with the disconnection and the discord all around us.
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First we forgive ourselves, then we forgive others and life itself.
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Diversity is good. We need each other's ideas.
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What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.
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When we slow down, quiet the mind, and allow ourselves to feel hungry for something that we do not understand, we are dipping into the abundant well of spiritual longing.
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Fear is a sneaky thief, stealing away precious moments of your life.
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I can only do what I do with a spirit of humor, and faith and give the controls over to something else.
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Grief is an expression that you loved well.
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Anyone whose lifestyle may frighten you or whose point of view makes smoke come out of your ears.
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There's something in our makeup and in our bodies that really wants to luxuriate more in just the joy of being alive and not always consuming, creating, building. There's something inside of us that wants desperately to stop and experience and just be - not just always do.
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Some people, who are deeply involved in an organized, traditional religion, find it very difficult to accept that their way isn't the only way. And that their sacred text isn't the only text and it must be taken literally.
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If you're interested in the door to the heavens opening, start with the door to your own secret self.
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I actually don't think we're more divided than we were.
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First we love within, then we love the world.
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I'm interested in helping women become courageous in being exactly who they are. Because the only way to change anything is to do it from your genuine self.
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Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans - I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment.