Quotes from Elizabeth Cunningham

So I say, if you are burning, burn. If you can stand it, the shame will burn away and leave you shining, radiant, and righteously shameless

Being lost is the way, how else can you be found?

This is a passion story: my passion, his, ours — yours.

And what is love but a four-letter word for trouble?

In your time, politicians win points in the polls for proposing to punish unmarried teenaged mothers like me, not to mention our children.

How things appear is only the thin, papery outer skin of the onion. Of course, when you cut open the onion, your eyes will sting and water, and then you can't see at all. You're lucky if you don't slice your finger.

And sometimes men fail, I answered silently. Sometimes they don't forgive. Sometimes what you see is only the bright surface of something cold and deep.

Summer was letting out one long, last, sweet breath before winter began to blast.

I was grateful for the darkness that hid our faces at least, but nothing can hide the voice. It is always naked.

I've outgrown my childhood name, and I haven't found a new one yet." "Ah," she cried. "Then it will be my pleasure to name you for myself. I can tell you are a colleen after my own heart, more like to me than my own daughter Findbhair. So I bestow on you the brave name of Maeve until such a time as another name shall claim you.

Ever notice how the more depraved a man is, the more he tries to ruin other people's fun?

Remember your Plato, Maeve. 'If a man, fixing his attention on these and the like difficulties, does away with the idea of things and will not admit that every individual thing has its own determinate idea which is always one and the same, he will have nothing on which his mind can rest; and so he will utterly destroy his reasoning…

these mothers at their midnight council were more like one great mind probing itself, divided at times as great minds may be, but one entity

In the end I just let the dreams come and go, let whatever bliss or pain they brought roll through me. ...Time wears away hope like water wears away rock. As for faith, I remained in a standoff with Isis. But love, as Paul of Tarsus would say, is greater than hope and faith. It can survive without either. Love was all I had, and it would not go away. It would not die even though sometimes I wished it would.

Love has nothing whatsoever to do with deserving. We may not like it, and I don't much, but that is what our Rabbi teaches. If we are disciples, that is the discipline we must practice

They had always been there, just hidden, sometimes, sadly, self-hating, but always there. The women, the church within the church, like Mary in the Sacristy, with their own secret rites. The thread wound back through a labyrinth, through thousands of years, into a ball, round and bright as the full moon.

Today was Mardi Gras, Marvin remembered. The Episcopals called it Shrove Tuesday, Maria had explained to him, because they were supposed to shrive themselves of their sins, which, loosely translated, meant something like: no more jive, time to shrive, almost Lent, time to repent.

It is not easy," he began, "for the snake to shed skin. The new skin underneath is extremely sensitive, tender to the slightest touch. The snake at this time has a tendency to heightened temperament. It is all in the natural order of things.

sacrifice and denial are not always one and the same. The word sacrifice means to make sacred. Life is sacred, and sacrifice is returning to life what life has given. A sacrifice might be something offered or relinquished. Something dies and becomes the ground of new life, and both the life and the death are sacred.

Don't call me Naomi, which means pleasant. But call me Miriam, which means bitterness. I will weep, and I will not be comforted, for the Lord God hath dealt bitterly with me." She would light a candle to Mary, Esther decided.

If you are burning, burn. If you can stand it, the shame will burn away and leave you shining, radiant, and righteously shameless.