Quotes About Acceptance

Tom said either you learn to live with paradox and ambiguity or you'll be 6 years old for the rest of your life.

Of course, there will always be more you could do, but you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

Trappings and charm wear off, I've learned. The book of welcome says, Let people see you. They see that your upper arms are beautiful, soft and clean and warm, and then they will see this about their own, some of the time. It's called having friends, choosing each other, getting found, being fished out of the rubble. It blows you away, how this wonderful event happened—me in your life, you in mine.

God loves you crazily, like I love you, Rae said, like a slightly overweight auntie, who sees only your marvelousness and need.

Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don't have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not to go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in—then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.

I have actually come to believe that a person being herself is beautiful - that contentment and acceptance and freedom are beautiful.

You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and finally, grief ends up giving you the two best gifts: softness and illumination. Every

They taught me that maturity was the ability to live with unresolved problems.

The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches.

Every day we're in the grip of the impossible conundrum: the truth that it's over in a blink, and we may be near the end, and that we have to live as if it's going to be okay, no matter what.

Don't get me wrong: grief sucks, it really does. Unfortunately, though, avoiding it robs us of life, of the now, of a sense of living spirit.

You can't logically get from where we were to where we are now. I think that is what they mean by grace.

P 264: Elizabeth talking to Rosie re Sharon leaving--Try to be a good sport, baby. Sharon feels as bad as you do. It's all right for you to be mad, but...try to be as good a sport as you can. I'll tell you. It's a run-of-the-mill shitty thing. Life is full of them. And it is ALWAYS feels better to be kind.

Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken.

Sometimes love does not look like what you had in mind

Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

In general, though, there's no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

even though you know that your manuscript is not perfect and you'd hoped for so much more, but if you also know that there is simply no more steam in the pressure cooker and that it's the very best you can do for now—well? I think this means that you are done.

The good news is that God has such low standards, and reaches out to those of us who are often not lovable and offers us a chance to come back in from the storm of drama and toxic thoughts.

The sky was blue and cloudless, everything was in bloom, and she wore a little lavender cotton cap. She was doing very well that day, except that she was dying.

Polite inclusion is the gateway drug to mercy.

My elderly priest friend Terry says, "Don't try harder—resist less.

Dying people can teach us this most directly. Often the attributes that define them drop away—the hair, the shape, the skills, the cleverness. And then it turns out that the packaging is not who that person has really been all along. Without the package, another sort of beauty shines through.

I desperately want to stop minding so much about other people, life, and myself. Krishnamurti, the great Indian teacher, when asked what was the secret to his serenity, said in his soft, shy voice, "I don't mind what happens." This is so not me—I mind his having even said this.