Quotes About Transformation

having had the gleam taken out of her to the point where she resembles twilight

I am cold cold trying to slide myself out of my own shade but hour by hour more shade leaks out

breaking out of their mass grave

Life plots elegantly.

He reached across the table and put both his cold hands on my face. Those hands that had—what did he say?—"opened doors of perception and windows of imagination and broken shackles of anxiety" were soft.

I guess the idea of stepping out from behind the "camouflage of routine," as someone once described it, still intimated me.

I had surprised myself this year by jumping in to reshape my life before life stepped in to reshape it for me.

Sometimes it was hard for me to connect the boy I knew—the skinny smart kid who collected lead soldiers and pursued Boy Scout merit badges—with the phenomenally successful man he'd become. But sooner or later, when we were together, some remark would inevitably trigger childhood memories and then we'd be off, zipping down a path that existed now only for the two of us.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there's a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they're not the same, ever again.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that's going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

After a decade of all-volunteer advocacy, I have come to view every incarceration as a missed opportunity to love and transform; as a loss of time, life, and dreams of our community; and as state violence. Some of our greatest assets and resources in this struggle are exiled from our communities and languishing in this nation's labyrinth of violent institutions.

On the cross, leadership dies. On the cross, success dies. On the cross, skills die, and excellence dies. All of my strengths—nailed to the cross. All of my weaknesses—nailed to the cross. All of my yearnings for bigger and better, for anything other than Christ himself—nailed to that same cross.

No. Our desire to "be like Jesus" contains several exemption clauses, not the least of which are Jesus' hidden years, desert experiences, temptations, tortures, and crucifixion.

What might be the fruit of fasting stinginess? What would happen if our churches fasted spectatorship? What might occur if our families fasted accumulation? What could change if our offices fasted revisionism? What might erupt if a new generation fasted escapism? Such fasts could trigger a spiritual revolution.

Christian spirituality is not a life project for becoming a better person." —EUGENE PETERSON

That though passageway came with a surprising revelation. When life forces you to face yourself, what awaits in the mirror is a gift: vulnerability. Your heart is pierced. You're broken open. You're hyper-aware of what you're feeling.

All I knew was that I needed to flee as far away as I could from the pressure cooker my life had become. A few days at a local spa would not suffice. My spirit was demanding a complete and total eject, a force powerful enough to propel me five thousand miles across the Atlantic. In fact, this was not a vacation. It was a prison break.

I'm a person in process, from the me I once was to the me I am now.

Falling down ain't falling down, If you don't cry when you hit the floor, It's called the past cause I'm getting past, And I ain't nothing like I was before, You ought to see me now

Growth requires movement. And often, the only way forward is through an exit door.

When life forces you to face yourself, what awaits in the mirror is a gift: vulnerability. Your heart is pierced. You're broken open. You're hyperaware of what you're feeling.

Bliss is a beautiful destination, but you can often only reach its shores after a turning point. It's as if the universe is testing you to be sure you are strong enough to make it through the murky waters, not just the serene ones, so that you can move to a new and unknown place in yourself.

We adjust ourselves to fit, to adapt to others' ideas of who we should be. We shift ourselves not in sweeping pivots, but in movements so tiny that they are hardly perceptible, even in our view. Years can pass before we finally discover that, after handing over our power piece by small piece, we no longer even look like ourselves.

Acting is magical. Change your look and your attitude, and you can be anyone.