Reba Riley > Reba's Quotes

“You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced
life.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“Don't ever discount the wonder of your tears. They can be healing waters and a stream of joy. Sometimes they are the best words the heart can speak.”
― William P. Young, The Shack

“I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.”
― Wm. Paul Young, The Shack

“...if anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will be the same again.”
― Wm. Paul Young, The Shack

“I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
― Anne Lamott

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“She said to go ahead and feel the feelings. I did. They felt like shit.”
― Anne Lamott

“We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.”
― Anne Lamott

“A peace washed over me when I knew God had marked me as HIS crazy person.”
― Jana Riess

“Feed my sheep, feed my sheep," I repeated. "He didn't say, 'Feed my sheep after you check their ID.”
― Sara Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion

“When I interviewed at Yale, the admissions committee asked me why they should let me into the program. I looked at them unblinking and said, 'Because I'm going to change the world some day. And I'm giving you the chance to say, We knew her when.”
― Sarah Thebarge

“As my nostrils filled with the stench of burnt hair and my friends scurried to clean up the mess, I thought, 'If your hair catches on fire while you're making a wish, does that mean it isn't coming true?”
― Sarah Thebarge, The Invisible Girls

“As I watched them file down the stairs, I didn't cry and I wasn't afraid. But I couldn't tell if it was Jesus or the gin.”
― Sarah Thebarge

“We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.”
― Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy

“At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.”
― Brian D. McLaren

“Maybe being Jesus is simply seeing people as they truly are.”
― Jim Palmer, Being Jesus in Nashville: Finding the Courage to Live Your Life

“My striving couldn't get me any closer to knowing God. He had always been there, waiting for me to give up and listen.”
― Jim Palmer, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God

“You have to let go of what you know to find out what you believe.”
― Reba Riley

“Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome is an opportunity to fight your way to the stronger person you will become.”
― Reba Riley

“Defeat is triumph in disguise.”
― Reba Riley

“Don’t drink at the water’s edge, throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst be quenched. —Jeanette Berson”
― Tosha Silver, Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead

“What is meant for you is always meant to find you. —Indian poet-saint Lalleshwari”
― Tosha Silver, Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead

“When you knock, ask to see God . . . not any of the self-appointed intermediaries. —Thoreau”
― Tosha Silver, Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead