The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen Quotes

“I used to believe there was some line between what is sacred and common, miraculous and mundane. My perspective had to shift to see that actually all of the bushes are burning, the entire world is ablaze.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“New sight didn’t come from someone giving me a summary on how to get through tough times. It came from hitting rock bottom, knowing what suffering is, feeling what love can do, and continuing to let both teach me in the years that followed.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“I still see harsh comments online or receive them right to my face, comments on how we have fallen into the deep end, how we throw the word love around to too many people. And to that I’d say, “Oh, thank you, I’m trying to.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“I am thirty. I made two girls within my own body, felt the rush of bringing them into the world, and when I saw their bodies, I saw a miracle. Their skin and eye lashes perfect. Tiny lips, tiny fingernails, eyes embodying innocence and awe. They grow and run around my house naked and scream wildly without self-awareness or social concern. I teach them about our culture and what is and isn’t acceptable. But what I will not teach them is shame of their body. It was beautiful from moment one, and that will not change - not with age, not with anything. One daughter looks at her body in the mirror, we talk about the organs and skin, how her body will change. She is beautiful on every count. I remember when I was six, and I know I have to warn her. Not shame her, but tell her how some people were not taught to love, but take for themselves and she must be brave and aware. It pains me as I tell her, her innocent mind not know why one person would hurt another in such a way. “Do not be afraid,” I tell her. “But this is our culture, so be smart and be aware my brave girl.” Shame teaches us, but I will not teach my daughters in this way. I will empower them to be proud of their bodies, respectful of their bodies, in awe of how miraculous it is and what it is capable of.

I will tell my daughter that to be a woman is not to be lesser, not object, not the bed in the red light district, nor the “bitch” in the hotel. She is not the body to exploit or product to consume.

“She” is not shame.

“She” is beautiful woman with beautiful body, capable of cosmic realities. Holding someone close, experiencing love, making love, creating life, accepting another human life as her own, feeling pain, joy, giving strength, healing with a kiss, wholeness with a touch; giving physical and mental nourishment with her own body.

“She” is grounded enough to follow, still capable to lead from a child to a nation. The woman’s body is made in the image of Love, from Love herself, Life herself, so she herself is of God.

For my Grandmother, for my Mother, for my daughters, my friends, and as a reminder to myself: be proud, beautiful woman, your body is intrinsically good, perfectly good.

Perfect from moment one.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“Suffering is what happens when we want what is in front of us to be different than it is, and I wondered just how much suffering actually exists versus how much I was creating.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“Shame didn’t die until I finally decided to see the oppressive system for what it was and not subject myself to it any longer. My stories were not like many other terrible stories I know. But just how dehumanizing does a thing need to be before you can say it out loud?”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“After years of entrusting someone else to make your decisions, it can feel dangerous to start making them for yourself.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“Jean Vanier wrote, “A society which discards those who are weak and nonproductive risks exaggerating the development of reason, organization, aggression, and the desire to dominate. It becomes a society without a heart, without kindness—a rational and sad society, lacking celebration, divided within itself and given to competition, rivalry, and, finally, violence.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“Sharing in suffering—it does something to a soul. It’s like a beautiful sad piece of music undoing things so our souls are more alive.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“I once heard a man say he had favor on his life because he received a good parking spot at the mall. I cringed. I’d thought something like that before, believed it—like it was a blessing having a nice house or car or having something come easily. How did I ever believe that? The great American dream bastardizing the profound story of Love. I realized how often I had abducted the story, how I’d labeled certain things as favor, blessing, transaction. I wondered what the kids I knew in Kenya or the people in Auschwitz called favor. A bread crumb? Death?”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“is interesting what humans will subject themselves to because of tribalism or fear of being rejected.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“As I heard Peter Rollins once say, we don’t know what we believe; it shows up in symptoms.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder

“... I found truth was more a thing my tribe didn't own. I found that love was much bigger than my idea of it.”
― Lisa Gungor, The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder