Quote of the Day

Don't try to win over the haters; you're not the jackass whisperer.

-- Scott Stratten

Quote of the Day

Now that I had left the church, Jason was trying to show me what he had already experienced.  His comment about it being like Christmas reminded me of the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, where everyone lives in Halloween Town, and all they know from is a world related to Halloween.  One day the main character Jack Skellington wanders into the forest and finds seven holiday doors and opens a portal to Christmas Town.  Here, for the first time, he finds that there is a world outside of Halloween.  He begins to question all he sees when he continually asks "What's this?"  It was the same thing for me and I imagine for anyone else who has left a cult-like community.  Worlds open up to you that you were previously cut off from.  I now realize that there are plenty of people in the universe doing good things.  Not just Scientologists, as I was falsely led to believe.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 223

Quote of the Day

Honoring and protecting our integrity isn't easy.  Blackmailers shout down our inner guidance by creating confusion and uproar, and as they do, we seem to lose contact with the knowing parts of ourselves, only to kick ourselves when we realize we've given in again.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 130

Quote of the Day

The strange idea of having to love God so that He does not punish me for my rebelliousness and disappointment, but instead rewards me with the love that forgives all, becomes just as much the expression of our childish dependency and insecurity as the assumption that, like our parents, God is in desperate need of our love.  But is this not a completely grotesque idea?  A higher being dependent on inauthentic feelings dictated by morality is strongly reminiscent of the insecurity displayed by our frustrated and disoriented parents.  Such a being can be called God only by people who have never questioned their own parents or thought about their dependency on them.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 39

Quote of the Day

If conservative Christians continue to treat LGBT people as second-class citizens and cry persecution every time they don't get their way, they will lose far more than the culture wars.  They will lose the Christian identity.  We've obscured the gospel when the "right to refuse" service has become a more widely-known Christian value than the impulse to give it.

 -- Rachel Held Evans, "For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex"

Quote of the Day

I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena.  If you're occasionally getting your butt kicked as you respond, and if you're also figuring out how to stay open to feedback without getting pummeled by insults, I'm more likely to pay attention to your thoughts about my work.  If, on the other hand, you're not helping, contributing, or wrestling with your own gremlins, I'm not at all interested in your commentary.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 171

Quote of the Day

After thinking a certain way, and being told what to think based on strict policy for more than thirty years, learning to think for myself and make my own choices did not come easily, nor did it happen overnight.  Now, more than two years after cutting ties with the church, I'm still trying to figure things out.  This mindset, which had been drilled into me for decades, is not an easy thing to "unlearn."  With practically every decision I made when I first left (and still even now), I had to ask myself Is that what you really think, or what a Scientologist would think?

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 221-222

Quote of the Day

Though we tend to equate integrity with honesty, it's actually much more.  The word itself means "wholeness," and we experience it as the firm knowledge that "This is who I am.  This is what I believe.  This is what I am willing to do -- and this is where I draw the line."

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. 128

Quote of the Day

A system of morality tells us what to do and what not to do, but it cannot tell us what we should feel.  Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated.  We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies.  But as we have already seen, our brains are permanent repositories of our emotions; these are retrievable, susceptible of experience, and luckily they can be transformed without risk into conscious feelings.  And if we are fortunate enough to find an enlightened witness, we can learn to recognize their meaning and their causes.

-- Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 38

Quote of the Day

I've been watching people with golden crosses around their necks and on their lapels shout at the TV about how serving gay and lesbian people is a violation of their "sincerely-held religious beliefs."  And I can't help but laugh at the sad irony of it.  Two-thousand years ago, Jesus hung from that cross, looked out on the people who put him there and said, "Father, forgive them."  Jesus served sinners all the way to the cross.

-- Rachel Held Evans, "For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex"

Quote of the Day

When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection.  When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable.  If we dismiss all the criticism, we lose out on important feedback, but if we subject ourselves to the hatefulness, our spirits get crushed.  It's a tightrope, shame resilience is the balance bar, and the safety net below is the one or two people in our lives who can help us reality-check the criticism and cynicism.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 169

Quote of the Day

Even now, after decades in this business, I still have moments where I am trying to fit in as an actress in Hollywood, as if I were somehow an imposter.  For so long, I looked for acceptance from everyone from my dad to the people in this town.  What I have slowly come to realize, and often still have to remind myself of, is this: There is no "right" way to be.  I am flawed and imperfect, but am uniquely me.  I don't fit in and probably never will.  And I don't have to try to anymore.  That other person was a lie.  And let's face it, normal is boring.  We all have something to offer the world in some way, but by not being our authentic selves, we are robbing the world of something different, something special.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 170