Mary Rose O'Reilley Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

What if we were to take seriously the possibility that our students have a rich and authoritative inner life and tried to nourish it rather than negate it?

Mary Rose O'Reilley
My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you.

Mary Rose O'Reilley
If you have a big splash of ecstasy in your life every day you are going to teach students something finer than "buy low/sell high". Maybe you'll teach them, not by what you say but by who you are, to live their lives as a standing affront to the ravaging mercantile mentality.

Mary Rose O'Reilley
Finding voice is a socially responsible political act. We don't just do it for ourselves. And helping someone to find voice demands a spiritual partnership with that seeker. It's an exercise of compassion.

Mary Rose O'Reilley
Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours.

Mary Rose O'Reilley
Whatever your eye falls on. For it will fall on what you love - will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go.

Mary Rose O'Reilley
I would not say I am looking for God. Or, I am not looking for God precisely. I am not seeking the God I learned about as a Catholic child, as an 18-year-old novice in a religious community, as an agnostic graduate student, as - but who cares about my disguises? Or God's.

Mary Rose O'Reilley
The economy of gift, of art, is fundamentally opposed to the economy of war.

Mary Rose O'Reilley