Michael Elmore-Meegan Quotes

“The future lies in education, for 36 years ICROSS has focused on educating girls and making sure that they see their own potential”

“God is at home and is content, it is we who are looking and are not at one in ourselves.”

“In order to create and to heal, to do and to serve,.. to act we need detachment.”

“Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door.”

“The outward efforts will never be insignificant if the inner light is great.”

“You may call God truth, you may call God hope. But the best name for God is love.”

“Your energy is powered by your thoughts, negative thoughts drain you, loving thoughts fill you with love”

“A loving person is one who is awakened and transformed into empathy.”

“Only one thing is expect of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself and love with all your being and all your light without stopping.”

“Even if we were offered everything that exists, it is nothing compared to the freedom and power of being loved”

“All life, every living thing is a word for God in His mystery.”

“We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity… But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.”

“When we feel overwhelmed by all the suffering in the world, or just drained by the stress of the day, do this. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and know that the very breath you are taking is the same miracle of life that pervades all creation. He who gives you this breath, despite your anxieties, fears and pain, knows you. He knows you better than you will ever understand yourself. Breathe in, breathe out. You are experiencing the miracle. The most amazing miracle of all. The gift of life. All things will find harmony in this knowing, in this, is the whisper of not only all creation, but of the Creator.”

“We know how it feels to be in the wrong and have someone shout at us or frown and walk past, we feel dreadful. We try to be friendly but so often it turns into a strained smile as someone replies curtly and asks what we want.”

“Ulcers, high blood pressure and heart attacks, insomnia and depression, all stem from trying to do more than we can in a situation that has lost its humanity.”

“We want to be good, but it’s difficult to know a safe place to start. We want to reach out our hand in friendship, but we don’t want it bitten off.”

“We have all, at one time or another, been used, or have experienced someone being unfair to us.”

“Because of the distrust that has grown from our experience, we are very careful whom we welcome. We are selective in our companions, we look suspiciously those who sit beside us in a bar and start talking to us: “is he crazy? What’s he up to?” we wonder. The city becomes a desert. With groups of friends who are nobody else’s friends. As Emily Dickinson, the reclusive poet, once wrote: “The soul selects its own society, then shuts the door.””

“If someone humiliates and hurts us, it is difficult to give them a second chance and turn the other cheek. They might just take another swing at us, we are not ready for that kind of abuse. Who needs it?”

“The best thing you can say is the thing that you have not uttered.”

“Vision without action which fails to touch the lives of the poor is not vision, but self delusion.”

“Perhaps the secret of being happy is about letting go of fear, embracing energy that enriches us. Ignoring those who drain us and diminish, channeling ourselves towards goodness and positive acts”

“Today we can change the future for someone, we have only to act.”

“Remind yourself of your vision, keep your hopes close yo your heart, be passionate about them and always, always always be true to them”

“If you only utter a single prayer in this life let it be Thanks, with all your heart”

“All our emotional scars and mental stress come from the pain of being fully accepted and cherished in ourselves.”

“The most important language of personal joy is the often complex linguistics of silence”

“Every now and then its good to step back a little. When we let go a little and remove ourselves from the drama, we can see more clearly. So often we are caught up in the stress we fail to see what triggers our worries. When we are still and put distance between our problems we often discover the solutions”

“The price of doing nothing is far greater than the cost of error.”

“The more we possess the less we have.”

“Everything changes when you wake up in the morning and decide to own today. It will not be taken from you by anyone else, it will be yours”

““The ICROSS philosophy has always been that change occurs by empowering women. You can only empower women by educating them. This was a part of our policy twenty years before it became development sector.”

“There is no such thing as change in international development, unless it belongs to the people who want to change”

“Anxiety is often related to having to perform and act an acceptable role in order to be admitted into relationships.”

“If we are ready to tear down the walls that confine us, break the cage that imprisons us, we will discover what our wings are for.”

“Waterborne diseases kill millions every year, over 1.3 billion people have no clean water. ICROSS has provided safe drinking water to over 300 000 people through innovative ground breaking research spanning three decades”

“If a young mother has a job as a secretary in a company trying to cut expenses, where they start giving her the work of two secretaries and making extra demands on her, she will do all she can to please her employers. In fact, they are causing her to worry, hurry to work and rush home late to her expectant family. Thus, pressure and demands in a business setting lead to anxiety and tension at home. This is what begins to happen in our civilization when we put profit before people, and getting work done before the feelings of those we work with.”

“When you are defeated it is your own attitude that is wrong.”

“Be quiet enough to know what to say with your actions. Never limit yourself, live the impossible, always step beyond yourself. This is what you were born to be, to become light in a world on great need. We may not be the solution, but are part of the solution.”

“It is in crisis we find ourselves, so when we are broken then this light is nearest to us.”

“That someday there will be no them and us. There will be no colour and no differences between us. There will be only one human family working together.”

“Do exactly what you would do if you felt most loved and cherished.”

“The biggest lie and dishonesty about change or the impact of projects is created by the lords of poverty who profit from the business and industry of aid.”

“To be full of things is to be empty of what matters. To be empty of things is to be full of freedom.”

“People can’t eat our pity, dehydrated children can’t drink our sorrow nor can a child be educated by our anger at injustice. No one has ever been lifted out of poverty by us being overwhelmed or shocked. The only thing that ends poverty is our actions.”