Streep and Sehested

" 'I remember Albert Brooks saying to me in Defending Your Life, "Could you just make it a little sweeter?" - and that's been repeated by other people in the years since then.' This time her derisive snort is much louder.  'But I didn't listen to it.'
"So how did she free herself? 'I don't think it's something anyone can tell you,' Streep says. 'I think you just have to get sick of hearing the accommodation in your approach to things . . . the way people have to get sick of drinking or drugs before they stop. As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for anyone else.'"
               Meryl Streep cited in "Something about Meryl" by Leslie Bennetts in January 2010 Vanity Fair.

"I am a prison chaplain in a maximum security prison for men.  . . . Prison is a place fueled by fear. The place runs on power generated by cruelty and shame. It is shredding to the soul. . . .
I have a prayer, a daily hope.  My  prayer is that I can stand at the receiving dock at the prison as the new arrivals come in.  In my vision, I say: 'Brothers, the violence and abuse that has been done to you, or that you did to yourself or to someone else . . . it ends here.  Here you will practice compassion, dignity, and respect for yourself and others.  Here you will have the possibility to to change because God is here.  Welcome.  Come on in.'. . .
I have the same prayer and hope for the church . . . that the violence and abuse stops, and that we practice dignity and respect for all human beings."
     Baptist preacher and storyteller  Nancy Hastings Sehested, in "Passionate about the Possible," Christian Feminism Today, Vol. 30, No. 2, Summer (July - September), 2006.