The Thing Isto love life, to love it evenwhen you have no stomach for itand everything you’ve held like burnt paper in your hands,your throat filled with the silt of it.When grief sits with you, its tropical heatthickening the air, heavy as watermore fit for gills...
I believe that we can only safely read Scripture—which is a dangerous book in the wrong hands—if we are somehow sharing in the divine gaze of love. A life of prayer helps us develop a third eye that can read between the lines and find the golden thread which is moving...
Do not ask your childrento strive for extraordinary lives.Such striving may seem admirable,but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, and pears.Show them how...
To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
Angel, a Jew, owner of the most famous bakery in Germany, often said: "Do you know why I'm alive today? I was still a teenager when Nazis in Germany killed Jews mercilessly. Nazis took us to Auschwitz by train. Last night in the ward was deadly cold. We were left for...
There is no reversingthis road.The path that bore you heregoes in one direction only,every step drawing youdown a wayby which you will notreturn.You thought arrivalwas everything,that your entire journeyended with kneelingin the placeyou had spent allto find.When you...
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way."
Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe...
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can...