Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
[Written after she found out she was dying from cancer:] If I had my life to live over: I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren’t there for the day. I would have burned the pink candle...
If you want to be a true professional, you will do something outside yourself. Something to repair tears in your community. Something to make life a little better for people less fortunate than you. That's what I think a meaningful life is--living not for oneself, but...
Those of us who are warm and dry and safe and well-fed must show up for those who are cold and wet and endangered and hungry. That's a rule of life. Every ethical and religious and spiritual tradition in the world agrees on that rule.
If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less...
Forgive, forget. Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours. Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.
God is not a belief-system. Jesus is not a religion. Christianity is not a check-list. Church is not an address. The Bible is not a book of doctrines. Community is not a meeting. Grace has no exceptions. Ministry is not a program. Art is not carnal. Women are not...
I think we'd like life to be a train...but it turns out to be a sailboat.
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...
You don't need another human being to make your life complete, but let's be honest. Having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn't see them as disasters in your soul but cracks to put their love into is the most calming thing in this world.