My answer to a friend: There is no success in ministry, only service and moments of celebration. If you choose to minister, expect to be misunderstood. All of the pain people carry will fall upon your brow, and you shall be the stand-in for every ignorant statement...
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or...
In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.
The key is this: Meet today's problems with today's strength. Don't start tackling tomorrow's problems until tomorrow. You do not have tomorrow's strength yet. You simply have enough for today.
Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty. from The Gifts of Imperfection
Loving your enemies has the deep spiritual benefit of enabling us to set our own course in life rather than constantly being in a posture of angry response to what other people do. There is freedom along this route, but it requires considerable internal strength and...
I know and I speak from experience, that even in the midst of darkness, it is possible to create light and share warmth with one another. Even on the edge of the abyss, it is possible to dream exalted dreams of compassion; that it is possible to be free and strengthen...
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature can heal and give strength.
The spiritual stature of a person's life is measured by love, which in the end remains “the criterion for the definitive decision about a human life's worth or lack thereof”. Yet some believers think that it consists in the imposition of their own ideologies upon...
Don't wish me happiness. I don't expect to be happy all the time...It's gotten beyond that somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor. I will need them all.