Sometimes you don’t know when you’re taking the first step through a door until you’re already inside.

Maybe the man who said that his doctor had pulled him off Prozac because One Thousand Gifts and taking the dare to write 1,000 gifts was healing deep places in him and leading him to *experience* joy.

When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?

But wells don't come without first begging to see the wells; wells don't come without first splitting open hard earth, cracking back the lids. There's no seeing God face-to-face without first the ripping.

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.

Worry is the facade of taking action when prayer really is.

We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: the means to communion with God.... There is a belief missing, that God is good and that he gives good gifts.