Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.

Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

Left to my own devices, my first inclination is to mess in other people's lives. I secretly believe my whole family, and really the whole world, is my responsibility.

If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.

After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.

My theology is based on what I tell my Sunday-school kids - that they are loved and chosen, AS IS, now, today. That the moment is holy, sacred, and all there is - and that we are only as sick as our secrets. So TELL IT.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories.