When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.

I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said that you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

What if you wake up some day, and you're 65... and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life?

I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.

It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.

Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.