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

And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That's what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were about.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

We're out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look.

If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching.

The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.