I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.

A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out, like a baby's fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through.

Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic...but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned.

Frequently, as so many poets and psalmists and songwriters have said, the invisible shift happens through the broken places.

My mother was a not-too-devoted atheist. She went to Episcopal church on Christmas Eve every year, and that was mostly it.

I knew that the world was a harsh place, and my family was a mess, and even though I danced as fast as I could, I did not feel welcome, did not feel the great Shalom. THIS WORLD WAS NEVER A GOOD MATCH FOR ME. But my belief was that there was a loving magical energy in the world - seen in Nature's beauty and awesomeness, my best girl and women friends, art, music.