Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.

I found myself in a maze where I'd taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn't doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.

Prayer is happening, and it is not necessarily something that I am doing. God is happening, and I am lucky enough to know that I am in The Midst.

Day by day we are given not what we want but what we need. Sometimes it is a feast and sometimes...swept crumbs, but by faith we believe it is enough.

The real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there.

Because I'm a "strong person," the symptoms hit me by surprise. It was, as I write in the book, stinging in my eyes after Sunday that I thought was an allergy, until one day I sat in the car and decided to just let my eyes tear up so that whatever was in them would come out, and what came out were tears that wouldn't stop. It was literally a physical reaction that was my first indication there was anything wrong.

Once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices.... Needless to say, this is far less satisfying that nailing villains. It also turned out to be more healing in the end.