[O]ne of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.

I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, “Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight.” My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: “When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town – to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go.

You must have courage to love, you have to have a profound will to do what is right to love, and it does not come easy.

When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise. They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny.

I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that's becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism.

It's in the act of having to do things that you don't want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.

Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences than in educational settings.