There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.

Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked.

Make time for prayer and reflection; try to understand your value as a man on earth but see, too, your proper place in the scheme of things. It may sound funny to say this, but I have come to see that we are all far more important and less important than we think.

Do you think that people ever really do believe they will die, that the world will just go along as always without them? I wonder if we aren't all a little surprised at the moment of crossover, if we don't look back over our shoulders saying, Now hold on.

There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.

My inside self and my outside self used to match. A compass needle pointed true north. Now the needle spins around and around indicating the sad direction of nowhere.