I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I'd been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion...well, surely there was a way to learn that trick.

Don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be.

the number 108 is held to be the most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to 9, which is three threes. And 3, of course, is the number representing supreme balance.

I believe in a magnificent God.

Devotion is diligence without assurance

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.

There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.