I didn't write because I had anything to say, but in order to find out what there was to say.

Spirituality is no different from what weve been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. Its just ordinary stuff.

Suffering attracts fixers the way road-kills attract vultures.

Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality . . . a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.

Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing.

Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.

All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.