Pray anyway. Who knows what God can do through your prayer?

Prayers out of, very often, not the most religious part of me, but the most anxious part of me, the most desperately loving, fearing part of me.

I don't know how to save my own life, so anything they've found in what I've written that saved theirs - I can't take responsibility for it.

The other day, the way people [do] who are approaching their 80th birthday, I was thinking about all the last business - funerals and where do you want to be buried - and I thought if anything were to be inscribed on my tombstone, I said let it be that.

When friends speak overmuch of times gone by, often it's because they sense their present time is turning them from friends to strangers. Long before the moment came to say goodbye, I think, we said goodbye in other words and ways and silences. Then when the moment came for it at last, we didn't say it as should be said by friends. So now at last, dear Mouse, with many, many years between: goodbye.

We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old. This seems to be close to the heart of that mystery. I know no more now than I ever did about the far side of death as the last letting-go of all, but now I know that I do not need to know, and that I do not need to be afraid of not knowing. God knows. That is all that matters.

If preachers decide to preach about hope, let them preach out of what they themselves hope for.