Like a house in the rain, books were havens of permanence and protection from whatever it was that as a child I needed protection from.

The birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it.

You do not need to understand healing to be healed or know anything about blessing to be blessed.

You hear as many things as you would imagine. I hear voices of people I loved once. I hear moments that took place. I hear silences.

Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.

Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.

That's five friends, one each for Jesu's wounds, and Godric bears their mark still on what's left of him as in their time they all bore his on them. What's friendship, when all's done, but the giving and taking of wounds?