I suspect that Jesus spoke many of his parables as a kind of sad and holy joke and that that may be part of why he seemed reluctant to explain them because if you have to explain a joke, you might as well save your breath.

What makes you, in the deepest sense of the word, happy? That's what you should be doing, if the other part is also met - if it is something the world needs.

Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.

It is the first day because it has never been before and the last day because it will never be again. Be alive, if you can, all through this day - today - of your life. What's to be done? What's to be done? Follow your feet. Put on the coffee. Start the orange juice, the bacon, the toast. Then go wake up your children and your spouse. Think about the work of your hands. Live in the needs of the day.

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.

We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.

Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God's will.