Laugh till you weep. Weep till there's nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it's all one.

Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.

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

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

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

But it has been my experience that the risks are faroutweighed by the rewards, chief of which is when you speak to strangers as though they are friends, more often than not, if only for as long as the encounter lasts, they become friends, and if in the process they also think of you as a little peculiar, who cares?

One life on this earth is all that we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.