For some people, going to church is going home. In a very profound sense, I would say the same thing. Home is where Christ is.

Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting.

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?

We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old.

Love yourself not in some egocentric, self-serving sense but love yourself the way you would love your friend in the sense of taking care of yourself, nourishing yourself, trying to understand, comfort, and strengthen yourself.

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.

All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from it. Today is the only day there is.