True faith, a simple life, a helping hand- the three things prized most in Heaven.

The pride that keeps us from forgiving is the same pride which keeps us from accepting forgiveness.

I don't go to church all that regularly, and one reason I don't is very often when I go I am bored out of my wits. I find myself being addressed by preachers who, I assume, were led by some initial passion for Christ, for the truth, for God, for "the More." That's what got them there. But that has gotten buried under all the debris of having to run a church, of concerns.

The trouble with really seeing and really hearing is that then we really have to do something about what we have seen and heard.

What's prayer? It's shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish into the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard.

A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is when one plus one equals a thousand.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.