The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

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.

I was deeply influenced by an Episcopal laywoman named Agnes Sanford, who in her day was quite famous as a faith healer, which is a term I've always distrusted, because it conjures up charlatanry. She was not a charlatan. She was the real thing, and she had had remarkable healings.

Prayers out of, very often, not the most religious part of me, but the most anxious part of me, the most desperately loving, fearing part of me.

I pray for people I love when they are sick. I pray that way.

It is not the objective proof of God's existence that we want but the experience of God's presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.

You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.