Our life is full of brokenness - broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God's faithful presence in our lives.

Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.

To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.

In 1984, Jean Vanier invited me me to visit L'Arche community in Trosly, France. He didn't say "We need a priest" or "We could use you." He said, "Maybe our community can offer you a home." I visited several times, then resigned from Harvard and went to live with the community for a year. I loved it! I didn't have much to do. I wasn't pastor or anything. I was just a friend of the Community.

The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.

Forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. Forgiveness indeed heals memories . . .

People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.