Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.

In community, where you have all the affection you could ever dream of, you feel that there is a place where even community cannot reach. That's a very important experience. In that loneliness, which is like a dark night of the soul, you learn that God is greater than community.

The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.

If you are not able to be silent, you will not be able to speak well.

'How much longer will I live?'... Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention.

When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.

When I could no longer cling to my normal supports I discovered that true support and real safety lie far beyond the structures of our world.