Someday I would love to write about Vincent van Gogh - his paintings and letters continue to inspire me very much. But it remains hard to find the time and inner rest to write.

How do you pray? Take the gospel of each day and spend ten minutes with it. Read it, and read it again. Walk into the world with the gospel in your heart.

Where are you getting your affection? Who's touching you? Who's holding you? Who makes you feel alive? Who says, "You are a beautiful person, you are the beloved of God, don't forget it"? That's an important discipline.

Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God.

Friends share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.

Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.

The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity. It is a secret known only to a very few people, a secret that has to be rediscovered over and over again.