For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before.

I write what I would like to read.

I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?

True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who 'have found the center of their lives in their own hearts'.

Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.

It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?

I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.