The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

Pay close attention to objects, events and natural phenomenon that would otherwise get chewed up in the daily grind.

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.

If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being.

The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.

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

Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day.