There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.

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'.

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

You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.

They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.

Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change.