Your understanding of a place changes the longer you stay; you discover more, and your own life gets woven into the fabric of the community.

Grief, it seemed, was a physical place.

The challenges in this place are real and sometimes very difficult, but I've learned to slow down and look for beauty in my days, for the mysteries and blessings woven into everything, into the very words we speak.

The thing is, I used to like that: feeling special because I knew something no one else did. It's a kind of power, isn't it, knowing a secret? But lately I don't like it so much, knowing this. It's not really mine to know, is it?

A moment might be a thousand different things.

A fear Paul had transformed all these years, like a gifted alchemist, into anger and rebellion.

Once, this whole world had been hidden beneath a shallow sea.