Dear God, I surrender this thought to you, for I would see the miracle that lies behind it. Amen.

I have heard it said that living out of our vision is more powerful than living out of our circumstance. Holding on to a vision invokes the circumstances by which the vision is achieved. Vision is content; material circumstances mere form.

It can take years of tears to melt the hardness that develops in this world, covering our tender, gentler inner selves. Tears for every devastating loss, tears for every humiliating failure, tears for every repeated mistake. Those who honor those tears, and even honor them, are not failures at love but rather its true initiates. First the pain and then the power. First the heart breaks and then it soars.

A relationship is more of an assignment than a choice. We can walk away from the assignment, but we cannot walk away from the lessons it presents. We stay with a relationship until a lesson is learned, or we simply learn it another way.

As long as there are ways we can serve, then we have a job to do.

We shouldn’t use our own upset as an excuse for not helping.

I think the heartbreak of September 11 - America's grief not only over the loss of life but also the loss of our own innocence -has expanded us as people because it has tenderized our hearts. On a psychological level, the American people have matured as a result of that awful day.