He will wipe the tears from all faces.' It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required

Somebody who had read Lila asked me, ‘Why do you write about the problem of loneliness?’ I said: ‘It’s not a problem. It’s a condition. It’s a passion of a kind. It’s not a problem. I think that people make it a problem by interpreting it that way.’ 

I am interested in Scripture and theology. This is an interest that I can assume I would share with a pastor, so that makes me a little bit prone to use that kind of character, perhaps, just at the moment. Then there is also the fact that, having been a church member for many years, I am very aware of how much pastors enrich people's experience, people for whom they are significant. I know that it's a kind of custom of American literature and culture to slang them. I don't think there is any reason why that needs to be persisted in.

Often, when I want to read something that is satisfying to me as theology, what I actually read is string theory, or something like that - popularizations, inevitably, of scientific cosmologies - because their description of the scale of things and the intrinsic, astonishing character of reality coincides very beautifully with the most ambitious theology. It is thinking at that scale, and it is thinking that is invested with meaning in a humanly evocative form. That's theology.

If we focused on using the opportunities we have, which are very great by any standard - health, longevity, comfort and privacy, endless resources of culture and information - we would not just navigate this world, we would leave a good inheritance to succeeding generations.

A narrow pond would form in the orchard, water clear as air covering grass and black leaves and fallen branches, all around it black leaves and drenched grass and fallen branches, and on it, slight as an image in an eye, sky, clouds, trees, our hovering faces and our cold hands.

Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.