There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us.

Rejoice with those who rejoice." I have found that difficult too often. I was much better at weeping with those who weep.

He [Christ] even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail.

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

I think the connection between poetry and theology, which is profound in Western tradition - there is a great deal of wonderful religious poetry - both poetry and theology push conventional definitions and explore perceptions that might be ignored or passed off as conventional, but when they are pressed yield much larger meanings, seem to be part of a much larger system of reality.

When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.

Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me