By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings.

If you are going down a road and don't like what's in front of you, and look behind you and don't like what you see, get off the road. Create a new path!

Tragedy, no matter how sad, becomes boring to those not caught in its addictive caress.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

Love builds up the broken wall and straightens the crooked path. Love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides. Each of us is created of it and I suspect each of us was created for it.

Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross