I think it's important to remember that by the second half of our lives, we are meant to see in wholes, and no longer just in parts.

We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question.

The important thing is the willingness to give back the gift that is you, not the perfection of the gift itself. Can you feel the difference?

Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy.

God is always drawing us closer, blow by blow and bit by bit. And most of the time we do not even know it is happening.

The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.

All great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough, you’ll find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than enough and is all that you need. At that place, you will have nothing to prove to anybody and nothing to protect. That place is called freedom. It’s the freedom of the children of God. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody . . .