The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God, not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong.

In the second half of life, people have less power to infatuate you. But they also have much less power to control you or hurt you.

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.

It seems we are suffering from a very narrow and self serving reading of the Gospel right now.

You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today.

Remember finally, that the ashes that were on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.

The cross is the standing statement of what we do to one another and to ourselves. The resurrection is the standing statement of what God does to us in return.