It is precisely because no one needs soup, fish, meat, salad, cheese, and dessert at one meal that we so badly need to sit down to them from time to time. It was largesse that made us all; we were not created to fast forever... Enter here, therefore, as a sovereign remedy for the narrowness of our minds and the stinginess of our souls.

Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers? Why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half earth's gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become.

Salvation is a gift given, not a bargain struck.

Even to this day, grace remains hard to swallow. Religiosity and moralism go down easier than free forgiveness.

If you take all your meals seriously, none of them gets a chance to matter.

The bread and the pastry, the cheeses and wine, and the sugar go into the Supper of the lamb because we do. It is our love that brings the city home. It is I grant you, an incautious and extravagant hope. But only outlandish hopes can make themselves at home.

Grace cannot prevail...until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.