We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.

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.

Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with... Give us pasta with a hundred fillings.

We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.

If God seems to be in no hurry to make the problem of evil go away, maybe we shouldn't be, either. Maybe our compulsion to wash God's hands for him is a service he doesn't appreciate. Maybe - all theodicies and nearly all theologians to the contrary - evil is where we meet God. Maybe he isn't bothered by showing up dirty for his dates with creation. Maybe - just maybe - if we ever solved the problem, we'd have talked ourselves out of a lover.

The truth that makes us free is always ticking away like a time-bomb in the basement of everybody's church.

Man was made to lead with his chin; he is worth knowing only with his guard down, his head up and his heart rampant on his sleeve.