In many cases, change is not a function of life's cruelty but instead a function of God's graciousness.

Life hands us opportunities at every turn to get over ourselves, to get outside ourselves, to wake up from our own bad dreams and realize that really lovely things are happening all the time.

I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything's easy. I believe that loss and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness and wisdom.

I believe that God is making all things new. I believe that Christ overcame death and that pattern is apparent all through life and history: life from death, water from a stone, redemption from failure, connection from alienation. I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything's easy.

We have, each one of us, been entrusted with one life, made up of days and hours and minutes. We're spending them according to our values, whether or not we admit it.

When we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life.

...what I can do is offer myself, wholehearted and present, to walk with the people I love through the fear and the mess. That's all any of us can do. That's what we're here for.