I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.

When you eat, I want you to think of God, of the holiness of hands that feed us, of the provision we are given every time we eat. When you eat bread and you drink wine, I want you to think about the body and the blood every time, not just when the bread and wine show up in church, but when they show up anywhere- on a picnic table or a hardwood floor or a beach.

Sometimes the happiest ending isn't the one you keep longing for, but something you absolutely cannot see from where you are

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

But our hearts are more elastic than we think, and the work of forgiveness and transformation and growth can do things you can't even imagine from where you're standing now.

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

...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.