Stopping is a spiritual art. It is the refuge where we drink life in.

the redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black.

A moment of grace. There rose up within me a profound sense of being loved. I felt "gathered together" and encircled by a Presence completely loving, as if I were enveloped by the music of a love song created just for me. It was not overwhelming or even emotional. Just a warm knowing that I was in God's loving embrace...centered and unified there. [Love]encounters cannot be analyzed, only shared. If you take a butterfly, Robert Frost said, and pin it down into a box, you no longer have a butterfly.

I grew up in the American South and came of age in the 1960s, an incredibly turbulent time. It was as if the seams of American life were being ripped apart with riots and protests.

A lot of time you write out of some unconscious place. I try to trust what is coming and where it wants to take me.

I vividly remember the summer of 1964 with its voter registration drives, boiling racial tensions, and the erupting awareness of the cruelty of racism. I was never the same after that summer.

God is at the tip of our scalpels, our screwdrivers, our computer terminals, our dust rags, our vacuum cleaners, our pencils and pens. He is with us in our wheelchairs, or on our hospital beds, when all we can do is sit or lie flat. When we envision Him and His purpose in what we do, then we begin to grow aware of His presence in the middle of it. We are able to engage in our inward conversation with Him as we work, naturally, without strain. He becomes our partner, our collaborator.