To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs.

The monk at St. Meinrad took his hands and placed them on my shoulders, peered straight into my eyes and said, ‘I hope you’ll hear what I’m about to tell you. I hope you’ll hear it all the way down to your toes. When you’re waiting, you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is. You’re allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.

And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.

The question occurred to me: Well, if that's so, if the Divine is ultimately formless and genderless, what's the big deal? Why all this bother? The bother is because we have no other way of speaking about the Absolute. We need forms and images. Without them we have no way of relating to the Divine. Symbol and image create a universal spiritual language. It's the language the soul understands.

Betrayal of any kind is hard, but betrayal by one's religion is excruciating. It makes you want to rage and weep.

The awakening passed from simple recognition of my need for God at the center of my life, to a depth where the will is stirred And that is a deeper place by far. That is the place of response, of unifying one's heart, mind, soul and feet around a decision.

I wished she'd been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don't give up their children.