One of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people.

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]

It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.

A good marriage is supposed to be one where each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal.

Usually if you pray from the heart, you get an answer—the phone rings or the mail comes, and light gets in through the cracks, so you can see the next right thing to do. That’s all you need.

Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.

Prayer usually means praise, or surrender, acknowledging that you have run out of bullets.

First find a path, and a little light to see by. Then push up your sleeves and start helping.

Finding one important thing in your life doesn’t mean you have togive up all the other important things.

There is beauty in tragedy. And we all believed!

We're conduits for the universe's desire to think about itself.

I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning.

After God and my family, it's surf. I don't imagine me not surfing. Surf brings me smile every day.

I had a lot of friends in high school, but I was never the wild party girl. Never have been, never plan to be!

Persist - don't take no for an answer. If you're happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you'll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years.

No human being...is ever conceived outside God's will or ever conceived apart from God's image. Life is a gift from God created in His own image.

There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back.