When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.

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

Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.

Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you.

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

Beauty isn't made of sugar.

In order to do anything about the suffering of the world we must have the strength to face it without turning away.

When all you have is the darkness of hate, kindness is a beacon that burns bright.

The witness of solid moral character to a righteous way of life must never be underestimated.

I am sure that music was never meant to sound this harsh, this painful.

Hubble is very close to my heart, and going back to Hubble, because I was there once already in 1993, is really a great privilege for me.

Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.

Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos.

It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.

For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.