When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.

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.

When has faith ever been about feelings?

People will treat you unkindly at times. Forgive them always.

Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos.

For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.

To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.

The tongue is more easily controlled than the features of the face; and though the heart may be secret, the face is transparent.

When I was in college, I had a friend who was an artist and her theory was that all the best art in the world is funny/sad. That was her favorite genre. Funny/sad are probably my two favorite tones.

The silkworm spins out his life, and, wrapping himself in his labor, dies.

My obligation as president, and what I promise the country, is that the courts will be able to do their job free of all pressure.

and there's something about having an especially different name that makes it difficult to imagine what you would be like as a Jennifer.