“If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people.”

Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering–remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.

In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.

To protect our children, we must talk to them about rape.

A very important but difficult piece of renewing relationships is accepting responsibility for our part in any conflict.

We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.

If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There’s nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.

Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.

We are not responsible for what breaks us, but we can be responsible for what puts us back together again. Naming the hurt is how we begin to repair our broken parts.

We learn from history that we don’t learn from history.

We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy.

I do believe there are monstrous and evil acts, but I do not believe those who commit such acts are monsters or evil.

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

Transformation begins in you, wherever you are, whatever has happened, however you are suffering. Transformation is always possible.

We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.

You left flowers on my bedside as if I were my tomb clumsy words that don’t begin to heal my wounds “I’m sorry” scrawled on a post-it.

Bound by rose thorns, pricked by love.

Here I am spitting up roses in your name I hope you choke on the thorns.

You spent years planting red flags convincing me they were roses.

Storms can ruin gardens, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see flowers again.

She is like water lily, because in the most hostile waters she blooms.

Flowers don’t bloom all seasons, and if flowers don’t, why would we?

His kisses make her blossom like a flower in the wild softly unfolding her petals to expose the magic hidden inside.