“And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old.”

The reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day.

We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.

The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?

You can either practice being right or practice being kind.

I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.

When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.

Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.

This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.

I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it’s over, it’s over.

We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.

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

So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.

People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.

Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.

We’re no longer in the Cold War. Eavesdropping on friends is unacceptable.

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.

Love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.

Be like snow – cold, but beautiful.

Cold, hunger and the shame of poverty are more likely to affect one’s psychology.

Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.

I can’t be friends with a man who blows hot and cold with the same breath.

Vulnerability is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.⁣