“It does seem to me that at least some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty and when the ones we love most are the ones we see the least.”

Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.

Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.

Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.

When I talk about losing myself, which I did, it’s losing my idea of who I was and my idea of what I was supposed to be doing and the idea of what my value was to God. I lost all of that at least.

In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life

I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.

As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.

I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.

There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address

When I forget the power of the word, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget the deep relief of telling the truth, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget to look for the holiness all around me, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget why the gospel matters, I read Frederick Buechner.

I love being alone. I learned that from my father, I think, who loved his own company.

Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.

I think we d like life to be like a train..but it turns out to be a sailboat.

It’s difficult for me to ignore how many conflicts locally and worldwide have religion tagged to them.

Divine reality is not way up in the sky somewhere; it is readily available in the encounters of everyday life, which make hash of my illusions that I can control the ways God comes to me.

When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, ‘Here, I guess, since this is where I am.’

God does not flunk any of His children. He just re-enrolls them.

I think you have to be fair with one another. It’s unfortunate when someone does something that’s not authentic, or not there for any reason other than to draw attention.

If you decide you want to change your life around, it doesn’t matter where you came from, what you did.

Richelieu was a great statesman, and like all great statesman, he was a very ruthless man.

God does not change us in order to love us. He loves us in order to change us.

Failure in the past does not nullify purpose in the future.

God does business with those who mean business.

The king reigns but does not govern.