"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,' the good thief said from his cross. (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well."

"What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup."

"The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment."

"There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth."

"The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around."

"Words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion in the human heart that can never be reversed"

"It is within the bonds of marriage that I, for one, found a greater freedom to be and to become and to share myself thatn I can imaine ever having found in any other kind of relationship."

"He also said we should carve in the year and place where I was born, but I said no. As a man dies many times before he's dead, so does he wend from birth to birth until, by grace, he comes alive at last."

"Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens."

"The life thatI touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt."

"You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary"

"The story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all"

"Lord, I believe; help my unbelief' is the best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough."

"... in the long run, there can be no joy for anybody until there is joy finally for us all"

"Whether you call on him or don't call on him, God will be present with you."

"You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own."

"If you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving."

"Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me."

"God himself does not give answers. He gives himself."

"If you have never known the power of God's love, then maybe it is because you have never asked to know it - I mean really asked, expecting an answer."

"Remember me not for the ill I've done but for the good I've dreamed."

"Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are."

"Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst."

"Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need."