You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace; and though theologians insist that grace is freely given, the … - Anne Lamott

"My favorite moment in Jeanne Moreau's latest movie — a comedy called The Summer House — takes place in a kitchen, when she proclaims that every human has something to cry about. When mocked by the owner of the kitchen and pressed to say what it is that we have to cry about, she tosses back her head of flaming red hair and says, "The winds of solitude roaring at the edge of infinity.

Don’t get me wrong: grief sucks; it really does. Unfortunately, though, avoiding it robs us of life, of the now, of a sense of living spirit.

During Advent, we have to sit in our own anxiety and funkiness long enough to know what a Promised Land would be like, or, to put it another way, what it means to be saved — which, if we are to believe Jesus or Gandhi, specifically means to see everyone on earth as family.