When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you. - Anne Lamott

"These lines of D.H. Lawrence are taped to the wall of my office:

"What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them."

I under[stand] that failure is surely one of these strange angels."

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.

and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear...