Gail Godwin has written a book about the heaviest matters of loss, grief, and loneliness with a touch so light that I was as often deeply amused by it as I was deeply moved.
Love yourself not in some egocentric, self-serving sense but love yourself the way you would love your friend in the sense of taking care of yourself, nourishing yourself, trying to understand, comfort, and strengthen yourself.
Envy is the consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are.
Don’t look down on them for looking down on us. Look at them, instead, as friends we don’t know yet and who don’t yet know what they are missing in not knowing us.
Grace is something you can never get but only be given.
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.
The magic of words is that they have power to do more than convey meaning; not only do they have the power to make things clear, they make things happen.
A Christian isn’t necessarily any nicer than anybody else, just better informed.
Laugh till you weep. Weep till there’s nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it’s all one.
ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, ‘What is the answer?’ Then, after a long silence, ‘What is the question?’ Don’t start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.
Five friends I had and two of them snakes.
Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage.
It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.
That’s five friends, one each for Jesu’s wounds, and Godric bears their mark still on what’s left of him as in their time they all bore his on them. What’s friendship, when all’s done, but the giving and taking of wounds?
Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God’s will.
Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the holy is drawing near.
You can never be sure whether you are discovering the truth or inventing it.
People are disturbed not by things but by the view they take of them. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
In other words to live Eternal Life in the full and final sense is to be with God as Christ is with him, and with each other as Christ is with us.
Listen. Your life is happening. You are happening. Think back on your journey. The music of your life...
A God in the hand is worth two in the bush.