Just as I can believe in others, I also believe in me.

Every time someone showed up for me, I learned that love is greater than skin deep.

May we release ourselves from the need to fit every truth neatly into our own language.

Make sure, both at Christmastime and in other times, that you ask for that which you really want.

It’s important to honor the footprint others leave on our heart.

In these days of so much uncertainty, may we choose honesty over comfort, love over complacency, and truth over convenience.

The harder things are to say, the more necessary they are to say.

The most life-giving coping strategy—for me—is to attune to a voice calmer and wiser than mine, and allow that seeking to be its own expression of faith.

We all have our foibles; pieces of ourselves that we both admire and occasionally revile. These gifts and struggles exist in tandem.

Can we strive to have the grace to back away when our presence doesn’t feel like safety?

We can be cheerleaders for simple joys (even when we don't share them) and compassionate about the fact that we’re all just trying to survive.

This is the beauty and sparkle of spiritual communities: needs arise and beloveds appear to ask, “How can I help?” There’s no fixed timeline, just the spiritual practices of generosity and stewardship.

There are so many spiritual lessons from the natural world and—in a season filled with Ingatherings and Water Communions—this is one for me: oxbow lakes as a beautiful combination of resiliency, strength, and flexibility.

Once I quit drinking, my inner voice and I began the harder work: that of creating a life from which I do not need or want to escape.

We could see the main path to the swimming hole ahead, but we had to pick our way through sand spurs to get there. Behind us were rattlesnakes. What did the youth do? They started playing.

In real life, we can only place the pieces, one by one, and see what kind of picture we create. Sometimes we turn out to have chosen the wrong piece. Sometimes the picture is wildly unexpected.

I’m not the same person who stood in that tattoo parlor eleven years ago. Still, I don’t for a minute regret being permanently marked with this snapshot in time, of my wounds and my hope.

"I went back to church thinking that it would be like an epidural, like it would take the pain away… that church would make the pain go away. Faith and church was not an epidural for me at all; it was like a midwife who just stood next to me saying, 'Push. It’s supposed to hurt a little bit.'"...

We humans have both a natural desire and a spiritual need to feel connected and to grow roots, even if those roots aren't necessarily tied to a geographic place.

The author suggests supplementing this Time for All Ages with a PowerPoint/slide show of interesting doors and asking the kids to imagine what is on the other side of each of them... Who here knows the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Can one of the kids in the room tell me how Lucy...