Love this world, she whispers.

Is it not a marvel?

We are living today with time to do good for ourselves and for each other.

See how the winds have shaped her hands to hold hope? So tenuous, it trembles like a hummingbird’s heart. She gently carries hope to a nest in the midst of the maelstrom and tilts it into the bowl of tiny feathers and mosses. Hope is so hard to cup. She might need your help when it seeps through...

In my chapel, redwing blackbird unravels her liquid song in the cattails.

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another, we live here in the light of this unlikely world that isn’t ours for long. May we spend generously the time we are given. May we enact our responsibilities as thoroughly as we enjoy our pleasures....

It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworks or loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag, a day of staying home instead of crowding away, a day we celebrate nothing gained in war but what we’re given — how the sun’s warmth is democratic, touching everyone, and the rain is democratic...

This is the key to the mystery, The Word became flesh.

That first breath must be delicious. It must be more tantalizing, more intoxicating than any drug, fragrant like no flower will ever be enticing like no body scent. It must be all of this, and more yet without words or memories, how do we know? That first glorious rush of air wants us to keep...

I wonder Did God’s heart (I mean the love-mushy, endearing part of God) That part The heart that I don’t really believe in as a thing, With pulses... ANYWAY Did that heart Did it Break just a little; When God realized "Oh no— They have made leaves into underpants!" If God says things like...

Why is this blank page staring back at me, mocking, like an affliction, and fraught with dread? How can it hold such sway, this simple emptiness? Might it instead be a gift left on my doorstep overnight, waiting to be broken open with the dawn?...

I vote we let the artists win the ones covered in paint from their last attempt to smuggle across the beauty of a bowl of fruit the 14-year-old rapper learning to spit throwing life's chaos on the rhythm wheel uncovering the shapes that live on after the next break I say we let the food bank...

What is the history of any thing? This apple, let's say, that my grandson just picked as he sits on my shoulders, feet dangling like parentheses around my heart?...

Of course I want the truth, but here’s the rub: Truth doesn’t sit around still as a rock, it breathes and flows and turns inside out. Ever seen a lion in a cage? He paces and glowers. That must be how God feels locked in our little religions. Look how big the sky is, the deep distances between...

I am praying again and how does one pray when unsure if anything hears? In the world I know as reliable and finite when time and matter cycle back and forth and I understand the answers to so many puzzles there are moments when knowing is nothing and I this accumulation of systems, histories...

You bring yourself before the sacred, before the holy, before what is ultimate and bigger than your lone life bigger than your worries bigger than your money problems bigger than the fight you had with your sister and your aches and pains bigger, even, than your whole being, your self who is part...

Barukh atah, Emeth! Blest are you, o Truth. Like the fabled Moses, I too can never claim to have seen you “face to face.” Too often, I’ve hung my own face on you and pretended that I know something I do not. Indeed, my most honest heart confesses that at most, I have only caught the briefest...

I lift my eyes up to the hills from where will my help come? My help comes from Love abundant. my help comes from the hills my help—my help, it comes from ancient Mothers whose hearts beat in mine. It comes from the trees that sway and the breeze that sways them . . . my help comes from all that...

There is a living web that runs through us To all the universe Linking us each with each and through all life On to the distant stars. Each knows a ­little corner of the world, and lives As if this were his all. We no more see the farther reaches of the threads Than we see of the future, yet...

We never know who we are (this is strange, isn’t it?) or what vows we made or who we knew or what we hoped for or where we were when the world’s dreams were seeded. Until the day just one of us sighs a ­gentle longing and we all feel the change one of us calls a name and we all know to be there...