I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.

Resentments make even the best of us feel superior.

The beginning of forgiveness is often exhaustion. You're pooped; thank God.

The solution is always spiritual, and it almost never has anything to do with the problem ... laughter is carbonated holiness.

Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when you’re secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction, but to gauge, miserably, the odds of rain?

Drugs took me to places; they were like portals. It's kind of a cliché, but they were like portals to altered states of consciousness into ways of imagining the world, or seeing a world beyond this world, or seeing a world beyond this world that I might not have gotten to unless I discovered meditation and a very deep, intense spiritual path based on contemplation and meditation.

The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening.