When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

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. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.

Niels Bohr wrote, ‘The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth.

If I were God, I'd have the answers at the end of the workbook, so you could check to see if you're on the right track as you go along.

Holiness has most often been revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes- in not enough help, in brokenness, mess. High holy places, with ethereal sounds and stained glass, can massage my illusion of holiness, but in holes and lostness I can pick up the light of small ordinary progress, newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions.

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.