…stormy weather.

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, “Prove that you are a good person.” Another voice says, “You’d better be ashamed of yourself.” There also is a voice that says, “Nobody really cares about you,” and one that says, “Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.” But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, “You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.” That’s the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.

That’s what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us “my Beloved.”

…not perfection

The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live.

Breathe before it’s gone.

If we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for creed or of those of one race against those of another race, surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow.

• Theodore Roosevelt, 1915

…you just want to fly away.

This is how a human being can change:

there’s a worm addicted to eating grape leaves.

Suddenly, he wakes up, call it grace, whatever, something wakes him, and he’s no longer a worm.

He’s the entire vineyard, and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy

that doesn’t need

to devour.