“The word I think of is precarious. I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them.”

“Teachers wondered why I didn't speak up more in class. Why would I when I knew how precarious words could be, how betraying they were, how vulnerable they made you?”

“I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.”

“Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world. ”

“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

“I always think incipent miracles surround us, waiting only to see if our faith is strong enough. We won't have to understand it; it will just work, like a beating heart, like love. Really, no matter how frightened and discouraged I may become about the future, I look forward to it. In spite of everything I see all around me every day, I have a shaky assurance that everything will turn out fine. I don't think I'm the only one. Why else would the phrase "everything's all right" ease a deep and troubled place in so many of us? We just don't know, we never know so much, yet we have such faith. We hold our hands over our hurts and lean forward, full of yearning and forgiveness. It is how we keep on, this kind of hope.”