“Please bring strange things.Please come bringing new things.Let very old things come into your hands.Let what you do not know come into your eyes.Let desert sand harden your feet.Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.Let the paths of your fingertips be your mapsAnd the ways you go be the lines of your palms.Let there be deep snow in your inbreathingAnd your outbreath be the shining of ice.May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.May your soul be at home where there are no houses.Walk carefully, well-loved one,Walk mindfully, well-loved one,Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.Return with us, return to us,Be always coming home.”

“Your own love story? Your paramour may have had lovers before you. But no one has ever loved him the way you do. No one has ever heard music. Not the way you hear it. The songs are beautiful vampires, asleep in your iPod, coming alive at night, aglow. You can have them on your hours, yours to conduct. Music shapes us and we shape it.”

“Come to us Father, in the watches of the night. Come to us as you always came, bringing to us the invincible sustenance of your strength, the limitless treasure of your bounty, the tremendous structure of your life that will shape all lost and broken things on earth again into a golden pattern of exultancy and joy.”

“Did you love well what you very soon left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache.”

“Often, it feels like we're not sure where we're going. Our path is not clearly defined. But your path does lie out there. It lies inside you. In your heart. Find what you love, what makes you come alive. You don't need to think. Feel it. Find what fills your heart with joy, and there lies your path. Where you find your Love, you'll find your path.”

“Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own home. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor . . . Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.”