That is all I ever need to remember on any given day, the ultimate condensation of the first three steps, or the Three Step Waltz, as we call it: I can't; God can; I think I'll let God. I am powerless over people, places, and things, unable to save or fix or rescue anyone, including myself. But God can, through the movement of grace in our lives: grace as

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That just might be the central message of how spiritual growth happens, yet nothing in us wants to believe it. If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness so that only the humble and the earnest will find it.

salvation is sin turned on its head and used in our favor.

I suppose there is no more counterintuitive spiritual idea than the possibility that God might actually use and find necessary what we fear, avoid, deny, and deem unworthy. This is what I mean by the "integration of the negative." Yet I believe this is the core of Jesus's revolutionary Good News, Paul's deep experience, and the central insight that Francis and Clare lived out with such simple elegance.

The joyful acceptance of a limited world, of which I am only a small moment and limited part—this is probably the clearest indication of a man in his fullness.

We are all spiritually powerless, however, and not just those physically addicted to a substance, which is why I address this book to everyone.

It takes uncommon humility to carry both the dark and the light side of things. The only true perfection available to humans is the honest acceptance of our imperfection.

But grace is not a late arrival, an occasional add-on for a handful of humans, and God's grace and life did not just appear a few thousand years ago, when Jesus came and a few lucky humans found him in the Bible. God's grace cannot be a random problem solver doled out to the few and the virtuous - or it is hardly grace at all!

Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of the spiritual journey is this: wisdom and love do not come from success but from continuing failure.

They are comfortable knowing, and they are comfortable not knowing. They can care and not care—without guilt or shame. They can act without success because they have named their fear of failure. They do not need to affirm or deny, judge or ignore. But they are free to do all of them with impunity. A saint is invincible.

Grace is always a punishment for us.