A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.

And my fear of failure has been lifelong and deep. If you are what you do- and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea- and you do poorly, what then? It's over; you're wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud.

Addicts and alcoholics will tell you that their recovery began when they woke up in pitiful and degraded enough shape to take Step Zero, which is: Ãƒ¢Ã¢'¬Ã…"This shit has got to stop.

God can't clean the house of you when you're still in it.

Imagining God can be so different from wishful thinking, if your spiritual experiences change your behavior over time. Have you become more generous, which is the ultimate healing? Or more patient, which is a close second? Did your world become bigger and juicier and more tender? Have you become ever so slightly kinder to yourself? This is how you tell.

I felt changed and a little crazy. But though I was still like a stained and slightly buckled jigsaw puzzle with some pieces missing, now there were at least a few border pieces in place.

Whether it's Mt. Sinai, a pasture, a library, the creek down the road, a liveness, or whatever you want to call it, the song is above us, around us, within us. We transcend the incessant and wearying yammer of bullshit. Transcendence means you go from judgement, separation from life in yourself, to feeling at one-ish with the universe. We hook into something bigger than we are - truer than the self-serving stories we make up about life and ourselves.

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there. We become like mushrooms, living in the dark, with poop up to our chins. If you want to know only what you already know, you're dying. You're saying: Leave me alone; I don't mind this little rathole. It's warm and dry. Really, it's fine.

Will call him a she when the pee-pee is gone. Says Brave is to endure stares, jeers, prejudice. He won't.

Jesus is big on people evolving. And all organisms have an innate tendency to evolve toward improvement. I seem to be the outlier.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.

I tried to cooperate with grace, which is to say, I did not turn on the TV.