9. Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.

I often see it in people who have attained what the monastic tradition terms "detachment," an ability to live at peace with the reality of whatever happens. Such people do not have a closed-off air, nor a boastful demeanor. In them, it is clear, their wounds have opened the way to compassion for others. And compassion is the strength and soul of a religion.

No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear.

My Nini wanted to get another dog, as much like Daisy as possible, but my Popo said that it was not a question of replacing her, but of trying to live without her. "I can't, Popo. I loved her so much!" I sobbed inconsolably. "That affection is inside you, Maya, not in Daisy. You can give it to other animals, and what's left over you can give to me

The death of my own son has made me more sensitive. It's made me more compassionate.

Mary's life was a perfect imitation of Jesus. She was humble, hidden, sorrowful and afflicted, but she also knew joys that never entered the heart of man. She is all things to all men that she might understand their failings, though she failed not.

No man can have true sympathy who has not been, in some measure at least, "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," but the sorrow and grief must have passed, must have ripened into a fixed kindness and habitual calm.

All the ache in my heart and the wound in my soul All the tearing apart at saying good-bye All the pain deep inside, like a dam giving way . .

The pain in my body could not match the pain her cry surfaced in my heart. They cleaned her, weighed her, wrapped her, and whisked her away. And it was then that I realized the much-greater pain is not in giving birth but in releasing your own child.

It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence.

O Lord, Sula," she cried, "girl, girl, girlgirlgirl." It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.