God is close to the brokenhearted, and God lifts up the lonely. That was a message that was explicitly quoted to me and was part of my upbringing: Brokenhearted people and poor people and people who are in trouble should be your focus, and you should be on their team.

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.

For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.

Mi bella princesa, your funny little dwarf will never dance again. It is a pity; for he is so ugly that he might have made the King smile. 'But why will he never dance again?' asked the Infanta laughing. "Because his heart is broken", answered the Chamberlain.

The blessedness was not in their condition of being poor, mournful, or disrespected. They were blessed because they could enter the kingdom, and to be in the kingdom means to be blessed no matter what else happens. They can rest in that. Their future in God is secured, and their present condition redeemed. Forever. No matter what.

Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God.

Godly despair cries out for perspective but allows the hollowness of loss to move the heart to seek God.

The route to facing what we feel is not by devaluing the darkness of what we feel, but by valuing the deep structure of why we don't want to feel. Once we face why feeling is so hard, then we can move beyond what we feel to the deeper energy within us that keeps us from grappling honestly with our emotions. Then we will not only feel more deeply, but—more importantly—we will feel our feelings in a way that exposes our struggle with God.

"King David was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: 'O my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you — O Absalom: my son, my son!'"

It's better to cry than be angry, because anger hurts others while tears flow silently through the soul and cleans the heart.

For what seemed a long time Mat knelt there with his father's dead wrist in his hand, while his mind arrived and arrived and yet arrived at that place and time and that body lying still on the soiled and bloodied stones.

In time, against conscience and even will, my grief for him began to include grief for myself. Sometimes I would get the feeling that I was going to waste. It was my life calling me to itself. It was the light that shines in darkness calling me back into time.