We talked for hours. Long, rambling conversations about everything under the sun. Spending time with her was intoxicating. We seemed to have everything in common. We shared the same interests. We were driven by the same goal. She got all of my jokes. She made me laugh. She made me think. She changed the way I saw the world. I'd never had such a powerful, immediate connection with another human being before.

Ray seemed to subsist primarily on a diet of high-fructose junk food and old videogames. It was hard not to love the guy. Back

Like most gunters, I voted to reelect Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton (again).

The more isolated and disconnected we are, the more shattered and distorted our self-identity. We are not healthy when we are alone. We find ourselves when we connect to others. Without community we don't know who we are... When we live outside of healthy community, we not only lose others. We lose ourselves...Who we understand ourselves to be is dramatically affected for better or worse by those we hold closest to us.

Morris again. "This is good, helpful. Now that we are talking this way, I realize that for those twenty years that I was an engineer sitting in the pew each Sunday, I never had a patient pastor—they were all trying to get me 'with the program,' shape me up, get me, as they put it, 'involved.' I don't want to become a pastor like that. I don't think that is what pastors are for.

Living together means seeing the oil flow over the head, down the face, through the beard, onto the shoulders of the other—and when I see that I know that my brother, my sister, is my priest.

The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure.

Important in any community of faith is an ever-renewed expectation in what God is doing with our brothers and sisters in the faith. We refuse to label the others as one thing or another. We refuse to predict our brother's behavior, our sister's growth.

God comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.-2 Corinthians 1:4

It is easier to find guides, someone to tell you what to do, than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship as you work it out yourself. This is what spiritual direction is.

It is a good thing to be rich, and it is a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be loved of many friends.

I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old, a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief