In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left for you.

You should pay more attention to the caravan, the boy said to the Englishman, after the camel driver had left. We make a lot of detours, but we're always heading for the same destination. And you ought to read more about the world, answered the Englishman. Books are like caravans in that respect.

Words are life set down on paper.

The feet of labourers, pilgrims and explorers smoothed these stones. The stones were changed and the travellers were too.

So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won't be heard: we don't want people to suffer because they don't follow their hearts.

I have always been a nomad and I have mastered the art of packing! I always say: pack lightly, live lightly.

Nourish it with good works, give it peace in solitude, get it strength in prayer, make it wise with reading, enlighten it by meditation, make it tender with love, sweeten it with humility, humble it with penance, enliven it with psalms and hymns, and comfort it with frequent reflections upon future glory.

The God who walks the paths of history through the pages of the Bible pins a mission statement to every signpost on the way.

God's revelation was not a mystic secret for the initiated, but a light to guide every member of God's community.

This means we do not ignore the particularity of biblical commands (and apply them to our own day as if they were timeless universals). Nor are we paralysed by their particularity (and thus unable to apply them to our day at all). We rejoice in their particularity because it shows us how the will of God was expressed in their context, and we take them as our paradigm for our own ethical construction.21

So then, we must not read Lamentations without the rest of the Bible. But equally, we should not read the rest of the Bible without Lamentations (as Christians have habitually tended to do).

The greatest service you can provide to the people in your care is to make the Bible accessible to them.