Walter Wangerin Jr.

Sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker.

Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal - and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace.

In your attempts to heal this beloved one, the Holy Spirit finds opportunity to keep the promise of Jesus - and indeed, to heal.

Mutuality is accomplished by two whole persons; and if each partner truly intends to be but the fraction of a relationship (thinking my whole makes up half of us) he or she will soon discover that these halves do not fit perfectly together. The mathematics can work only if each subtracts something of himself or herself, shears it off, and lays it aside forever. There will come, then, a moment of shock when one spouse realizes, __ou won__ want the whole of me? Not the whole of me, but only a part of me, makes up the whole of us?_ P 45

The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can't stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope--and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us.

So go back to the books. They will comfort you and cheer you. If you earnestly work with them, neither sorrow nor anxiety nor distress nor suffering need trouble your mind any more, no, not evermore.

I have never loved Fortune, even when she seemed most to love me. I never considered her treasures mine, neither her money, nor her office nor her influence. Her theft of these things, therefore. has taken away nothing of my own. Mother, my roof is the stars. My house is human goodness. My body is clothed. My stomach is full. And the thirstier part of me, my soul, drinks gladly from the pool of my books.So much for me. I am just fine.

The stories that contain badness are not bad stories. Rather, they are among some of the best. Because the storyteller who loves the children and gives the whole of his or her self to them by means of the tale__nviting at the same time the whole of the children's selves__s of all people the best able to confront true and truly terrible things with the children.