The patchwork quilt of our theological heritage is torn and fraying in places, and it is stunningly vibrant in others. Some sections have been mended or wholly replaced… As we mature spiritually as a tradition and as people, we develop our capacities to be with the broken and the beautiful…

If you have come here tonight on Rosh Hashanah and feel that there is nothing to examine, no wound in your life to heal, no relationship to repair—then I hope you will listen especially closely to the shofar.

Love this world, she whispers.

Every relationship is an ongoing story that unfolds between people.

The only way we survive this modern agony is together.

Loss binds us together undeniably.

We are an angry and beautiful people.

The power to choose is the power of life in the midst of brokenness.

Shame seems to be a bestselling product pumped out of all these crushing systems.

I learned that love and support can be expressed in many different ways by different people.

May we be with one another in solidarity and struggle.

My broken is what makes me who I am today.

Uncertain as the world feels right now, love will bear whatever lies ahead.

It’s important to honor the footprint others leave on our heart.

Here I am, God, here I am. Here I am with the dishes in the sink, the dust on the shelves, the skin on my hands which is drying out and starting to crack. My appetite has gone, without any other bodies to remind my body of itself. I can pray for salvation but my bones know this is all there is....

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”...

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we...

A lot of us feel like our lives should have come with instructions. Or maybe they did, but we lost the only copy a long time ago.

Surround yourself with skillful teachers. Let them teach you, but don't let them do it for you. That learning is yours to do.

Every year, I tell the congregation not to worry about mistakes because there aren’t any; there is only us, telling an old story about love getting born into this aching world.