The Magnificat is a courageous and subversive song of praise; a call to social justice.

I belong, and you belong, and we belong—just as we are.

Spirit of Life who dwells before and between and beyond all words… we open ourselves to you.

I was made this way, in this body and this skin. Like all beings, I have an inherent good that cannot be eclipsed.

Coming out to my family was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. I realized that my choice was one of life and death, and I needed to let my secret out in order to continue living, and to do so authentically.

My heart broke the day my son stood in the bathroom crying. He handed me a pair of scissors and told me to just cut it. I told him how beautiful his hair was and how sad I would be to see him cut it.

In real life, we can only place the pieces, one by one, and see what kind of picture we create. Sometimes we turn out to have chosen the wrong piece. Sometimes the picture is wildly unexpected.

An adequate Christmas would have you calm and open, taking it in, accepting whatever is. Slow it all down like you might be, in some way, attuned to the pace of the Eternal. If you need, you can fake it at first.

There we were, two strangers idling at the red light―but I felt seen, and blessed, by a stranger.

“Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we kept fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.” —John Updike, “Tuesday, and After,” The New Yorker, September 24, 2001 We sat on the back steps watching transfixed as hundreds of rust-red spiders, big as thumbs, dropped...