Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

We, too, are shadow and light. We are not supposed to know this, or be all these different facets of humanity, bright and dark. We are raised to be bright and shiny, but there is meaning in the acceptance of our dusky and dappled side, and also in defiance.

This was very disloyal to my family, for me to no longer play along with the family plan, but all the ways of pretending that I’d been taught were crippling, life-threatening. They had turned me from a delicious dough of flour, yeast, sugar and salt into a desperately self-conscious pretzel. I’ve

When we agree to (or get tricked into) being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are saved.

The grown-ups we trusted did not share the news that life was going to include deep isolation, or that the culture’s fixation on achievement would be spiritually crippling to those of more gentle character. No one mentioned the peace that was possible in surrender to a power greater than oneself, unless it was to an older sibling, when resistance w

They taught me that maturity was the ability to live with unresolved problems.

Emerson wrote, “People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

Love is the question: How can it possibly be enough this time, in the face of such tragedy, loss or evil? And it is the answer: It will be.

This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness.

when something ghastly happens, it is not helpful to many people if you say that it’s all part of God’s perfect plan, or that it’s for the highest good of every person in the drama, or that more will be revealed, even if that is all true.