I have a lifelong friend who will soon be living a good distance away from me.  When I started to feel sad about it the words of another friend came to mind, “Nothing lasts forever.”  I believe it was said in an effort to comfort, but it felt heartbreaking.  The older we get the more intensely aware we are that change is the very definition of life, so in this way, “Nothing lasts forever.”    Yet when I actually reminisce about my friendships, so many occasions come to mind when someone’s presence in my life made a timeless change in...

The great poet John O’Donohue describes the soul as the original “house of belonging” which did not create itself but is “a presence from the divine world.”  It seems that many of us walk around trying to earn a spot of worth instead of thinking as he does.  He also says that the “birth of a human heart is an ongoing process,” so maybe our search for belonging must go outward before circling back around to the gift of creation? I was quite young the first time someone told me, “You think too much.”  It was an offhand observation but...