For all the noise, jocularity and familiarity of the inn, the pregnant silence of the stable is the image treasured in countless hearts.

As the bandwagon of rights rolls on its way, gratitude is the victim that falls most frequently beneath its wheels.

For long years I nurtured my children and protected them from trouble and suffering. Now that my family have grown up, my protective instinct won't lie down.

Is it really the best thing that can happen to us to have the wind at our back, for life always to be smooth and comfortable?

We came to deepen the co-mingling of our selves and God's spirit within us, certain that spiritual strength and moral change will be necessary to a South Africa at peace with itself.

Only in prayer, asking for that unspeakable, unpronounceable and invisible direction; only by looking for God is it possible to walk the mountain paths.

`Happy are the pure in heart for they shall see God.' If your vision is dazzled by things which glitter, then you don't get a look-in on real love... for people, or for God.

I had the good fortune to be born into a family with a dream, which believed in the coming of the Kingdom, although my parents would not have put it that way.

Christ's first recorded sermon expresses the same simplicity. 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Repent and believe.' Not exactly a wordy programme; simply an invitation to life in all its fullness.

I was not alone in my hurt. The world hurt with me. I withdrew the feminine essence and found myself in a hard, hurting world, filled to the brim with violence and an unending onslaught of barbarism.