Dani Clark

Soul Seeing writer Dani Clark recalls the day when a little boy on the street stopped her in her tracks and changed both of their lives forever.

Soul Seeing: Naming and seeing. Seeing and naming. It's hard to say which comes first, but once you get the hang of it, you walk through that doorway of gratitude straight into joy enough times that it becomes the home you live in.

Soul Seeing: Jesus said the poor will always be with us. What exactly did he mean?

Soul Seeing: "One must want to begin." How true. That is what counts; maybe that is all that is required. To want to struggle for that freedom, whether it remains elusive or not.

Soul Seeing: Our first Sunday at La Maddalena island, during Mass, the priest announced that Bernadette of Lourdes' rib was making a special 18-hour stop on the island as part of a tour of 33 dioceses in Italy. I whispered to my husband, "I am not missing that!"

Soul Seeing: I lived with the core members and finally, finally understood who Jesus was because the friends you invited to share your life with starting in 1964, the friends you kept inviting, the friends who could not walk or could not speak, they taught me to see beyond the surface, where Jesus dwells.

Soul Seeing: Yes, praying hands are begging hands, they are conciliatory. And they are nonviolent because they prove your inability to fight back. They prove your vulnerability. I find that beautiful — and useful. 

Soul Seeing: For many of us, Catholicism is our marrow. Some people pontificate on how weird it all is, but you can't help being astonished and grateful for all this rainbowness in your life.

Every Sunday afternoon, I volunteer at a nursing home with members of the Community of Sant’Egidio in Washington, D.C. Once a month we have Mass there. It’s a ragtag affair, a comedy of errors, and this is why I love it.