Quotes from Amy Hollingsworth

He once asked me, "You know how when you find somebody who you know is in touch with the truth, how you want to be in the presence of that person?

Indeed, Fred Rogers and his gentle care of children seemed to embody the words credited to Saint Francis of Assisi: 'Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.

words from an article I had once written on Tolkien's The Hobbit: "Adventure can be scary and unpredictable, but the more you continue in it, the more you lose that sense of fear and doubt (and the less you care about being late for dinner). You begin to gather up your internal resources with confidence.

Fred may have considered silence his most important legacy. When acclaimed musician Yo-Yo Ma visited the Neighborhood and played Fred's composition 'Tree, Tree, Tree' on his cello, Fred took some time afterward to reflect. Let's take some quiet time to remember, he invited his television neighbor, to sit and think about what we've heard. And so he did. It wasn't dead air to him; it was thanking the God who inspires and informs all that is nourishing and good.

Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.

During the report of Fred's death on the Nightly News program on NBC, the network where Fred got his start in television, reporter Bob Faw said, "The real Mister Rogers never preached, [never] even mentioned God [on his show]." And then Faw added, "He never had to.

Death may feel like an amputation at the time of the loss, but if the connection is still vibrant, perhaps those aren't phantom pains haunting us but the spirit of love.

Cisterns are made to hold water, but there was no water in it at the time. Had there been, Joseph could have drowned. Instead he stayed relatively safe inside the cistern until his brothers inadvertently moved him toward his destiny in Egypt. Reflecting on my own cistern experience, I realized that God's intention was not to drown me, not to overwhelm me with illness, but only to hold me still for a while.

Many people feel that they must surrender their personalities in order to become more Christlike....When we are in Christ, we will be more ourselves than ever. Encouraging others to be themselves, their honest selves, was the hallmark of Fred's ministry here on earth. It was the best gift he could offer.

So perhaps the philosophers and politicians and poets are wrong; perhaps prayer isn't a crutch or an old man's bauble. Maybe it's a necessity for both the strongest and the weakest among us.

Prayer is not only a daily discipline that deepens our relationship with God; it also provides a way for us to be together in our aloneness.

It wasn't just the awe of celebrity that moved you; celebrity usually exudes entitlement more than it does peace.

Fred Rogers was always saying things like that to the people around him: "How blessed your wife is to have you for a husband!" "How blessed your colleagues are to have you to work with!" "How blessed your children are!

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, in its original French. It read: "L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." What is essential is invisible to the eye.

I think one of the greatest gifts that we can give anybody is the gift of one more honest adult in that person's life—whether [the recipient] be a child or an adult.

Later he would counsel parents to allow their children to act out their feelings through puppets, as a way to bring some distance between the children and their difficult emotions.

It was Dr. McFarland, Fred's mentor in child development from his graduate studies, who noted that Fred was more connected to his childhood than anyone else she knew, that he hadn't "shed" the vestiges of childhood as most of us have.

And as I said, 'I wish I could pass this through the television set,' it just dawned on me—that was very much like the Eucharist, how [food] could be broken and offered to nourish others. And yet there was no way I could put that food through the television set, so I said there are other ways of sharing.

Acclaimed writer and thinker Madeleine L'Engle once noted, in her treatise on the spiritual rhythms of life, The Irrational Season, "Righteousness begins to reveal itself as that strength which is so secure that it can show itself as gentleness, and the only people who have this kind of righteousness are those who are integrated and do not suppress the dark side of themselves.

I wonder if you don't have somebody in your life that just the very thought of that person makes you feel better. It would be wonderful if you could take a minute, at least a minute every day, to think of such a person. Just think. Just be quiet and think. It would make all the difference in the world.

Then, once we are able to see the image of God in our neighbors, once we recognize their inherent value, we strive to help them become who they were meant to be.

Prayer is not only a daily discipline that deepens our relationship with God; it also provides a way for us to be together in our aloneness. Amen.

If there's anything that bothers me, it's one person demeaning another. That really makes me mad!

I think, for me, I need to be myself." Another pause. "And I've never been a kind of a hyperactive, runaround kind of person. I think one of the greatest gifts that we can give anybody is the gift of one more honest adult in that person's life—whether [the recipient] be a child or an adult. "And so, for me, being quiet and slow is being myself, and that is my gift.