Pope Francis insists that mercy is at the very top of the Christian hierarchy of great truths, and everything falls apart whenever mercy is displaced by anything else.

The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what's there: all of it.

Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God.

The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.

Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.

There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it's enough.

You come to God not by being strong, but by being weak; not by being right, but through your mistakes.

A disastrous flaw in our design is that the heart always defies the brain.

Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?

I always notice flowers.

The modern period adds social ethics to religions agenda, for we now realize that social structures are not like laws of nature. They are human creations, so we are responsible for them.

It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.

I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.'

I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet.

Create what you want as opposed to being stuck in what you didn't have.

What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes.

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.