Yet, if the most frequent sex and apparently the best sex is that between married partners who are faithful to one another, is there not a hint that affection might be an important aspect of sex? Even love?

I think that the core doctrines of Christianity - the incarnation, the resurrection, life after death-these are as strong as ever. In fact, the belief in life after death has increased in this century.

We're given second chances every day of our life. We don't usually take them, but they're there for the taking.

I think the real problem for American religion are those minority of fundamentalists who try to identify political policies with religion.

Practically speaking, your religion is the story you tell about your life.

An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me.

If there is not laughter in intimacy, it becomes heavy, burdensome, and dull. At my best moments, the love dialogue I try to carry on with You each day is comic-what could be more comic than a human addressing the Ground of Being as an intimate? It's a kind of blasphemy that I dare because you have called for it, and that is pretty humorous, too.