I love being alone. I learned that from my father, I think, who loved his own company.

The church grew, and I gained a reputation for preaching, and people came, and it was a wonderful community. But we had a building that seated 82 people, and with a congregation then approaching 400 we were up to four services on Sunday, and everyone was tired.

I live by the simplest, perhaps facile command that Jesus ever gave, which is to love God with the whole self and the neighbor as the self, and I find that's entirely consuming. To do those two things leaves me very little time to do much else.

For a long time I listened to other people to decide whether I was still Christian or not, and I would sort of vet myself by the traditional formulae.

Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.

It's difficult for me to ignore how many conflicts locally and worldwide have religion tagged to them.

Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.