To be fully human is perhaps why I'm Christian, because I see in the life of Jesus a way of being fully human.

I went to the little church in the country after ten years in the city. And part of my dream was to sit on people's front porches with glasses of iced tea, and all that happened. I was able to send birthday cards to everyone in the parish and able to know everyone who was there on Sunday by name. And that was what I'd been looking for.

Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.

If churches saw their mission in the same way, there is no telling what might happen. What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?

Day by day we are given not what we want but what we need. Sometimes it is a feast and sometimes...swept crumbs, but by faith we believe it is enough.

The tradition piece is so embedded in me I don't know that I can see it any more, but the community piece is one I've been in danger of losing.

I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.