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.

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.

I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.

I'm leaving out some of the hugely successful megachurches, of which I have very little experience.

Divine reality is not way up in the sky somewhere; it is readily available in the encounters of everyday life, which make hash of my illusions that I can control the ways God comes to me.

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

I think a toxic message in a lot of Christianity has been that the self has to be annihilated in order for God to be found. I think that has been a toxic message.