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

The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.

As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.

I thought being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was...it wasn't until I failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.

I found myself in a maze where I'd taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn't doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.

I can't help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.

We are born seekers, calling strange names into the darkness from our earliest days because we know we are not meant to be alone, and because we know that we await someone whom we cannot always see.