Our instinct as parents is to order our kids around — it's easier, and frankly, we're usually right. [But] reverse the waterfall as much as possible. Enlist the children in their own upbringing.

We're in a hyper-connected world, and there's a crisis of connection. The first thing that God says about woman and man in the Bible is that it's not right for humans to be alone. Social media interaction cannot take the place of face-to-face interaction. If anything, it prevents us from doing that. We're staring into our screens for so long that we're forgetting to look at the people directly in front of us.

One day, my daughter Tybee came to me, and she said, ‘I have so much love for you in my body, Daddy, I can’t stop giving you hugs and kisses. And when I have no more love left, I just drink milk, because that’s where love comes from.’

The higher the joy is not the light, it's the reflection. The greater pleasure is not climbing up; it's handing down

We no longer just take religious identity from our parents, so what's going on? Why are people going to this series, why are people reading so many books about religion? It's because they want answers. The answers are no longer just passed down from generation to generation. It's harder for people. In effect, you have to roll up your sleeve and ask the questions. But if you do it, if you forge your own identity, it can be much more personal and much more meaningful to you.

Cancer is a passport to intimacy. It is an invitation, maybe even a mandate, to enter the most vital arenas of human life, the most sensitive and the most frightening, the ones that we never want to go to - but when we do go there, we feel incredibly transformed.

But humans disappoint. Adam, in tasting the fruit, indicates that he prefers Eve to God, so God banishes them.