If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.

No lifetime is long enough for those ... who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.

It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?

It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri

The life of a poet lies not merely in the finite language-dance of expression but in the nearly infinite combinations of perception and memory combined with the sensitivity to what is perceived and remembered.

Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.

History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.