People will use their religion to justify virtually anything.

One of the things that has always surprised me is why Americans are so patient. Because they have seen not just that freedom has come, what they have seen is that there are some who used to be poor who are very rich, stinking rich some of them.

As human beings, even if we were to have tried to forget the past, if you dealt with it in a cavalier fashion, it would return to haunt you.

We must embrace our differences, even celebrate our diversity. We must glory in the fact that God created each of us as unique human beings. God created us different, but God did not create us for separation. God created us different that we might recognize our need for one another. We must reverence our uniqueness, reverence everything that makes us what we are: our language, our culture, our religious tradition.

You and I are created for transcendence, laughter, caring. God deliberately did not make the world perfect, for God is looking for you and me to be fellow workers with God.

The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life.

When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound - our own and others' - and it can finally heal.