Our Christian faith is actually very subversive of the conventional notion of success - the notion that what invests a person with worth is something extrinsic.

You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.

I think it is a good exercise to ask oneself, "How would I have wanted to be treated?"

Life is funny and we are really funny, especially when we get to be hoity toity; we can be so ridiculous. Life is fun.

There would be no call for ecological campaigning had nature not been exploited and abused. We experience the ground now bringing forth thistles as soil erosion devastates formerly arable land and deserts overtake fertile farms. Rivers and the atmosphere are polluted thoughtlessly and we are fearful of the consequences of a depleted ozone layer and the devastation of the greenhouse effect. We are not quite at home in our world, and somewhere in each of us there is a nostalgia for a paradise that has been lost.

Look at Nelson Mandela. Why did people want to follow him? He's a lousy speaker. If he hadn't got all the other things, you wouldn't spend time listening to him. But people actually don't listen to what he's saying, in a way. They are listening to him because he has communicated that he is ready to put his life on the line.

Does taking the life of the perpetrator return your mom? No.