Dream of a world where poverty is history, dream of a world where we don't spend those obscene billions on arms, knowing full well that a tiny fraction of those budgets of death would ensure that children everywhere had clean water to drink, could afford the cheap inoculations against preventable diseases, would have good schools, adequate healthcare and decent homes.

To forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, the greatest good.

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.

People will use their religion to justify virtually anything.

Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God's grace and God's love for us . . . Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others.

We are living in an historic moment. We are each called to take part in a great transformation. Our survival as a species is threatened by global warming, economic meltdown, and an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor. Yet these threats offer an opportunity to awaken as an interconnected and beloved community.

God says, "Please, please help me realize this dream." And some of God's best collaborators are the young, because you dream. You dream God's dream.