There's no authoritarian structure at Reed College, but the education is conservative. So what you have is a lot of students who are very authentically looking for truth.

If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.”

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

Lets choose to do something really difficult, something that saves lives, and let's do that thing with people we love.

I'm not a pastor; I've never been on staff at a church.

Dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something is the hard thing. Living for something extends beyond fashion, glory, or recognition. We live for what we believe.

Don't let go of your strength or your beauty. It was given to you by God.