I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.

People are not problems to be solved. They are mysteries to be explored.

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.

American culture is probably the least Christian culture that we've ever had because it is so materialistic and it's so full of lies. The whole advertising world is just, it's just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst of the instincts we have.

The task of the prophet is not to smooth things over but to make things right.

Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God; it whets our appetite.

Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.