The older I get, the more convinced I am that the space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.

Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered . . . just one kind word to another person.

Children long to know that they are lovable. And there are ways that technology can help with that. But ultimately it's their relationships with their parents, their grandparents, their peers, and their teachers that help them to know that for sure. A child can learn the word "hug" and the letters h-u-g through a computer, but a computer can never give the child a hug.

The purpose of life is to listen - to yourself, to your neighbor, to your world and to God and, when the time comes, to respond in as helpful a way as you can find ... from within and without.

Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past.

If it's mentionable, it's manageable.

When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won't be just our child's feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well-from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.