Like Buddha under the Bo tree, Jesus, on his tree, has his eyes closed too. The difference is this. The pain and sadness of the world that Buddha's eyes close out is the pain and sadness of the world that the eyes of Jesus close in.

We have God's joy in our blood.

Your calling is where your own greatest joy intersects with the needs of the world.

It's very easy in a way, horrible in some ways, but simply to give up the whole thing, to say, "Well, the hell with it, as far as I'm concerned life is pointless and [so] live the fullest, most successfully self-fulfilling life you can and let the rest go hang" - I've never reached that point in my life.

The best moments any of us have as human beings are those moments when for a little while it is possible to escape the squirrel-cage of being me into the landscape of being us.

Despair has been called the unforgivable sin-not presumably because God refuses to forgive it, but because it despairs of the possibility of being forgiven.

They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour's work as for a day's. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the lamb.