Solitude begins with a time and place for God, and him alone. If we really believe not only that God exists but also that he is actively present in our lives—healing, teaching, and guiding — we need to set aside a time and space to give him our undivided attention.

As a general remark, I would say we must move from the moral to the mystical life.

I've had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I'd rather not talk about it, because it's over. But depression is real.

If you want to know anything about community, you have to realize that the contemplative side is essential. Community without retreating and quiet time never survives.

That is our vocation: to convert the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.