Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God, here and now.

Is my growing old making me any closer to Christ? Am I only getting older or am I getting more godly?

The people who most affected me were the ones who got right in there with me, who cried with me, but who also had a certain authority, who dared to say what needed saying.

The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.

The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the world--free to speak even when my words are not received; free to act even when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless.... I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyond its boundaries.

Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself.

The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation.