Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty.

Two ideas militate against our consciously contributing to a better world. The idea that we can do everything or the conclusion that we can do nothing to make this globe a better place to live are both temptations of the most insidious form. One leads to arrogance; the other to despair.

A bifurcation of loyalties that requires religious to put canon law above civil law and moral law puts us in a situation where the keepers of religion may themselves become one of the greatest dangers to the credibility - and the morality - of the church itself.

All of us wrestle with the angels of our inabilities all the time. We live in fear that our incapacities will be exposed. We posture and evaluate and assess and criticize mercilessly.

I celebrate myself," the poet Walt Whitman wrote. The thought is so delicious it is almost obscene. Imagine the joy that would come with celebrating the self — our achievements, our experiences, our existence. Imagine what it would be like to look into the mirror and say, as God taught us, "That's good.

"When we do not know what harbor we are making for," the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, "no wind is the right wind." Persons have vision only when they have a dream that drives them on.

Anger is not bad. Anger can be a very positive thing, the thing that moves us beyond the acceptance of evil.