The spiritual response is too often a simplistic one: we abandon God or we blame God for abandoning us.

For centuries the church has confronted the human community with role models of greatness. We call them saints when what we really often mean to say is 'icon,' 'star,' 'hero,' ones so possessed by an internal vision of divine goodness that they give us a glimpse of the face of God in the center of the human. They give us a taste of the possibilities of greatness in ourselves.

The purpose of leadership is not to make the present bearable. The purpose of leadership is to make the future possible.

Beauty scatters the seeds of hope in us.

June is the time for being in the world in new ways, for throwing off the cold and dark spots of life.

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.

"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.