Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long.

The vision of a culture lies in what becomes its major institutions, in what it remembers as its most impacting events, in who it sees as its heroes.

Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience. It makes moral children of the adults from whom moral agency is required. It makes a vow, which is meant to require religious figures to listen always to the law of God, beholden first to the laws of very human organizations in the person of very human authorities. It is a law that isn't even working in the military and can never substitute for personal morality.

Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scrapping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard of its own accord we have the stamina to yes to its twists and turns with faith and hope. Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be.

When I get on the internet and hide behind a false identity, and then allow that hiding to free me from the standards of decency, to begin to use language I would never use in front of my mother, all of a sudden, there's nothing between me and you, but worse than that, there's nothing between me and my worst self.

Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.

Oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lost control in the end.