We may well be the ones Proverbs warns when it reminds us: "Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value the one who speaks the truth." The point is clear: If the people speak and the king doesn't listen, there is something wrong with the king. If the king acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people.

A life of value is not a series of great things well done; it is a series of small things consciously done.

To be a presence of perpetual thanksgiving may be the ultimate goal of life. The thankful person is the one for whom life is simply one long exercise in the sacred.

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

Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.

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.