The way you become divine is to become wholly human

Anybody who's a mythology ... there's always a fear. That's why we don't like people whose skin color is different, whose eye slant is different, or whose worship is different. It makes them feel insecure. So we strike out. The thing that bothers me most about the Christian church today is that we spend our time confirming people in their own sense of wretchedness.

The right to a good death is a basic human freedom. The [2006-JAN] Supreme Court's decision to uphold aid in dying allows us to view and act on death as a dignified moral and godly choice for those suffering with terminal illnesses.

The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.

I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies.

Praying and living deeply, richly and fully have become for me almost indistinguishab le. Prayer is being present, sharing love, opening life to transcendence. It is not necessarily words addressed heavenward. Prayer is entering into the pain or joy of another person. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so.

Toward the end of his life, [Arnold] Toynby said the Christianity he saw developing was brittle, imperialistic and incapable of reforming itself.