I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates.

I don't want a God that would go around killing people's little girls. Neither do I want a God who would kill his own son.

The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.

Terrorism is a real despair. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their 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.

We are in a survival mentality, and that's hard-wired into our humanity, because we are the winners of an evolutionary struggle of millions and millions and millions of years.

Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.