To be a great teacher, you can't simply be looking at how to earn your income. And with a priest or spiritual leader - there's another relationship that makes those lives what they are. And in each of these cases you'll find elements of gift exchange thriving, and you'll also find a tension around it.

The gift finds the man attractive who stands with an empty bowl he does not own.

Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.

Uncovering secrets is apocalyptic in the simple sense (the Greek root means ‘an uncovering’). In this case, it lifts the shame covers. It allows articulation to enter where silence once ruled.

The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not a solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible.

We are only alive to the degree that we can let ourselves be moved.

I think of a myth as a story that helps you explain all the different pieces of your life. In that broad sense, there is no way to live without mythology.