When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.

We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health.

When we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us.

But for the first time, I had a religious identity. I had come home. And so I called myself a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18.

I've had all kinds of experiences with God in terms of revelation through a still, small voice or dreams or coincidences.

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture