No one is any more or any less important than you are.

Today is a day for sober and mature reflection, not glee. Mindless celebration is both spiritually inappropriate and politically naive.

There should be an expanded role in this society for every human being. I see an expanded role for the human spirit, for excellence, for virtue, and for creativity - within women, and within everyone.

I was very much a child of the 1960s. I protested the Vietnam War and grew up in a fairly politicized home. My father was like a cross between William Kunstler and Zorba the Greek. I grew up among left-wing lawyers.

Love will push every button, try every faith, challenge every strength, trigger every weakness, mock every value, and then leave you there to die. And then you will be ready to be born at last, to become a soul who is strong enough to take love on. You'll be a romantic mystic who has achieved the elements: you endured the flames of love, you were baptized in the waters of love, and now you can soar like only a mystic can through the skies and skin of a lover's heart.

We are not here to fix, change or belittle another person. We are here to support, forgive and heal one another.

The soul force we need in America today, more than any other, is the spirit of atonement. We need to humble ourselves before God and ask forgiveness for the things we have done wrong. We need to ask God to forgive us for our arrogance.