The highest level of prayer is not a prayer for anything. It is a deep and profound silence, in which we allow ourselves to be still and know Him. In that silence, we are changed. We are calmed. We are illumined. Prayer is meant to dissolve the worldly focus, to dissolve our sense of a separate self, to help us detach from an insane world order. We pray that He might flood our minds. Prayer is like pouring hot water on an ice cube, melting the cold and encrusted thought forms that still surround our hearts.

I think optimism is a moral imperative.

If I had to choose between a narrow-minded woman or a man who was an enlightened thinker, I would vote for the man.

The work of intimacy, of course, is to learn to both show your own illumination, and to see it in a way that the physical eyes cannot reveal. In a way that only the heart can reveal: the illumined beauty in another person.

Forgiveness is the ultimate preventive medicine, as well as the greatest healer.

Be the most wonderful expression of you that you're capable of.

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.