There is a trend in child-rearing that I find abhorrent: "Whatever the kids want to do is fine." For me, the classic example of this is when someone has a visitor and says, "Go kiss Aunt Gertrude," and Aunt Gertrude says, "She doesn't have to kiss me if she doesn't want to." Well, I think that's wrong.

It's the beginning of your day. You awake and look around you, feeling perhaps a joyful expectation, or perhaps an awful dread. No matter which, remember this: God loves you with an infinite love.

The soul is the truth of who we are.

Allowing the pain of personal growth to be a crucible of your spirit-the alchemical grail through which the metal of your former self turns into gold-is one of the highest callings of life. Pain can burn you up and destroy you, or burn you up and redeem you. It can deliver you to an entrenched despair, or deliver you to your higher self. At midlife we decide, consciously or unconsciously, the path of the victim or the path of the phoenix when it is rising up at last.

With every thought we think, we either summon or block a miracle. It is not our circumstances, then, but rather our thoughts about our circumstances, that determine our power to transform them.

In any moment, in any circumstance, a miracle will occur when we align ourselves with truth.

If we only identify with the mortal world, then we identify with a level of scarcity and lack and brokenness, and that will be our experience.