It's funny, I see Wendy Kaminer herself as a kind of guru - a guru of the fashionably cynical set. Yet she uses the term "guru" to minimize my career, to marginalize my thoughts and to trivialize my work, as well as those of others.

The plan of spiritual evolution is marked not only by God's will that we move ever in the direction of love, nut also by another of God's creative principles: that humanity has free will. What that means is that in any given moment, it is our choice whether we move toward love or retreat from it. What is not love is fear. But in the larger scheme of things, there is a limit past which lovelessness cannot remain. Fear is not life-giving enough to sustain itself. We can move in the direction of fear only so long before it brings us to our knees, or to our end.

I think the greatest gift we can give our children is to show them that devotion to God's purposes - love for all beings - is the center of all right living.

We need to recognize that part our political problem is that we do not participate effectively, that we suffer from a kind of mental slumber.

Every ending is a new beginning. Through the grace of God, we can always start again. (Page 120.)

We need to change society's ordering principle from economic to humanitarian values, from money as the bottom line to love as the bottom line.

Once you've had enough and you can't do it anymore, you consider the possibility that there might be a better way. That's when your head cracks open and God comes in.