Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.

When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.

There are several sources for my appreciation of pastors and the way they are described in this book. One of them is reading history and realizing that they had a profound creative impact on the Middle West and the settlement of the Middle West.

When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.

I read things like theology, and I read about science, Scientific American and publications like that, because they stimulate again and again my sense of the almost arbitrary given-ness of experience, the fact that nothing can be taken for granted.

I really don't know why people have so much trouble now writing about religious faith. It is true that clichés can override more interesting impulses. But the desire to find meaning, to be generous, to live well in an ethical and spiritual sense, is so widespread that it should not seem alien to people when it is expressed in the terms of traditional religion.

When we accept dismissive judgments of our community we stop having generous hope for it. We cease to be capable of serving its best interests.