I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.

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.

I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another.

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.

. . . there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving.

The best essays come from the moment in which people really need to work something out.

It saddens me that Christians need to be reminded that awe is owed also to those who disagree with them, who believe otherwise than they do.