I'll put it to you this way: I never, ever think about the things that I get involved with on a macro means-to-an-ends scale.

It is precisely the despair of our times that convinces me that a renaissance is right around the corner.

Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied, of getting in touch with the space inside and expanding this until it merges with the space outside. Space meeting space; empty pouring into empty. Births happen from that encounter with emptiness, nothingness. . . . Let us not fight emptiness and nothingness, but allow it to penetrate us even as we penetrate it.

Faith takes us to deep places, to the ruptures in our self-confidence and our lives. Do not settle for spiritual comfort all the time...Darkness is divine also. Faith is not about positive thinking so much as about what kicks in when we are weak, sick, and short of self-confidence. The via positiva never stands alone. The via negativa is always with us on our faith journey as well.

A lot of people want to see this idealized version of heroism, all pretty and perfect, and I'm not interested in playing the goody-goody hero at all.

I'm really enjoying the process of learning to fly. How it will fit into my life down the road - I'm looking forward to discovering that.

To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people.