I will always have fears, but I need not be my fears, for I have other places within myself from which to speak and act.

Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.

By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.

You are much more likely to have a holy experience in a quiet, focused, and communal context than you are when you are being entertained.

The past isn't fixed and frozen in place. Instead, its meaning changes as life unfolds.

When we generate utopian visions and hope to make them happen soon – when we elect Barack Obama and expect all our problems to be solved, and solved quickly, by his presidency – the outcome is both predictable and tragic. That is not the way to engage social change in a democracy. And it is not the way to help democracy itself survive and thrive. Democracy is a non-stop experiment. Each generation must help sustain it, which means being in it day-by-day for the long haul.

Everybody is on a lifelong journey toward trying to live more deeply. There is nobody who can say, "Well, I've got that one checked off my to-do list." We have to be honest with ourselves about where we are on this journey and about the difficulty of living in our own identities and integrity.