Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive.

We listen for guidance everywhere except from within.

There is a tradition that the church represents, without which we wouldn't have the church, that's all about diving deep beneath the surface of the culture and finding those timeless, eternal truths that the whole Christian enterprise is rooted in. And one of those is that you don't come to God at 180 miles an hour.

I don't do a lot of top-down teaching.

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

In a culture of technique, we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out. . . . I am painfully aware of the times in my own teaching when I lose touch with my inner teacher and therefore with my own authority. In those times I try to gain power by barricading myself behind the podium and my status while wielding the threat of grades. . . . Authority comes as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation.

Community doesn't just create abundance - community is abundance. If we could learn that equation from the world of nature, the human world might be transformed.