Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one's self. It is not about the absence of other people -- it is about being fully present to ourselves, whether or not we are with others. Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others; rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other. It is not about the presence of other people -- it is about being fully open to the reality of relationship, whether or not we are alone.

God ain't finished with any of us yet.

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

The answer comes to me through studying the lives of the Rosa Parks and the Vaclav Havels and the Nelson Mandelas and the Dorothy Days of this world. These are people who have come to understand that no punishment that anybody could lay on us could possibly be worse than the punishment we lay on ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment, by living a divided life, by failing to make that fundamental decision to act and speak on the outside in ways consonant with what we know to be true on the inside.

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

People are always asking, "Is this person in front of me the same on the inside as he or she appears to be on the outside? Is there congruence between what's within that person and the words and actions I'm viewing and hearing externally?" Children ask that about their parents; students ask it about their teachers; parishioners ask it about their pastors and priests; employees ask it about their bosses; and in a democracy, citizens ask it about their political leaders.

I believe that movements start when individuals who feel very isolated and very alone in the midst of an alien culture, come in touch with something life-giving in the midst of a death-dealing situation. They make one of the most basic decisions a human being can make, which I have come to call the decision to live "divided no more," the decision to no longer act differently on the outside than one knows one's truth to be on the inside