Our equal and opposite needs for solitude and community constitute a great paradox. When it is torn apart, both of these life-giving states of being degenerate into deathly specters of themselves. Solitude split off from community is no longer a rich and fulfilling experience of inwardness; now it becomes loneliness, a terrible isolation. Community split off from solitude is no longer a nurturing network of relationships; now it becomes a crowd, an alienating buzz of too many people and too much noise.

Humility is the only lens though which great things can be seen--and once we have seen them, humility is the only posture possible.

My favorite topping is one that a lot of people don't like. I love anchovies.

Authority is granted to people who are perceived as authoring their own words, their own actions, their own lives, rather than playing a scripted role at great remove from their own hearts.

Disabused of our illusions by much travel and travail, we awaken one day to find that the sacred center is here and now - in every moment of the journey, everywhere in the world around us, and deep within our own hearts.

The spiritual life is about becoming more at home in your own skin.

My high school, like most high schools, had a pretty rigid stratification system. Kids were clustered into groups - the studious ones, the athletes, the popular ones - and we never crossed paths with each other. You stayed in your air-tight group, and you were suspicious of people in other groups.