I am very, very uneasy with churches that have basically said, "Well, since that's what people want and that's what sells, then were going to do our worship services like Hollywood productions. We're going to have a lot of bells and whistles. We're going to have high entertainment value, and it is going to have a lot of gloss and glitter."

Spirituality is not primarily about values and ethics, not about exhortations to do right or live well. The spiritual traditions are primarily about reality...an effort to penetrate the illusions of the external world and to name its underlying truth.

A scholar is committed to building on knowledge that others have gathered, correcting it, confirming it, enlarging it.

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.

Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.

How easily we get trapped in that which is not essential - in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth - when simply being alive is the gift beyond measure.

Death in various forms is sometimes comforting, while resurrection and new life can be demanding and threatening. If I lived as if resurrection were real, and allowed myself to die for the sake of a new life, what might I be called upon to do?