Genuine forgiveness is participation, reunion overcoming the powers of estrangement. . . We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.

The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.

Parents need to listen as much to their kids as they do to them: "The first duty of love is to listen."

Spirit is the presence of what concerns us ultimately, the ground of our being and meaning.

Wisdom loves the children of men, but she prefers those who come through foolishness to wisdom.

Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.

The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces-both individual and social.