We don't have much wisdom about the second half when things really open up and end up looking a lot more progressive. In my own Catholic church, for example, we're sort of circling the wagons today by thinking that more moral strictures, more exclusionary rules on this or that, that that's going to do for the first half of life. I don't think it really does.

Prayer is looking out from a different set of eyes, which are not comparing, competing, judging, labeling or analyzing, but receiving the moment in its present wholeness and unwholeness. That is what is meant by contemplation.

Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.

Much of the Christian religion has largely become “holding on” instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).

The spiritual world is hidden and perfectly revealed in the physical world.

It is so important to balance orthodoxy with orthopraxy.

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.