Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.

What some now call 'emerging Christianity' or 'the emerging church' is not something you join, establish, or invent. You just name it and then you see it everywhere- already in place! Such nongroup groups, the 'two or three' gathered in deep truth, create a whole new level of affiliation, dialogue, and friendship.

When you haven't found inner meaning, you will always substitute outer performance. It's the only way to fill that void, that sense of significance - that I am significant. So almost the degree of outer performance can, in many cases, mirror the lack of inner alignment.

When 'happiness' eludes us - as, eventually, it always will - we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again.

The message of "falling" - failure, death, crucifixion, whatever you want to say - is not really that. Some sort of falling is really found in all the world's religions, just in different languages.

Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you.

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.