I think it's almost necessary for most people to have the freedom to pull back, and then re-enter at an adult level, where they are neither playing the victim nor creating victims, but just participating in calm, adult behavior. Because an awful lot of churches just aren't there at adult Christianity, this seems to be the norm anymore.

The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

If you work with such people almost on the level of spiritual direction, you see that they are people who prefer a world view of order and even punitiveness. And for some reason, there's a feeling that the male psyche is going to give that to them. And if that's your view of religion, which it is for many people, if they've never come to the mystical level, religion is for social order and to maintain social order.

People wanted to me to describe more about what I call "the container," and then describe what the second half of life feels like.

One time, a Protestant minister said, "We made Jesus blonde haired and blue eyed and very cute. We made Jesus somehow a much more feminine figure." And there's probably truth to that.

I think it's almost necessary for most people to have the freedom to pull back, and then re-enter at an adult level, where they are neither playing the victim nor creating victims, but just participating in calm, adult behavior. Because an awful lot of churches just aren't there at adult Christianity, this seems to be the norm anymore.

The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.