Religions should be understood as only the fingers that point to the moon, not the moon itself.

Church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus. We invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolves every question even when it is not entirely true over the mercy and grace of God.

If you're the head of the organization that has to pay salaries, bills and keep the money coming, you have to be concerned with pleasing the middle. I find it means you have to dumb down your message to something less radical than the gospel. It can't be the real gospel. It has to be "churchiness" that pleases everyone, so they come back next Sunday and keep putting money in the collection plate. I don't mean that in a cynical way. I just think it's what happens.

When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself. Most of our mainline Christian denominations, in my opinion, don't do the first or second halves very well. We don't really give people a good container, we give them a bunch of legalisms.

I decided years ago that if I'm going to keep teaching contemplation, then the last years of my life should be contemplative.

When we can see the image of God where we don't want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.

Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.