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.

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

Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy.

Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.

The Eucharist becomes a microcosmic moment of belief and power in which we say we believe in the real presence of God in Jesus, in this bread, and in this wine.

I'm not trying to make political statements ,but theological statements. How can religion get itself so identified with one political party, exclusionary world views, or with "pelvic morality" as the defining issues of the Gospel? Jesus surely didn't. Jesus said to "preach the gospel to all nations", which means we do not just talk to ourselves.

I think it's important to remember that by the second half of our lives, we are meant to see in wholes, and no longer just in parts.