The big truth for men is that often we have to leave home in the first half of life before we can return home at a later stage and find our soul there.

The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.

People will often, almost always, prefer a male God. A male image of God gives them this sense of security, safety, order, no nonsense. So that's where their psyche is at. Probably it's something that they've got to go through. Not that there isn't a need for order in the world, but the mystical level seems to be the mature level of religion, and there the question is not order but union - divine union. And so, without some integration of the feminine, usually you never get to the mystical level.

I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action.

The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God, not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong.