Having a school really is the fulfillment of a longtime dream of mine.

Your heart has to be prepared ahead of time through faith and prayer and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness so you can keep your heart open in hell, when hell happens.

Ancients knew that you need guidance, patronage and protection as you move from one place or state to another, whenever you cross a bridge. You had better know what you are doing when you leave one group or place to join another.

G.K. Chesterton, who was part of a Catholic conservatism that was kind and loving, not reactionary or hateful, said "We're all in the same boat in a stormy sea and we owe each other a terrible loyalty." I think that's profoundly true, yet it's difficult to have civil dialogue right now with other Christians, so how can we possibly talk to "all the nations"?

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

There are three things we have to let go of. The first is the compulsion to be successful. Second, is the compulsion to be right-especially theologically right. (That's merely an ego trip, and because of this "need" churches split in half, with both parties prisoners of their own egos.) Finally, there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control.

We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question.