every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us.

Either you allow Holy Scriptures to change you, or you will normally try to use it to change--and clobber--other people. It is the height of idolatry to use the supposed Word of God so that my small self can be in control and be right. But I am afraid this has been more the norm than the exception in the use of the Bible.

The phrase, 'You must die before you die,' is found in most of the world religions. If you don't learn how to die early, you spend the rest of your life avoiding failure. When you can free your True Self, the whole spiritual life opens up.

Our culture is almost entirely prepared to not just help you create your false self, but to get very identified with it and attached to it. So, without some form of God experience, which teaches you who you are apart from that - we would say in the religious world, who you are "in" God, in the mind and heart of God - there's almost no way to get out of it.

Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery.

The Gospel gives human suffering deep, personal, and cosmic meaning, by connecting our pain to the pain of others and, finally, by connecting us to the very "pain of God".

God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history.