If you stay in the mainstream of life, you let in the suffering of the world that invariably enters all of our lives by the time we're in our middle years, when we've experienced a few deaths and read a few headlines.

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.

If you do not transform your wounds you will transmit them.

Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.

Jesus is never upset at sinners; he is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners.

When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself.

To give, and not demand that others receive . . . that is the crossover point to maturity. . .