If you stay in the mainstream of life, in other words, 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. Famine, poverty, abuse, you can't keep that all blocked out. If you let those things teach you, influence you, change you, those are the events that transition you without you even knowing it to become more compassionate. In other words, you hold onto your values, but you do it much more inclusively, humbly and in an open ended way. Suffering takes you there.

As you look back on a year almost ended, recall the ways in which God has been inviting you to return, again and again, to Love which is the same as returning to God

I think it's almost necessary for most people to have the freedom to pull back, and then re-enter at an adult level, where they are neither playing the victim nor creating victims, but just participating in calm, adult behavior. Because an awful lot of churches just aren't there at adult Christianity, this seems to be the norm anymore.

The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection—and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth.

The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.

The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime.

"Christ" is bigger than the Earth planet. If tomorrow we discover life on another planet, the whole "Jesus" piece would not make sense anymore. If he did everything for just us on this planet he wouldn't be the savior of the "world."