When we get to what happens when we die, we don't have any video footage. So let's at least be honest that we are speculating, because we are.

Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.

When someone sets out to be controversial or provocative or shocking as an end in itself, I don't think that's a noble goal.

It often takes suffering and lost in order to remind us of how precious life is.

It is better to be fully present and rested and engaged for one thing than rushed, distracted, and scattered for ten.

We can choose the way of compassion, the way of forgiveness, the way of generosity. Or we can choose other paths and those have very real consequences in the world. This is absolutely crucial.

God then makes people whom he puts right in the middle of all this loaded creation. Commanding them to care for creation, to manage it, to lovingly use it, to creatively order it... They are environmentalists. Being deeply connected with their environment is who they are. For them to be anything else or to deny their divine responsibility to care for all that God has made would be to deny something that is at the core of their existence. This is why litter and pollution are spiritual issues.