It often appears that those who talk the most about going to heaven when you die talk the least about bringing heaven to earth right now, as Jesus taught us to pray: 'Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' At the same time, it often appears that those who talk the most about relieving suffering now talk the least about heaven when we die.

We shape our God, and then our God shapes us.

When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god.

And a lot of times, the religious discussion is almost a masquerade for the real question, is what stories that we tell ourselves and that we tell each other and what convictions and beliefs actually have the capacity to make us the kind of people who together can make the world the kind of world we all want it to be?

Often times when I meet atheists and we talk about the god they don’t believe in, we quickly discover that I don’t believe in that god, either.

I believe God gives people the right to say no, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story.

I feel like I've gotten an extraordinary opportunity to experience a sort of collective humanity. If you hug many people in such a short period of days you pick up on a communal energy, almost like feeling a giant heartbeat that everyone is beating together.