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?

opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, dreams ... that is being naked.

If there's any place where you would express your deepest doubts, it would be church.

Enjoy mystery and speculation, but don't drift into dogma.

Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there [...] You see God where others don't. And then you point him out. So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst.

Look at the size of the universe and look at what we're discovering about string theory. There's a wide-eyed sense of we're just getting started here.

To me some of the greatest writing is when somebody puts something in words that you felt and experienced and you go, that's it.