Trust is not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown.

Trust is a skill learned over time so that, like a well-trained athlete, one makes the right moves, usually without much reflection.

Thus when I have to summarize naturalized spirituality in a single phrase, it is this: the thoughtful love of life.

Indeed, some kitsch seems to be flawed by its very perfection, its technical virtuosity and its precise execution, its explicit knowledge of the tradition

All trust involves vulnerability and risk, and nothing would count as trust if there were no possibility of betrayal.

For all of the advice in the magazines on "How to Keep your Love Alive," the salvation of love is not the prolongation of sexual desire but the shared lifelong cultivation of a romantic lightheartedness that softens conflicts and anxieties and focuses serious attention even as it undermines seriousness as such. It's hard to fall out of love so long as you're laughing together.

True, trust necessarily carries with it uncertainties, but we must force ourselves to think about these uncertainties as possibilities and opportunities, not as liabilities.