Our society has been eaten up by the economic view of things, which routinely forces us to work at jobs that don't mean anything.

As a mode of perception that often becomes a style of life, paranoia weaves around the vulnerable self or group an air-tight metaphysic and world view. Paranoia is an antireligious mysticism based on the feeling or perception that the world in general, and others in particular, are against me or us. Reality is perceived as hostile. By contrast, the religious mystic experiences the ground of being as basically friendly to the deepest needs of the self. That which is unknown, strange, or beyond our comprehension is with and for rather than against us.

The spiritual journey is one that we must take "alone together," in the same way that a good marriage involves a dance between solitude and communion. The life of the spirit entails a continuous alternation between retreating into oneself and going out into the world: it's an inward-outward journey. There is a solitary part to it, but that solitude helps us to develop richer and more in-depth relationships with our friends, our children, our community, and the political world.

Good men and good women have fire in the belly. We are fierce. Don't mess with us if you're looking for someone who will always be 'nice' to you. Nice gets you a C+ in life. We don't always smile, talk in a soft voice, or engage in indiscriminate hugs. In the loving struggle between the sexes we thrust and parry.

At thirty I lived in a world where death wasn't immediately real; it was always something "out there." My deeply held illusions of immortality - a product of my very conservative religious upbringing - were still pretty much intact.

To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.

Every time I come across a rattlesnake on my farm I initially react in fear and am tempted to kill it. Then I realize I wouldn't want to live in a world where all wild things - without and within - are domesticated.