Another of the things I started to do during this time was what Buddhists normally call "meditation" or, in Christian terms, "contemplative prayer". It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favorite hobby.

Being alone in our present society raises an important question about identity and well-being.

Natural history is not taught in seminary. This is curious, as most people in pastoral ministry are about 567 times more likely to be asked about cosmology or sub-nuclear physics or human biology or evolution than they are to be asked about irregular Greek verbs or the danger of the patripassionist heresy. If we monotheists are going to go around claiming that our "God made the heaven and the earth," it is not unreasonable to expect us to know something about what that heaven and earth actually are.

Another of the things I started to do during this time was what Buddhists normally call "meditation" or, in Christian terms, "contemplative prayer". It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favorite hobby.

My father taught me to be independent and cocky and free thinking, but he could not stand it if I disagreed with him.

It is not simply that we share with each other a common humanity, but that individually we have no humanity without each other.

Gardening gave me a way to work with silence; not "in silence" but "with silence" - it was a silent creativity.