When we were starting our community a bunch of older Benedictine nuns said to us, "If you have any questions or want to pick our brains, please do - we've been doing community for about 1,500 years together so we've learned a few things."

Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.

There is an innocence or purity that we see in renewals and in the Mennonite church and a new an invigorated civil rights movement.

Our churches should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated.

Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.

We have to use our discontentment to engage rather than disengage - our hope has to be more powerful than our cynicism.

We should refuse to get sucked into political camps and insist on pulling the best out of all of them. That's what Jesus did - challenge the worst of each camp and pull out the best of each.