We say it is idealistic to think we can continue to live the way we live - with 5% of the world using half the world's resources, with $20,000 a second being spent on war.

The more you look at the death penalty, that's where you see that we're actually not killing the worst of the worst. We're killing the poorest of the poor. Where actually one of the biggest determinants of who gets executed is how many resources they have to defend themselves.

It's hard to hear the gentle whisper of the Spirit amid the noise of Christendom.

I have this certain reluctance when it comes to this idea that we are spiritual but not religious and we want Jesus but not the church. Why can't we have both?

God can use anything, and anyone - even a king or a president, even a tax collector or a businessman, a priest or a prostitute, a Republican or a Democrat.

Faith is not accepting the world as it is but insisting on building the world God wants.

The monastic folks have the spirit of being in the world but not of the world, sort of peculiar people who have gone to the desert to live on the margins of the empire.