If you have two coats you have stolen one. We have no right to have more than we need when someone else has less than they need.

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

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."

The early Christians felt a deep collision with the empire in which they lived, and with politics as usual. They carelessly crossed party lines and built subversive friendships. And we should do that too.

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.

The greatest sin of political imagination: Thinking there is no other way except the filthy rotten system we have today.

Let's keep refusing to accept the world as it is and insisting on building the world we dream of. Don't let the haters have the last word.