Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.

What is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one's life--especially one's politics?

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."

When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way.

I think they [ monastic folks ] were going to the desert to build a new society and in a sense to build a new world, a new culture together where it was easier to be good and holy.

We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. Jesus and the early Christians had a marvelous political imagination. They turned all the presumptions and ideas of power and blessing upside down.

Karl Barth said it well: "We have to read the Bible in one hand... and the newspaper in the other." Our faith should not cause us to escape this world but to engage it.