Mother Teresa- cream. Exemplars, exemplary models we can learn from and become more like, but we don't have to imitate them. We can become more authentically ourselves, impeccable and unselfish, and beneficial to many like a wish fulfilling jewel.

Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it's about becoming more fully human. . . . It is the end of ignorance.

I realize that was becoming a contradiction in terms, especially after my friend Alison Krauss was shot and killed in Kent State in 1970 on campus by the National Guard.

Spiritual joy is devotion, it's like a virus you know? It's a benevolent virus, but it spreads. It's infectious. Ram Dass was like a mentor in those days.

If we accept and internalize the fact of our own mortality, then, by definition, we have to deal with the essential questions of how we live and spend our allotted time. We have to stop procrastinating, pretending that we have forever to do what we want to do and be what we long to be.

There's plenty going on that's substantial and transformative, beneficial and authentic. Just because somebody is in the media, it doesn't mean they're bad. It may mean they're the best, and occasionally you know the cream rises to the surface, but not always everything on the surface is cream.

Everyone has values, and values their family, values their health, their sanity, their safety and security, and their families, their parents, their children, their pets, their environments, well-being in general.