The intricacy and the inherent beautiful fragility of the human soul is such that it is uniquely damaged and only God knows how to heal it, and it's going to take time.

It's always been you know, religion that has been the primary impediment to actual relationship with God, because it creates a mythology about performance -- that you can perform your way into the appeasement of the deity. And you know, when you're born inside the cultural framework that I was, and you're born inside the religious traditions that I was, that becomes your understanding of spirituality: That it's about trying to please God. So, it's really not about God at all; it's about our ability to perform according to whatever the expectations are.

...humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.

Religion and anger has gone together a lot, historically. My father, being very religious and angry, was trying to reconcile the ideas of love and forgiveness with damage in his own heart. We historically create God in the image of someone who will redeem us, or someone who has damaged us. A lot of my imaginations of God was a projection of my own damage because of my father. God is good but he has a lot of expectations, of which I have failed -- just like my dad. But I don't think it's truthful to create God as a projection of either our damage or our altruism.

So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it.

It is my desire and intent to trust the multi-layered good purposes of God than in what humans fabricate out of their need and experience. I specifically ask not to know these purposes so that I might remain a child in their unfolding.

You cannot heal yourself. You cannot heal anybody else. We're designed to do this in community because we were created inside community for community by community.