Don't forget that in the midst of all your pain and heartache, you are surrounded by beauty, the wonder of creation, art, your music and culture, the sounds of laughter and love, of whispered hopes and celebrations, of new life and transformation, of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Jesus was always challenging the dogma of religion. So, you know, it's not like I'm out there by myself.

Women, in general, will find it difficult to turn from a man and stop demanding that he meets their needs, provides security, and protects their identity, and return to me. Men, in general, find it very hard to turn from the works of their hands, their own quests for power and security and significance, and turn to me.

You need boundaries... Even in our material creations, boundaries mark the most beautiful of places, between the ocean and the shore, between the mountains and the plains, where the canyon meets the river.

"Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly"... "And if left unresolved you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place."

Evangelicals have like millions of rules. And it's just, uh, we have sort of an accepted, rationalism within which we frame religion. And we think that belief, intellectually, is of the same as relationship. And in our Western family conversation, that's become an incredible impediment toward actual wholeness, where the heart and the head are aligned and relationship -- with not just God but with each other.

I think people are tired of religion and how it divides and damages people. You can name it whatever you want, Islam or Christianity, but if you have a system in which God is distant and angry all the time, and you're trying to please him through the right disciplines, it isn't going to work for everyone.