The world in many ways would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled. There would have been fewer children sacrificed to the gods of greed and power.

The soul is healed by being with children. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My dad was a preacher. My relationship, for example, with my father -- very difficult, and very painful, and it took me 50 years to wipe the face of my father off the face of God.

I want to tell you about the God that actually showed up and healed my heart. Not the God I grew up, because the God I grew up was fundamentally, and I use the word advisedly, fundamentally untrustworthy -- schizophrenic, narcissistic, unreachable, unknowable, and my concept within which I grew up was that Jesus -- He likes me -- but He came to save me from God the Father -- who was the one who was angry and distant, and unreachable, unknowable. All of that had to come crashing down.

Forgiveness is first for you, the forgiver...to release you from something that will eat you alive; that will destroy your joy and your ability to love fully and openly. Do you think this man cares about the pain and torment you have gone through? If anything, he feeds on that knowledge. Don't you want to cut that off? And in doing so, you'll release him from a burden that he carries whether he knows it or not--acknowledges it or not.

If a rainbow makes a sound, or a flower as it grows, that was the sound of her laughter.

Don't ever discount the wonder of your tears. They can be healing waters and a stream of joy. Sometimes they are the best words the heart can speak.