I don't just want a piece of you and a piece of your life. Even if you were able, which you are not, to give me the biggest piece, that is not what I want. I want all of you and all of every part of you and your day.

I grew up fundamentalist, evangelical, Protestant. Those are my roots, and they are good roots. But it means the Pharisees are my people. I grew up with an image of God that was not helpful -- largely the face of my father expanded.

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.

We've created a theology in the West of a God who is fundamentally self-centered. The imagery of God as distant, unapproachable, unreachable -- that's not a God who is relational. It is a God that gets to declare or judge when he gets pissed off. But there is no basis for love and relationships if God is a fundamentally self-centered being.

religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right... but i am about the process that takes you to the living answer... it will change you from the inside. there are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all.

Why would the God of the universe want to be submitted to me?' Because we want you to join us in our circle of relationship. I don't want slaves to my will; I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me.

I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness.