“While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.”

“Here is the major life question: Does our experience create our identity ... or does our identity create our experience?”

“The spiritual life and especially its expression in mystical experience, is not so much a matter of striving for heights of mystical union between the soul and God who is utterly different from us. It is rather more a matter of attending to God’s presence with us and responding to God’s presence by being altogether present to the divine presence which is always near. The long history of Christian spirituality has to do with the various ways of responding to God’s presence and participating ever more fully in the divine life altogether present in human life, history, the world and the church.”

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”

“Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.”

“Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God.”