“At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.”

“the pollution of American space...brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.”

“God is more concerned about our character than our comfort. HIs goal is not to pamper us physically, but to perfect us spiritually.”

“Silence can bring us into alignment with our thoughts and feelings and help us to hear the quiet spiritual voice of our intuition.”

“If there is a single factor that makes spiritual direction effective as a change agency for the soul, it is this: spiritual direction holds our shame at bay long enough for us to see ourselves as God sees us in Christ.”

“He has had to learn to hide it, even more than most of us. Somewhere, I think, there is a center to him. It glows like a coal being slowly crushed into diamond, weighed down by layers and layers of surface.”