“Father has taught me that when something is lost, whether dear or not, giving up the search is sometimes best and often enough the lost article finds its owner.”

“If we're going to impact our world in the name of Jesus, it will be because people like you and me took action in the power of the Spirit. Ever since the mission and ministry of Jesus, God has never stopped calling for a movement of "Little Jesuses" to follow him into the world and unleash the remarkable redemptive genius that lies in the very message we carry. Given the situation of the Church in the West, much will now depend on whether we are willing to break out of a stifling herd instinct and find God again in the context of the advancing kingdom of God.”

“For as is often the happenstance with that which is precious and lost, when you find him again, he may well not be quite as you left him.”

“If it was true that all paths in our World led to only one place, then why not fill whatever path you chose with the best things you could find?”

“Consider now the primal scene of education in the modern elementary school. Let us assume that a teacher wishes to inform a class of some 20 pupils about the structure of atoms, and that she plans to base the day's instruction on an analogy with the solar system. She knows that the instruction will be effective only to the extent that all the students in the class already know about the solar system. A good teacher would probably try to find out. 'Now, class, how many of you know about the solar system?' Fifteen hands go up. Five stay down. What is a teacher to do in this typical circumstance in the contemporary American school?"If he or she pauses to explain the solar system, a class period is lost, and 15 of the 20 students are bored and deprived of knowledge for that day. If the teacher plunges ahead with atomic structure, the hapless five—they are most likely to be poor or minority students—are bored, humiliated and deprived, because they cannot comprehend the teacher's explanation.”

“A Partial History of My StupidityTraffic was heavy coming off the bridgeand I took the road to the right, the wrong one,and got stuck in the car for hours.Most nights I rushed out into the eveningwithout paying attention to the trees,whose names I didn't know,or the birds, which flew heedlessly on.I couldn't relinquish my desiresor accept them, and so I strolled alonglike a tiger that wanted to spring,but was still afraid of the wildness within.The iron bars seemed invisible to others,but I carried a cage around inside me.I cared too much what other people thoughtand made remarks I shouldn't have made.I was slient when I should have spoken.Forgive me, philosophers,I read the Stoics but never understood them.I felt that I was living the wrong life,spiritually speaking,while halfway around the worldthousands of people were being slaughtered,some of them by my countrymen.So I walked on--distracted, lost in thought--and forgot to attend to those who sufferedfar away, nearby.Forgive me, faith, for never having any.I did not believe in God,who eluded me.”

“During the years of struggling to make partner, he had sometimes entertained the comical notion that making partner would imbue him with new powers, like a budding superhero who had been bitten by a radioactive spider. It appeared that any superpowers he had gained did not include the ability to pick up women in bars.”