“Content in our connectedness / we are brothers and sisters / after all.”

The sibling relationship contains enough emotional dynamite to set off rounds of daily explosions.

Less time alone with parents. Less attention for hurts and disappointments. Less approval for accomplishments. . . .

And it’s not hard to understand why in families across the land,

You can call on each other / and count on each other … / because each other / is all you have.

And once he’s clear about that reality, he gathers the strength to begin to cope.

Let us be different in our homes.

When we acknowledge a child’s feelings, we do him a great service.

Keeping our youth and yesterdays alive / Comrades with one history.

Let us realize that along with food, shelter, and clothing

We deprive them of the experience that comes from wrestling with their own problems.

The resentment that each child feels for the privileges of the other;

Deep inside you know / when trouble comes / and there’s no one else to turn to

No wonder they mobilize all their energy to have more or most. Or better still, all.

Add to that the envy that one child feels for the accomplishments of the other;

I was a wonderful parent before I had children.

From their verbal sparring they learn the difference between being clever and being hurtful.

I think what we are confronting now is a new war of ideas. It’s not communism versus capitalism, but it is authoritarianism versus democracy and representative government.

The people to whom we minister and speak will not recall 99 percent of what we say to them, but they will never forget the kind of persons we are.

Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.

God’s aim in human history is the creation of an inclusive community of loving persons, with himself included as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.

The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.

My soul, be satisfied with flowers, with fruit, with weeds even; but gather them in the one garden you may call your own.

There is no way for a human being to come to God that does not involve surrender.

Meditation is the royal road to the attainment of freedom, a mysterious ladder that reaches from earth to heaven, darkness to light, mortality to Immortality.