“The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.”

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

Monotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until novelty and entertainment are built up as positive experiences.

Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.

The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.

When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.

The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.

What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.

A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.

In many ways, constancy is an illusion.

The Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives.

Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.

Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.

The critical question about regret is whether experience led to growth and new learning. Some people seem to keep on making the same mistakes, while others at least make new ones. Regret and remorse can be either paralyzing or inspiring.

Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.

Often in winter the end of the day is like the final metaphor in a poem celebrating death: there is no way out.

It was easier than explaining DiMaggio’s use as a metaphor.

Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something’s time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a great metaphor for endings.

We wanted to make fun of that fear-based culture we’ve been plunged into. And Halloweens the perfect metaphor for fear.

Still, it’s an apt metaphor for our profession. But there’s another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.

The dancing vortex of a sacred metaphor clashes horns and halos to make wounded music set to the tempo of a new era in brilliant labor.

Every time some new huckster of angst-ridden metaphor is appointed by Art Forum, the congregation genuflects, stroking the catalog like a handful of Rosary beads

To use a basketball metaphor, West Wing cast was a group that liked to pass as much as they liked to shoot.