“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely.

Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering–remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.

In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.

To protect our children, we must talk to them about rape.

A very important but difficult piece of renewing relationships is accepting responsibility for our part in any conflict.

We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.

If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There’s nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.

Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.

We are not responsible for what breaks us, but we can be responsible for what puts us back together again. Naming the hurt is how we begin to repair our broken parts.

We learn from history that we don’t learn from history.

We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy.

I do believe there are monstrous and evil acts, but I do not believe those who commit such acts are monsters or evil.

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

Transformation begins in you, wherever you are, whatever has happened, however you are suffering. Transformation is always possible.

Muslim women had to go out in purdah, that heavy sheet that covers even the eyes. Hindu women had to go out in the doli, a kind of closed sedan chair like a catafalque. My mother always told me about these things with bitterness and rage.

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

The eye altering, alters all.

Men trust their ears less than their eyes.

I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.

There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man’s spice-box seasons his own food.

I am part of the sun as my eye is of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.