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

A person is a person through other persons; you can’t be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.

If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people.

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.

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.