“What about the miracle that we are conscious. Just think about that for a second and that we are aware, and that we are aware that we are aware.  How can we be certain that our experience of consciousness is authentic?  The answer is that we Can’t. It is beyond the reach of our science.  And yet who doubts it’s reality? In fact the reality of evidence for consciousness is much like the evidence of the reality of mystical experience. We believe it exists not because science can independently verify it, but because a great many people have been convinced of its reality.  Here too all we have to go on is the Phenomenology.”

“You cannot have a rational discussion of evil outside of Agape love – the kind of self-surrendering love for others that is supposed to be at the heart of the Christian life.”

Are you entitled to a good father then? No, only to a father

Imagine yourself standing in the rain on the bank of a raging river. Suddenly the water-swollen bank gives way. You fall in and find yourself being tossed around in the rapids. Your efforts to keep afloat are futile and you are drowning. By chance, along comes a huge log and you grab it and hold tight. The log keeps your head above water and saves your life. Clinging to the log you are swept downstream and eventually come to a place where the water is calm. There in the distance you see the riverbank and attempt to swim to shore. You are unable to do so, however, because you are still clinging to the huge log with one arm as you stroke with the other. How ironic. The very thing that saved your life is now getting in the way of your getting to where you want to go. There are people on the shore who see you struggle and yell, “Let go of the log!” But you are unable to do so because you have no confidence in your ability to make it to shore. And so, very slowly and carefully, you let go of the log and practice floating. When you start to sink, you grab back on. Then you let go of the log and practice treading water, and when you get tired, hold on once again. After a while, you practice swimming around the log once, twice, ten times, twenty times, a hundred times, until you gain the strength and confidence you need to swim to shore. Only then can you completely let go of the log.

I’m coming to believe that if I do not accept all of what this program offers (demands?), but instead walk away from it as somehow more than I bargained for, I might get drunk. 

Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment.

The best things cannot be taught.
The second best things are misunderstood, by virtue of the fact that the thoughts about the best tend to be equated with the best.
When we think about ultimate realities, or the most important things, we get stuck on the thoughts, by virtue of the fact that these things cannot be directly thought. We get stuck on the thoughts because these are the thoughts which refer to that which cannot be thought.
The way we “get at” the greatest things is by talking about them.
Religion and deep philosophy is our attempt to talk about the good.

The level of sanctimony in the rhetoric is inversely related to the public benefit of the policy.

…there is a contemporary form of violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his or her work for peace. It destroys one’s own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of one’s own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves …
Don’t search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.