In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches.

I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories.

The God of the Hebrews is a God that human language, we're not even supposed to speak the holy name. We were told in the Second Commandment we could make no images of this God, and I don't think that means just building idols, I think that means also trying to believe you've captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures.

The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history.

One should never live with regrets or with 'what if.' I've loved the good times, and I have learned from the bad. All in all, it's been a pretty fabulous life for me.

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

I learned to love myself, because I sleep with myself every night and I wake up with myself every morning, and if I don't like myself, there's no reason to even live the life.

There was no way I was going to write about Africa and not include the triumphant continuity of life that had also been part of my experience there. It's not just war and famine all the time.