It's easy to judge. It's more difficult to understand. Understanding requires compassion, patience, and a willingness to believe that good hearts sometimes choose poor methods. Through judging, we separate. Through understanding, we grow.
We must be the ones that invest in abandoned places. In abandoned people. Because when the world says that there is no future there, we are the ones who know better. We believe in a God that restores.
As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.
[Debbie Allen--dancer, choreographer, actor, singer, director, producer--accepting Governor's Award at 2021 Emmys:] It’s taken a lot of courage to be the only woman in the room most of the time. A lot of courage and creativity and fight and faith to believe that I...
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist. I honor my tradition. I walk through my tradition. But I don't believe my tradition defines God. It only points me to God.
The signs are all around us. We can see them springing up like wildflowers after the prairie rain. People who had fallen asleep are waking up. People who had been content to watch are wanting to join. People who never said a word are speaking out. The tipping point of...
Look, the world loves us when we are good, better, best, but this is the time when you want to stop feeling guilty that you are not living your best life, now. We’re not always doing mountaintop yoga. I used to have my own delusion of living my own best life...
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true. The other is to refuse to accept what is true.
Brothers and sisters, if we don’t believe that every crucifixion—war, poverty, torture, hunger—can somehow be redeemed, who of us would not be angry, cynical, hopeless? No wonder Western culture seems so skeptical today. It all doesn’t mean anything, it’s not going...