The Kingdom of God is an earthly experience which manifests in an unearthly manner.

If you are doing things in order to be happy...you're doing them in the wrong order.

The more deeply one enters into the experience of the sacred the more one is aware of one__ own personal evil and the destructive forces in society. The fact that one is alive to what is possible for humankind sharpens one__ sense that we are fallen people. The awareness of sin is the inevitable consequence of having met grace... This grace-judgment dynamic reveals that the center of Christian life is repentance. This does not mean that the distinguishing mark of the Christian is breast-beating. Feeling sorry, acknowledging guilt, and prolonging regret may be components of the human condition, but they are not what Jesus means by repentance. Repentance is the response to grace that overcomes the past and opens out to a new future. Repentance distinguishes Christian life as one of struggle and conversion and pervades it, not with remorse, but with hope. The message of Jesus is not __epent,_ but __epent for the Kingdom of God is near.

Nothing was simple, certainly not simplification.

People who truly serve God actively look for darkness in order to chase darkness away, they run after darkness, they search for darkness in all its ramifications and destructive consequences.

It didn't matter what anyone else saw in me. For the first time, I felt like I was seeing myself.