Share the Beauty
"We all share beauty. It strikes us indiscriminately. . . . There is no end to beauty for the person who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty. If we take pictures of them and blow up the photographs, we realize we walk on beauty every day, even when things seem ugly around us."
— Creation Spirituality
Embrace Emptiness
"Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied, of getting in touch with the space inside and expanding this until it merges with the space outside. Space meeting space; empty pouring into empty. Births happen from that encounter with emptiness, nothingness. Solitude is built into nature itself. We need our space in which to dance our dance. Let us not fight emptiness and nothingness, but allow it to penetrate us even as we penetrate it."
— Creation Spirituality
Falling in Love
"I propose that we can fall in love several times a day for the rest of our lives. You could fall in love with the galaxies — there are one trillion out there! . . . You could fall in love with species of wild flowers, of which there are still 10,000 on this planet; you could fall in love with fish and plants, trees, animals, and birds, and with people, especially those who are different from us."
— Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
Postdenominationalism
"Postdenominationalism is about pluralism and ecumenism in religion. It is about stretching our piecemeal religious boundaries and setting aside our boxes to the extent that they are neither challenging us nor nourishing us deeply anymore, or to the extent that they are interfering with the pressing earth issues of our time. Denominationalism mirrors the physics of the modern era, when we were taught a parts mentality and that atoms are rugged individualists that never interpenetrate. In the name of denominationalism we have, over the centuries, fought wars, tortured people and whole towns, excommunicated one another, hated one another, competed against one another, banished one another to hell for eternity, and more or less managed to miss the point of what Jesus of Nazareth was teaching: such behavior characteristics as compassion, justice making, loving your enemies, telling the truth. . . . It is hoped that a postdenominational era will improve our efforts to live out the message of Jesus."
— Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest
On Lust
"Instead of seeing our sexuality as a problem of lust, we can experience our sexuality as an avenue and a path to the Divine. Tantric sexual practices and the Song of Songs in the Western Scriptures are examples of the praxis of sexual pleasure as a theophany or sacramental experience. Sexuality, like any rich experience, can be turned into an addiction and therefore a problem. But when we have developed skills of letting go and letting be and becoming emptied, sexuality does not overtake us as an obsession will.
"It is not just the lust of our human ancestors that brought us here. The lust of animals that have blessed us with their company, their beauty, their shelter, their companionship, their meat, their wonder — we owe them and their lust a debt of gratitude as well. Also, the lust of flowers that bear fruits and grains that strive so hard to spread their pollen amidst the winds blowing and the insects flying — all the lust of the world makes us be and live and ourselves be lusty."
— Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Lessons for Transforming Evil in the Soul and Society
