No culture of the mind is enough to make a garden out of your soul.

You should be he himself--not Christians, but Christ.

If we are true believers, though we ourselves should sometimes forget, the world will not fail to remind us of the difference between it and us. And, on the other hand, if we at any time feel perfectly at home in the world, if our consciousness of its necessary antagonism to us is entirely in abeyance, then there is abundant reason for us to examine ourselves. And the probability is that we have been backward in cultivating our hope upon God and the world to come.

The Spirit's work in the renewal of things proceeds according to a fixed, systematic method, in certain distinct stages.

These new times require new strategies for making faith real in people's lives. Nothing drives home the need for such innovation as attempting to connect (or reconnect) with the de-churched. Their dismissal of Christian churches is not mean-spirited; it simply reflects the firsthand experiences that led them to conclude churches are ill-equipped to support the flourishing life they hope for.

In the midst of the emotional and spiritual upset that occurs when a church hurts or disappoints us, we tend to lose sight of the fact that the local church is merely a collection of people on a challenging journey - a group of people that are involved in a long-term transformation process.

All this data leads us to a direct examination of the reasons the unchurched avoid Christian churches. The biggest issue is a perceived lack of value.

The man who listens to Reason is lost reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

You see things as they are and ask, 'Why' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not'

I especially like your autumn trees, gracefully letting their leaves fall. That is how I would like to shed my own leaves in this autumn of life, easily and elegantly. Why be so attached to what we are bound to lose anyway? I suppose I mean youth, which has been so present in our conversations.

How exuberant and boisterous the universe is, Alma! It turns and turns, and the only constant is everything changes. It is a mystery we can only appreciate out of stillness. I'm living through a very interesting stage. My spirit contemplates the changes in my body with fascination, but this contemplation is not from a distance, but from within. My spirit and my body are together in this process.

To dismantle the system that sustains civilization is very difficult and takes time, but we are achieving it, bit by bit. The complex and fascinating task of inventing a new order to replace it is long.