Many people want 'God bless America,' but they don't want 'One nation under God.' The problem is you can't have one without the other.

One of the things I wanted to introduce in The Same Sea beyond transcending the conflict, is the fact that deep down below all our secrets are the same.

I like the duchess very much, but I don't love her. And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are excellently matched.

Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. It may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.

Love is a more wonderful thing than art.' 'They are both simply forms of imitation,' remarked Lord Henry.

He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there was no pleasure in taking a husband who never sees anything.

Five rather small dogs can be very powerful. If you can get a team pulling together in one direction, you can get enormous power out of them.1 What a great illustration about cooperation in the face of contrast and difference.

Alignment cannot be achieved with one good speech from the bridge of the ship—it is established one person at a time. Even though everyone is in the same boat, heading in the same direction, it's quite likely they are going there for different reasons. Yes, working through these issues one person at a time is time consuming, but not as time consuming and frustrating as dealing with lack of alignment when the boat is in the middle of a storm, part way to its destination.

The lack of diversity is harmful to the vitality of a healthy team ecosystem—the climate needed to engender creativity and insight. For it is the diversity of experiences, perspectives, and skills that introduces increased quantities of creative solutions.

Purpose not only calls the team together but, like glue, holds the team together during the inevitable turbulence the team will experience on its journey.

But taking love itself—God's kind of love—into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the first chapter of his wonderful book Life Together, has a discussion of how Christians never meet one-on-one; they always meet under the presence of Christ. That's the way we escape the dreadful habit that human beings have of sizing one another up. Does that identify anything that you are familiar with? It's one of the most dreadful things in human life, and only the love of Christ and the presence of the kingdom can bring us beyond it.