Quotes about Meaning

When you get your "Who am I?" question right, all the "What should I do?" questions tend to take care of themselves. The very fact that so many religious people have to so vigorously prove and defend their salvation theories makes one seriously doubt whether they have experienced divine mirroring at any great depth.

Without a transcendent connection, each of us is stuck in his own little psyche, struggling to create meaning and produce an identity all by himself. When we inevitably fail at this-because we can't do it alone-we suffer shame and self-defeat. Or we try to pretend that our small universe of country, ethnicity, team, or denomination is actually the center of the world.

What was God up to in those first moments of creation? Was God totally invisible before the universe began? Or is there even such a thing as "before"? Why did God create at all? What was God's purpose in creating? Is the universe itself eternal? Or is the universe a creation in time as we know it—like Jesus himself?

Is there any evidence for why God created the heavens and the earth? What was God up to? Was there any divine intention or goal? Or do we even need a creator "God" to explain the universe?

To stay on the surface of anything is invariably to miss its message—even the surface meaning of our sinfulness.

A sacred myth keeps a people healthy, happy, and whole—even inside their pain. They give deep meaning, and pull us into "deep time" (which encompasses all time, past and future, geological and cosmological, and not just our little time or culture).

Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human loneliness. For me, too, it is the only ultimate meaning of life, the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to every life.

On a man's journey, everything has its place. Our failures, heartbreaks, defeats, and victories; our wounds, dreams, and passions; our stops and our starts-all have a place in our story, and all have a place in our transformation from shadow men to real men. Everything has meaning, and everything belongs.

From eighteen to fifty-five was the unfolding. Then, when it happened at fifty-five, they knew what they were born for. When that moment comes, it is great and it is all synchronicity. We know then that grace is at work and we are not manufacturing our own lives.

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

All who hold any kind of unexplainable hope believe in resurrection, whether they are formal Christians or not, and even if they don't believe Jesus was physically raised from the dead.

We are glad when someone survives, and that surely took some courage and effort. But what are you going to do with your now resurrected life? That is the heroic question.