Fear is a sneaky thief, stealing away precious moments of your life.

Forgiveness doesn't mean being a wimp. It doesn't mean being weak. It doesn't mean having no principles and no values. Sometimes we have to stand firm for what we believe and make really hard decisions.

Life is about change, it never stops, it's moving and it's moving this human body inexorably towards its demise.

Сertainly there are people for whom anti-depression medication has allowed them to use difficulty to wake up, and I don't deny that at all, but as usual with us human beings, we've overdone it. We are self-medicating ourselves away from the great awakening moments, and losing our coping skills and losing wake-up calls.

I think the gender story will become less fraught with hard edges -- and not that we'll have androgyny, but that men and women will move more fluidly into each other's domains.

My years as a mystic have made me question almost all my assumptions. They've made me a proud I-don't-know-it-all.

If spirituality is not religion or cynicism or sentimentality or narcissism, then what is it?... we can confidently say... that spirituality is fearlessness. It is a way of looking boldly at this life we have been given, here, now, on earth, as this human being.

What mothers do -- they act with love, at least good mothers do! They have a spirit of strong, fierce, protective energy -- the way a mother would put her life on the line for her children -- we need to put our life on the line for each other.

Sometimes to speak as a woman is to cry, and to speak from our emotional, intuitive knowing, as opposed to graphs and charts and vertical lines. And that's scary -- that's scary to do. And the fallout from it can be brutal.

I hope we have learned throughout centuries of revolution and reaction that it's really a shift in consciousness that we need. And I think there is a shift in consciousness among our human species. I think the human species is evolving, spiritually.

We must pay attention to the voice that calls us out of the safety zone.

I accept that life is uncertain -- that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next. And then, miracle of miracles, out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing -- a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.

If you have fathered a child, if you have given birth, if sex is a source of healthy pleasure, thank your pelvis and your reproductive organs for allowing you to feel the creative rhythms of life.

No one has the answer; only you know the way home.

How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.

Your path is your own, but you must walk side by side with others, with compassion and generosity as your beacons. If anything is required it is this: fearlessness in your examination of life and death; Willingness to continually grow; and openness to the possibility that the ordinary is extraordinary, and that your joys and your sorrows have meaning and mystery.

Recognition of the harm that patriarchy has caused to people and the planet does not mean that men are wrong and women are right; rather it is a call for new organizational forms and for relishing gender differences within a context of equality.

I really knew how to speak -- from my female voice, that different voice that Carol Gilligan so presciently described many years ago in her groundbreaking book. Because if we try to speak in a voice that isn't ours, we lose our power.

I pull from a place within me that has ultimate faith in the meaningfulness and beauty of human life.

We need each other's ideas. Now, I'm not talking about racist ideas or misogynistic ideas or cruel or criminal ideas. I'm talking about most of us who have very varied experiences, needs and ideas. It's really about believing that it's an important part of healing America.