The object of religion is the imagination, that deep and inexhaustible font of our understanding and symbolizing our deepest possibilities.

We not only romanticize the future; we have also made it into a growth industry, a parlor game and a disaster movie all at the same time.

The perception of the horizon is an earthbound event; all horizons disappear in space, and we are left shorn of the sweet roots that have held us to the earth, challenged to imagine what is truly present just before us, a unified and seemingly limitless universe.

We encounter and enter our richest, most humanly defining experiences by way of a tear in the fabric of things, because we are running late, or because we recognize, across a crowded room, a face whose lack of perfection allows a unique light to shine through and to stir us with uncommon wonder.

A married vicar is likely to regard his vocation as a job - a tough and ill-paid one, to be sure - but a priest is seen as a pillar of the community, answerable only to his parishioners and his God, rather than to a wife and children.

A true servant of God will never teach a false doctrine. He will never deny new revelation. He never will tell you that the canon of scripture is full, or that the New Testament is the last revelation ever intended to be given to man.

Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God's grace.

So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give in all kinds of ways to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality.