As Christians, we worship a victimized Lord. We should expect to suffer and should have particular compassion on those who hurt emotionally and physically. But we do not resemble the Suffering Servant when we take pains to show off our suffering.

I have occasionally - if ever I do interviews that are difficult or nerve-wracking - I take my wife's dog tags and have them in my pocket because it's a very quick way to realize that what I'm doing is not that important. It's not really worth getting stressed about because it's not, you know, war.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

I feel like if you sit down and have an assistant engineer and a producer in a top-notch studio and everyone sets up all the mikes perfect, all of a sudden it's really hard to live that melancholy song. It's hard to really live it in the moment.

When we did so poorly at helping folks recover from drug addiction, we stepped back and said, "Duh, no wonder. None of us are heroine addicts.

The tears we shed are not just for ourselves but for our world.

As I left Calcutta, it occurred to me that I was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again?

in one moment, God feels the pain of the victims of unspeakable violence, and God feels the agonizing pain of seeing a beloved child executed at the hands of the state.

And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.

We all need a place where we can give voice to the worst that torments our souls and still be held.

For a long time, our only mode of travel was an Econoline van. Eleven of us, with nine sleeping in the back on two mattresses.

Adversity not only draws people together, but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.