“Behind every specific call, whether it is to teach or preach or write or encourage or comfort, there is a deeper call that gives shape to the first: the call to give ourselves away - the call to die.”

Interview with Claud Cockburn, as quoted in “Mr. Capone, Philosopher,” Cockburn Sums Up (1981)

Source: The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

(1865) Source: Hudson Taylor; China's Spiritual Need and Claims http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/China's_Spiritual_Need_and_Claims

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 46

Essays on Woman (1996), Fundamental Principles of Women's Education (1931)

"Conferenza con Patch Adams a Reggio Emilia" arcoiris tv (27 March 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0goppIcodJo

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)
Context: We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao.
What I now realize, from my study of the different religious traditions, is that a disciplined attempt to go beyond the ego brings about a state of ecstasy. Indeed, it is in itself ekstasis. Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.

Fox & Friends Weekend, Aug 6, 2017, responding to Congresswoman Maxine Waters