A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
Our greatest resource in reversing the effects of this violent culture, and changing it into a culture of peace, comes from spirituality, and all that rich term implies... Profoundly transformative, it can dissolve the destructive patterns of the culture of violence which have held us captive for so long a time. Spirituality, as the inner yearning of the heart for the Divine, for the Real, awakens in us openness, gentleness, patience, deep reverence for all life forms, including the earth, intense compassion for all sentient beings, and an all-inclusive love, agape, that embraces the totality.