Religion is not something you can inherit or put on like a suit of clothes. It is the values, principles, and purposes by which you live every day. Your real religion is what gradually becomes real to you.

What we got now just isn’t working. The entire middle class owns less than the wealthiest one-percent. Extreme inequality dictates that too many of us can never start a business, invest in our families, and so on. Racism costs everyone. The 8th Principle promises a new beginning.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance may be the first proclamation of tough love. However, his gospel of sovereign individualism estranges us from the ground of our shared being – a ground that is watered by tears, tears which help us grow in forgiveness, mutual understanding, and love.