Really? You gotta be kidding!

Both as liberals and conservatives we too easily write off this third prong of the spiritual life, rationalizing that our causes are so urgent, we are so wounded, and our world is so bad, that, in our situation, anger and bitterness are justified. But we are wrong and, as the American poet William Stafford warns, “following the wrong God home we may miss our star.” The wrong God is the God of both the contemporary right and the contemporary left, that is, the God who is as wired, bitter, anxious, workaholic, neurotic, and unhappy as we are. But that is not the God who lies at the end of the spiritual quest, who, as Julian of Norwich assures us, sits in heaven, smiling, completely relaxed, looking like a marvelous sympathy” and who agrees with Albert Camus that the real revenge on our enemies, both to the right and to the left, and on the deepest demons that haunt us, is to be madly happy.—The Holy Longing, 67–68