I went whole hog at the actor's lifestyle - really embraced it. I had by then known how much I loved acting already, because I discovered acting from a teacher in the seminary - that's the first place I ever did it, in the seminary.

I entered the diocesan seminary. I liked the Dominicans, and I had Dominican friends. But then I chose the Society of Jesus, which I knew well because the seminary was entrusted to the Jesuits. Three things in particular struck me about the Society: the missionary spirit, community and discipline.

I'm a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I'd rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.

Each of our children during their high school years went to 'early morning seminary' - scripture study classes that met in the home of a church member every school day morning from 6:30 until 7:15.

If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.

I saw this new thing called television, and I saw people throwing pies in each other's faces, and I thought, 'This could be a wonderful tool for education! Why is it being used this way?' So I said to my parents, 'You know, I don't think I'll go into seminary right away. I think I'll go into television.'

After my primary school education, I started gathering little children by visiting parents to ask if they wanted somebody to care for their kids by teaching them the Bible. I have never attended any seminary school or Bible college in my life.

Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless people.

I started my blog back in 2009 because every Internet business and marketing seminar I watched at the time told me I had to. I had been trying to get a business started selling dating and life advice and was struggling.

Jim Newman, the business visionary who created the term 'comfort zone,' showed me how to expand my horizons. Thanks to Jim, after I attended one of his PACE Seminars in 1978; I moved out of my comfort zone at Bear Stearns and became a super successful oilman.

When I was a seminarian, I was dazzled by a girl I met at an uncle's wedding. I was surprised by her beauty, her intellectual brilliance... and, well, I was bowled over for quite a while.

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take us all the way.

In monasteries, seminaries, retreats and synagogues, they fear hell and seek paradise. Those who know the mysteries of God never let that seed be planted in their souls.

One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary.

When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.

I went whole hog at the actor's lifestyle - really embraced it. I had by then known how much I loved acting already because I discovered acting from a teacher in the seminary - that's the first place I ever did it in the seminary.

Each of our children during their high school years went to 'early morning seminary' - scripture study classes that met in the home of a church member every school day morning from 6:30 until 7:15.

If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars he or she should learn something about fieldwork something about bibliography something about how to carry out library research and something about how to publish that research.

It's also reflective of a young person's religion or faith in that it's highly charged with sacramental imagery and with country imagery because I was in the seminary for so many years in the country.

Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless people.

I trained to be a priest - started to. I went to seminary school when I was 11. I wanted to be a priest but when they told me I could never have sex not even on my birthday I changed my mind.