The homeless man with no legs crawls on his dolly like a snail while the world keeps whizzing by. No one wants to lose their legs, to go that slow. But sometimes, we’re forced to stop in order to empty ourselves of everything that’s in the way. Love can stop us in our tracks just as swiftly as suffering. It’s up to us to choose love before suffering takes our legs out from under us. In truth, every time I... Read more

The mind moves like a pencil. The heart moves like a brush.   While the mind can draw exquisite prints, the heart with its deep bright colors will ignore the lines.   If you only follow your mind, you will never go outside the lines.   If you only follow your heart, what you touch will never resemble anything.   We must be a student of both.   For the mind can build itself a home, but only the heart... Read more

In the life before tears, there are endless plans and we avoid the difficult feelings at all cost, as if grief, pain, and loss are canyons we’ll never climb out of.   But, then, one day, while not looking, someone dear dies, or a dream breaks like a plate, and our world, as we’ve known it, is blown apart.   Then, we discover that falling in the canyon is our initiation, and the river at the bottom is the only... Read more

I will never forget your care, how you stared into me the way a painter might peer into a canyon.   You saw a great vastness in me, where I felt only a great emptiness.   You taught me how to feel that emptiness as the shimmer of being.   This is the quiet gift of love: to be shown who we truly are by another who, when you say, “I have nothing left,” says, “But what of this magnificent... Read more

The being in us flies like a hawk. It knows nothing of the ground. But the human in us walks like a horse and must climb over everything. We grow by trying to fly and suffer because we can’t.   A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a friend or loved one, discuss something you have seen with clarity though it has been hard to live out. This is from my new book of poems in progress, The Tone... Read more

My hips burn as I climb the path, using roots as steps, but the view is worth the work, always.   The way we climb questions until we’re out in the open, able to take in what we seldom see.   This is the purpose of questions, to help us climb into the open. Though, often, the heart burns as we open.   This is not the pain of injury but the pain of exercise. Like pressing weights, we lift... Read more

Buddha said the origin of light came from within. The implication is that there is an inner plane of forces that mirrors the elements of the physical world. That as matter is a conduit for fire, water, earth, and wind, our wakeful consciousness is a conduit for the forces of inner light, which manifest as intention, care, compassion, and kindness. And while survival has us navigate the struggles of circumstance, the transformative way to meet and mitigate events is to... Read more

It is the simplest of paradoxes: You can’t see what you are in.   As soon as you try, you are no longer in it. This is the trap of self-consciousness.   You can’t see the ocean when you are in the ocean.   You can’t see the bird flying, if you are the bird flying.   You can’t see how the lungs work when you are struggling to breathe.   Nor the contours of the path when you are... Read more

So many thought Monet was making it up, imagining wildly how things might be if God held them closer.   But what he did was much braver. Like a human microscope he kept looking and looking as warmth left the trees as waves remade the sea as loss slowed into peace undoing hard men.   He watched strange flowers open where only silence had been.   He focused so far in that everything shimmered. He proved by the strength of... Read more

When a horse runs, it leaps and touches down by turns.   In just this way, our life is always moving between joy and sorrow.   Trying to avoid this is its own sorrow, like a mad bird trying to escape the sky.   Rather, our call is to help each other rise and help each other land. A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a friend or loved one, tell the story of how someone helped you rise... Read more