There was a particular moment of perception that transformed me completely. I had had a bone-marrow sampling and a spinal tap during the same hospital visit. Afterward, I was sent home a bit battered and told to lie still for six to eight hours, because moving before the spinal fluid had a chance to regenerate would cause a migraine. Well, it was hard for me to be still, and every time I moved, I was thrust back down on the... Read more

A tribe migrates west because they are being persecuted. They emigrate into the mountains. They settle on a plateau and, together, they clear that part of the forest and build their homes, creating a settlement, which the elder of the tribe names Crestview. In time, their children are born where they have arrived, into a place where they wake each day in a clearing with a view of the vastness. The paradox at the center of this small story is... Read more

Every life within every generation must struggle between the appearance of nothing and the appearance of everything. When hurt and unable to explain pain and loss, we are tempted to make a god of nothing, banishing all that is connective about light. Similarly, when touched by kindness and lifted by inexplicable grace, we are tempted to make a god of everything, wanting to exile the genuine difficulties of being alive. But the tides of life are always replete with both... Read more

Poetry is a portal, a means of perception. All art is. And just as we can see the very energy of existence through a microscope, we can see the vibrancy at the center of all life through our heart or our mind, when we are clear of bias and noise. Under all the shaping of words, poetry is the threshold of perception through which we taste the shimmer of Spirit that informs everything. The word “perceive” and the word “receive”... Read more

I take my time, looking for what [lasts]… —Tao Ch’ien We are constantly challenged to marry what is with what can be. If we only bear witness to the trials of existence, we will be weighed down by the burdens of time. If we only pine after what is possible and ideal, we will become airy, romantic, and completely removed from the embodiment of life. So these questions of practice remain: What are the tools by which you stay grounded... Read more

Imagine a lantern in an open boat, the light flickering as the boat drifts in the night lake. Now imagine it rains and look closely at how the drops plop in the lake and thud in the boat and bead on the sides of the lantern. Notice how the flame doesn’t go out.   A Question to Walk With: Describe the boat that is your life, the lantern that is your heart, and the small flame within your very center... Read more

Take off your situation and you are closer.   Take off the story you’ve been told about yourself and you are closer still.   Take off your dream of compliance or rebellion and you’re almost there.   Take off your name and put your face in the stream of all that wants to fill you.   A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a friend or loved one, describe the sense of your own being that exists below your... Read more

One of the great truths in this life is that if we know love, we will know loss. The more we love, the more the loss will hurt. Yet, if we don’t love, what’s the point in being here? When we can courageously love with all our heart, the reward is that through that love we will know depths in our heart and being otherwise inaccessible. What a gift. Still, things will never be the same. And who or what... Read more

Since stepping out of the first cave, we have made pilgrimage, trying to  find where we are going by opening our hearts to where we began. Yet how can any of us tell where the other has been? You, ahead of me in the checkout line, what have you lost and gained along the way that I will never know? They say the great flamingos of India prefer to migrate in a cloudless sky. They can travel up to 400... Read more

Once awake, an essential path of learning is the art of being sensitive. No one quite knows how to do this. And once open to the infinite sensations and enlivening encounters that experience brings, we are often overwhelmed by such aliveness. It is a common malady for the sensitive to become whatever they encounter. Yet though we are enlivened by our feelings, we are not our feelings, just as a tree brought alive by the wind is not the wind.... Read more