______________ Everything is alive and everything has something to offer. In the press of daily life, we often ignore these teachers, though they’re everywhere.   Everything Sees   In the parking lot, I find one lens from a pair of glasses. I rub it clean; wondering what it has seen and retained and what the person who’s lost it is blind to without it.   It won’t share its secrets. Or I can’t hear them. It just gives me my... Read more

______________ Inherent in the nature of living is being disturbed and being settled and how we’re rearranged by life in between these states. And so, we’re asked to compose ourselves again and again.   Compose Yourself Another practice we’re led to is the effort to compose our selves. When agitated, through pain or fear or worry, when broken into pieces, we need to find an inner way to put ourselves back together. In a culture afraid of feelings, the instruction... Read more

______________ So much of our aliveness depends on how open we can remain. This piece looks at how we can let in what matters.   Admitting Who We Are So how do we participate in the daily experiment of inhabiting Heaven on Earth? Time and again, we are invited to practice admitting who we are, in both senses of the word. Admit means to confess or acknowledge what is true about who we are, as in admitting to a crime... Read more

______________   Life waits irrepressibly under all the clouds that come and go. This happens within us as well as in the world. This poem speaks to our need to be where we are.   Beyond Measure Having burned dreams to keep warm, I think of dreams as kindling now. Having carried loved ones as far as I could to the other side, I make your coffee and bring you a tissue, as if these gestures open us to Heaven.... Read more

______________ It’s humbling how fear can rearrange our eyes. This piece describes a personal example of this.   On Retreat Walking from my cabin through the frosted grass, it’s very quiet. The meetinghouse is on the hill. From the field below, I see a dog on the steps. I don’t have my glasses. It looks like a Rottweiler or a Shepherd. The old fear returns. The dog is off leash and no one’s around. I think about heading back and... Read more

______________ Life tries to lure us into the open, the way sunlight opens a flower after a storm. This poem explores the life-force that calls to us. Nectar Like the nose of a bee, the heart rubs its face in trouble and joy. So bring all you’ve touched to bear on this day, to pollinate what matters. Ask everything you think might help to lure your best self into the open. Ask every pain that has forced you out of... Read more

______________ This fall, Atria published my new book of spiritual inquiry, The Endless Practice: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be. It’s a journey that explores the difficult and rewarding aspects of being human, which are often inter-related, including how to restore our trust in life, when suffering makes us lose our way; how to begin the work of saying yes to life, so it can enliven us; and how to make our inwardness a resource and not a refuge.... Read more

______________   THE FIFTH ELEMENT Our job is to stay thoroughly human, not to perfect our way out of it. I admit I’ve lost years to refining myself when I’ve needed to deepen myself. I admit I’ve known the lift of the beatific ocean of Spirit and the crash of the world’s great wave. And no matter what is taken away, I try to accept everything as a blessing. I try to put down my mask and sword and keep... Read more

______________   This is an excerpt from my new book, The Endless Practice: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be.   THE COURAGE NOT TO WASTE OUR GIFTS No one can construct the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of your life, but you. —Friedrich Nietzsche   Every single being has an amazing, unfathomable gift that only meeting life head-on and heart-on will reveal. And we can’t fully know our gift alone. We need each other to... Read more

______________   No matter how often we fall, the gift of wakeful effort allows us to find our way back to what is heartening and affirming, without denying the suffering we encounter. Still, the things that dishearten and drain us are always near, as near as all that is affirming. Here is one ancient story about sweetness and vengeance.   JUPITER AND THE BEE Another insidious condition that drains us of all that is heartening is the murkiness of harboring... Read more