Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. I was on retreat, in deep silence and solitude, when I felt a moment of great aliveness and a sudden want to share that sense. It led to this poem, which I thought was a song for company. It was only upon reading it later that I realized that the voice of the poem was a call from my soul for me to spend more time with it. COME WITH ME... Read more
This article by Mark is featured on Oprah.com today. We all have moments of clarity and then we’re confused. We’re awake and then we’re numb. We’re buoyant and then we’re down. Just as we inhale and exhale constantly, our wakefulness ebbs and flows. The practice of being human is the practice of coming awake, staying awake and returning to wakefulness when we go to sleep. We go to sleep because we’re mortal—not because there’s anything wrong with us. This opening... Read more
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. There are teachers everywhere. Every culture and tradition on Earth has quiet teachers and customs that are time-tried and still relevant. This teaching comes from Brazil. E Dai When in Brazil, my friend David encountered the phrase E daí (ay-die-ee), which is Portuguese for “And then?” Regardless of the story told or hardship conveyed, the custom is for the listener to ask after a while, “E daí?” with a tone that... Read more
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. It’s a recurring lesson that, try as we do, the things that matter can’t be prepared for, only met. In this way, preparation requires being fully awake and present, more than anticipating every possible outcome. Meeting life over anticipating life lets us be surprised by care. CARE It used to be so complicated: going where I’d want without a word as if telling anyone made me less free. Or coming into... Read more
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. Fishing is a great way to relate to the unknown. It’s compelling and surprising that we always return to places where we’ve caught something to wait, when there’s no reason to think that anything will ever break surface in the same place twice. But we wait and try to sense what is under the surface. The Purpose of Fishing It’s hard to say. We gather the rod and bait and clean... Read more
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. We are all blessed to live more than one life within our one life. All of us challenged to grow out of one self and into another. I am not the same person I was ten years ago, nor was that self the same as the one I inhabited twenty years ago. We blossom and outgrow selves the way butterflies emerge from cocoons. Except that being human, we have the chance to... Read more
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. We are all born with tendencies, inclinations toward different ways of being in the world. Some of us like to put things together. Some of us like to take things apart. Some of us like to have everything in order. Some of us are suffocated if everything seems too neat. Some of us feel completely who we are when with others. Some of us only feel this thorough alone, in nature. The... Read more
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. The great Jewish philosopher, Abraham Heschel said, “We will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation… What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder…” Wonder is the feeling that overcomes us when we enter life and not just watch it. Here is a reflection about wonder. Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. —William Wordsworth Let me share... Read more
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. This week’s poem is about what we hear in the spaces between all the noise. All meditation practices and all beginnings of art start with such a listening. But I will try. Sometimes my heart trembles like a butterfly in a jar and I’m afraid to let it out. Yet there are days my heart is a mountain on which my life grows. Sometimes when deeply alone, I can hear the bead... Read more
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. The modern use of the word “genius” refers to someone with a remarkable brilliance in one aspect of their capacities. We think of Mozart or Einstein or Michelangelo. But the original notion of the word genius meant “attendant spirit.” This was not reserved only for the gifted. Rather, it was believed that everyone has an attendant spirit. Everyone has a genius. This is where the word “genie” comes from. So each of... Read more
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