Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. Life can be harsh and beautiful by turns. Often, it seems unfair. Why can’t the beautiful openings last longer? I learned one spring that this movement from fullness to bareness is the inhalation and exhalation of the Universe. The rhythm is what keeps us alive. It keeps us growing. My teacher that spring was a cherry tree.   The Cherry Tree on Willett Street For three glorious years, I lived on Willett... Read more

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. There are spiritual physics that govern how we move from surface to depth and back. I think one is that experience wears or cracks us open, which can be painful and difficult. But most times, that wearing or cracking open lets something sweet in us out in the open, the way a coconut dropped and cracked by a storm lets its sweet milk drip into the world. This poem speaks to this.... Read more

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. Sudden, deep feelings are often teachers that we resist or turn away from, because of their intensity. Instead, we are often asked to enter these deep feelings, the way we might enter a field after a long walk through the woods. This reflection speaks about such a feeling I walked into one winter morning.   I woke this morning at a loss that it had stopped snowing. I don’t know why. I... Read more

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. The life of care and kindness often has the life of a seed. It might be planted by someone we never know or someone we learn of long after the kindness has been received. This is a story about such a kindness.   OF COURSE YOU CAN COME When a friend’s brother-in-law passed away, her sister had a call while preparing for the funeral. It was a Jewish woman living 300 miles... Read more

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. No one can be awake all the time. We sleep and wake and go back to sleep. We’re clear, then confused, then wide-eyed again. We feel safe then nervous, then at peace again. It makes being human a practice of return. This video clip from an interview with Sounds True took place in Colorado during a week of recording my box set of teaching conversations, Staying Awake: The Ordinary Art. Staying Awake... Read more

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. I used to feel inconsistent, because my moods would change. I’d want solitude, then when alone, couldn’t wait to be with others. I’d want to be still and walk slowly through the woods, but once there for a while, couldn’t wait to hear live music. It took years to realize that being dynamic beings, one mood leads to another. We need them all to stay close to our aliveness. This poem comes... Read more

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. The world is full of small stories that carry great wisdom. This one comes from an Inuit custom between fathers and sons. In central Alaska, there is a river that begins on the northwest slopes of the Alaska Range, and flows over 650 miles to the Bering Sea. The shores of the river are mostly thick with trees and uninhabited. These chilling waters are known as the Kuskokwim River. John Larson, a... Read more

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post. When I was young, the world was too much for me. I wanted to transcend my way out of here. But the years have made me root more firmly in the life of experience. I’ve come to understand that heaven reveals itself through how we love our way through our time on earth. This reflection speaks to this.     Have you searched the vastness for something you have lost? —Robert Service... Read more