The drop of a glass brings us running  but we have to climb to see the view.     In this, the vow to love: to be there  when we break and to never stop  climbing.    And to enter the vastness, side by  side, is like walking through a  forest at dawn.    And listening to each other squawk,  again and again, is to stand firm  before the waterfall of trouble.    Day in and out, we share the... Read more

When your mask cracks,  you can repair it or pull  it apart and feel how you  were born.    When the story you’ve  relied on rips, you can stitch  it back together or let it all  unravel and ask quietly and  fervently, “Who am I now?”    And when your worldview  shows its flaw, you can  criticize everyone not like  you or pull all thought back  to the beginning and start  Anew.    Everything in nature covers  itself, only to... Read more

  I invite you to practice intimacy. You may think, does he mean “practice making love?” Yes, but not with your body. I invite you to practice making love with the way you listen. How? Locate the center of your listening, which will be in the softest part of your heart. Go there and open the center of your listening like a window, so that whatever you listen to can enter you and touch you. For to practice intimacy is... Read more

  If you drop a plate, or in   frustration, throw it against   a wall—Well, you get the idea.    Speed releases violence.    Or you could use it every day  and wash it and dry it and care   for it through the long years of   intimacy   until one day its bond might  crack of its own sweet weight.    And you might take the piece  that looks like a small mountain  and sand its edges   and carry it... Read more

After a lifetime of teaching, I’ve come to believe that you can’t change anyone. So, what am I doing in the many circles I convene all over the world? Well, I’ve come to see that being a teacher means serving as a greenhouse: providing light and warmth to the living things before us so they can grow in the various ways they are meant to grow.  If I am invested in changing you, that assumes I know what you should... Read more

  You’ve both been gone for eight   years and I am turning seventy. I still   miss what we never had. Even when you   were here, I had become my own mother,   my own father. It took some time but I   can remember a beautiful moment in   the eye of the storm that was our life.   It was on a summer night in our small   backyard around a fire as the peepers   grew loud and we all stopped arguing   for a... Read more

Little things fall away  as big things become more clear.    I can no longer open jars  or carry two grocery bags at once.    But I can perch like an eagle   on the edge of the vastness  in any given moment.    I now walk into the kitchen  and forget what I was after.    But I can recite Basho’s instruction  to Kikakou in 1689 and join  their conversation.    I now stop near the top of the hill ... Read more

This whole journey is a rising and falling, a breaking into repair, a stubborn hike into acceptance, a give and take that lets the soul breathe.   And I keep building nest after nest, for I believe that everyone can fly. I keep trying to understand, a nest in itself, only to give every- thing away, the surest way to fly.   Like a note that stirs your heart and mine, I don’t know if I am the key waiting... Read more

I confess that though I see all for a second and nothing for a long time, I believe in all. The nature of true knowing is fleeting, though the deepest knowledge is constant. The great Jewish philosopher, physician, rabbi, and astronomer, Maimonides (1138–1204), offered this image about the transient nature of knowing: At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day. Our nature and habit then draw a veil over our perception, and we... Read more

I was in the hammock  watching the breeze through  the willows when you and Zuzu  climbed in. We laughed, your  feet in the crook of my arm,  Zuzu’s tail thumping on my  chest. The hammock swayed  from the weight of us all  huddled there together.  It seemed a secret whispered  in the chaos: huddle together  and the hammock of time will  sway, for a moment, and carry  you the way the sky carries   clouds. This moment of sway  renders all... Read more