Beyond family or the culture and religion of our birth, life will lead us to discover the lineage we are a part of, the circle of kindred spirits that nourish our soul. The difficulties of living can often make us put this lineage aside to deal with trouble first. I've...

Sitting on a bench in Central Park in New York City, I was watching an ancient oak whose roots were woven into massive stones. It wasn't long till I began to reflect on how those stones let the roots in and how the roots found their way into all that...

This week's poem explores the cloudlike veils that come between us and our direct living of life. Sometimes, we have to part the veil with our mind. Sometimes, we have to let the wind of our heart blow it open. Sometimes, we need the love of others to part the...

Over a lifetime, we are humbly changed by things we often don't notice along the way. We're often connected to other life we're not aware of. This piece bears witness to such connections.

How We Make Our Way

When he hits the conga with his palm, it feels like color...

Sometimes, in the midst of working through frustrations, it's possible to glimpse the truth that, though I'm frustrated, not everything is frustrating. Sometimes, in the midst of sadness, it's possible to glimpse that, though I'm sad, not everything is sad. This poem came upon me while in such a mood.

For all the dreams we dream and things we work toward, we sometimes stumble into a moment when what waits inside our dream somehow comes true. This poem speaks to such a moment.

Going Home

It was the middle of the day.
Early September. Light skirting
out from...

While guiding a workshop, we fell into a deep conversation about the part of us that is constantly changed by meeting the world and the depth of who we are that never changes. The Rocky Mountains were nearby and as I began to explore all this, the wisdom of the...

I'm always surprised to rediscover that life waits behind a door that can only be opened when we give our all, when we hold nothing back. This video clip from an interview with Sounds True took place in Colorado during a week of recording my box set of teaching conversations,...

Since life can be abrupt and harsh, it's a constant challenge to meet experience without shutting down. If we're too guarded, we're never touched by what matters. On the contrary, it seems that to be touched by what matters, we need to develop our gentleness.

Gentleness and Co-dependence

Receiving depends...

It's important to discern between steadfastness and stubbornness. There are crucial, if subtle, differences between the two. To be steadfast is to be faithful to what we know to be true, without a need to explain or justify that truth, but simply to live it. To be stubborn is to...

We live in an age where information, demands, and choices are more plentiful than ever. This rush of possibility gives us the illusion that we can do anything without limit. With this rush of possibility and the illusion of no limits comes a relentless urgency to do it all. This...

Experience opens us to humility and humility opens us to compassion, which means to suffer with, to keep company with, to be with. Nothing can as strong and soft at the same time as compassion.

Side by Side

Until we trip, we don't understand
why it takes so long...

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...

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 Daí

When in Brazil, my friend David encountered the phrase E daí (ay-die-ee), which is Portuguese for "and then?" Regardless of the story...

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...

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...

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 10 years ago, nor was that self the same as the one I inhabited 20...

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....

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...

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...