Book of Awakening

In a culture that erases its humanity, that keeps the act of innocence and beginning invisible, we are sorely in need of being seen with joy, so we can proclaim with equal astonishment and innocence that, of all the amazing things that could have been or not, "We Are Here."

When faced with the need to keep going inward, we are confronted with a very difficult kind of life choice: like carving up your grandmother's table for firewood to keep your loved ones warm, or leaving a job that has been safe and fulfilling in order to feel vital again.

Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry -- an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God.

Our very self is the one window we have into this life. And so often, we suffer the mood of a dirty window, believing the brilliant world gray.

The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things... Stop being a glass. Become a lake.

The devastating truth is that excellence can't hold you in the night, and, as I learned when ill, being demanding or sophisticated won't help you survive. A person dying of thirst doesn't ask if the water has chlorine or if it was gathered in the foothills of France.

It is no secret that cancer in its acuteness pierced me into open living, and I've been working ever since to sanctify that open living without crisis as its trigger. But can this be done without crisis pushing us off the ledge?

No matter how close we come, no matter how much we get from staying close with a sensitive heart, nothing will open us to joy but entering the stream.

It is a basic human sequence: gather, prepare, put down, enter. But failing as we do, we always have that second chance: to learn how to fall, get up and laugh.

From many traditions, from many experiences, from many beautiful and honest voices, the songs herein all sing of pain and wonder and the mystery of love.