I think we might find that by the time we are septuagenarians we will have spent an accumulated four to five of our years waiting or more. That thought staggered me, and so when I wait now (and I am a septuagenarian) I say to myself, you are alive now. Watch. Breathe deeply. This is prime time.

What keep something out also keeps something in, hence the beauty and necessity of gates. Boundaries with no exits or entrances stifle life. There’s no flow. We need both and the consciousness to decipher where to draw the line and where to welcome and open.

Boundaries are often created out of fear and are consequently rigid and impede growth. When created out of a sense of needful care they support life. We can relax in the appropriateness of them, and know we make better neighbors when both a boundary and a gate are present.

We can think of all the times we have said yes – some regretfully and some leading to growth and discovery. Any participation on our part done with resentment or obligation robs us in some way. Any gift of participation given with a true yes is a gift returned to life itself and grants us more energy and freedom. We need to be careful of every yes we say and so come to live more authentic lives.

We have two hands: one for receiving and one for giving. Putting our hands together, however, they make a cup, a little cistern where what we have been given can fill to the full and can then be shared with others. To receive fully enables us to share fully. It is the sustainable energy of serving.

What an extraordinary power the imagination is. Anything we hold in our minds consistently over time tends to manifest. It’ no small feat to catch the subtle every day stuff we carry around and so make happen as if we had nothing to do with it.

In our technological age everything has speeded up. We don’t give things the time they need. We have forgotten how to be in rhythmic, organic time with our physical and spiritual selves. A deep self-courtesy is to pause long enough and often enough for our souls to catch up with our bodies and our over-programmed minds.

As humans we have a strong tradition of the garden being a metaphor for the soul. A lovely thing to do is to ask in a meditation to have an image of what our inner garden looks like. Some of us are very good at this kind of picturing. Others have difficulty, and yet they […]

The word shed has two meanings: letting go of, or the noun for a storage unit. It’s often hard to know we are storing because habits are automatic. Whether we accumulate objects we think we might need or keep too many fixed attitudes in our minds, we are storing and unbeknownst to us we are […]

When we look at young children who have not yet had too much heavy socialization or trauma happen to them we can easily see curiosity, openness, and willingness to engage as intrinsic to their being. They naturally want to find things out, to play, to feel and be with whatever is around them. I believe […]

Commitment can have a lot of different feelings surrounding it. We commit to a life with another person for better and for worse in marriage. We commit to a life of obedience, poverty and chastity entering a life of spiritual enclosure. We are committed to prison if we have transgressed the law and have been […]