“Awareness is peace. It’s peace.” I’m a pretty great person as long as every single one of my needs is being met, but this idea shifted my understanding of prayer from that of a wish list of requests for God to a technique that allows me to sit back into my soul—the part of me that’s less involved in getting my way but quieter, more grateful, and a

The analogy would be: “God is like an old man in the sky on a throne.” That’s a pretty clear way to communicate the very far-out idea that there’s a Something that’s been around since the beginning (old) that has a higher perspective (sky) and is kind of a big deal (throne). This becomes the metaphor: “God is an old man in the sky on a throne.” My

“God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all categories of human thought, including being and nonbeing.”

Johnny isn’t a Red Sock or a Yankee any more than a ladybug is Italian. He’s Johnny, playing a game. There’s a feeling in the air when that many people see beyond what’s in front of them, like the stories you hear of World War I soldiers from both sides laying down their arms on Christmas to play soccer in the no-man’s-land. That special way of see

Lithuania, having lost her brother to World War II, then living in a refugee camp for three years before immigrating to the famously-racist-even-to-other-kinds-of-white-people South Boston—where her father, who also happened to be her best friend, told her, “No one in our family likes us, but at least we have each other”—then promptly died in a men

I like to think of it like this: “Pete” isn’t enlightened, but somewhere, underneath it all, “I” am. And when I rest in that “I” place, not swept away for the millionth time by my circumstances or headaches or personal disappointments, that’s just how I feel.

My girlfriend poured out some ice from her soda and we watched the cubes melt in our hands. The simple act of watching ice becoming water, to become air, to become rain, to return to ice, had profound meaning for me. All of us are so confused as to what happens when we die, but in this place I saw it so clearly: the ice wasn’t going anywhere. Nothi

After all, our favorite episodes of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones are when something happens. Good or bad. Because we know this will push the character. This will lead to growth, or change, or loss. And we love it. We know that for these characters, pain is the vehicle that takes them from where they are to where they’re afraid to but need to go.

All my mind’s biases—“important,” “not important,” “look at this,” “don’t bother with that”—had flattened out and surrendered to everything, just the way it is.