Suddenly the image of my mother came into my mind. I realized for the first time that her life and her death were really her story, not mine. They were a part of my story, but not the primary part.

The good news is that, according to the same law of interconnectedness, what we do individually and collectively does make a difference.

The first step on the journey of faith is to recognize that everything is moving onward to something else, inside us and outside.

reality. When we feel torn away from connection and purpose, we can end up so caught in our state of mind that the whole world seems to exist in reference to our pain.

This state of love-filled delight in possibilities and eager joy at the prospect of actualizing them is known in Buddhism as bright faith. Bright faith goes beyond merely claiming that possibility for oneself to immersing oneself in it. With bright faith we feel exalted as we are lifted out of our normal sense of insignificance, thrilled as we no l

Even when we don’t know what to do to make things better for someone, or when whatever we do seems likely to be of little consequence, we can have faith that we are not isolated individuals in a fragmented world. We can have faith that the power of intention links our actions to a vast web of interconnection.

I watched as the masks I had used to hide my pain fell, and the boundaries of isolation that kept me from more fully connecting to others and to the wholeness of life crumbled.

When we wake up in the morning and picture the dealings of our day as consequential, we tell ourselves a story that is based on our ultimate concern.

Faith, in contrast, reminds us of the ever-changing flow of life, with all its movement and possibility. Faith is the capacity of the heart that allows us to draw close to the present and find there the underlying thread connecting the moment’s experience to the fabric of all of life. It opens us to a bigger sense of who we are and what we are capa