Darkness is not the whole of the story-every pilgrimage has passages of loveliness and joy-but it is the part of the story most often left untold.

Everything in the universe has a nature, which means limits as well as potentials, a truth well known by people whowork daily with the things of the world.

I ask them instead to help each other see how limitations and liabilities are the flip side of our gifts, how a particular weakness is the inevitable trade-off for a particular strength.

As often happens on the spiritual journey, we have arrived at the heart of a paradox: each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around-which puts the door behind us-and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls. The door that closed kept its

True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth.

another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the

Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: `Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: Why were you not Zusya?"'=

When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless-a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other's need to be cared for.

You and I may not know, but we can at least imagine, how tempting it would be to mask one's truth in situations of this sort-because the system threatens punishment if one does not.