Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics

Read, write poetry, color in a coloring book, take a hike, make a beautiful meal and feed your loved ones—anything that reconnects you with your soul. Keep a journal of your experiences so that you can reflect back to yourself the gifts that arise when you open the door to deep rest and loving attention to the moment. (If you choose to write, see “

Participating in the human condition can be bewildering. It is just not always cozy and easy—rather, it’s humbling at best, downright humiliating when it’s not flowing.

Contemporary Western women have begun to recognize that we have options in this life beyond pleasing men and bearing their babies.

the only useful response to the mystery of death is awe and wonderment. We may bring tea, wipe the dying one’s forehead with a cool washcloth, empty the puke bucket, read some poetry aloud, or reshuffle the iTunes playlist, but the most important thing is to sit quietly and bear witness. Bear loving witness.

When I have some new accomplishment he celebrates me, and when I am disappointed he comforts me, and when I am sick he tends me. But he does not overdo the praising or the commiserating or the nursing. His care is grounded in dignity—both his own and mine.

Up to that point, both women had expended an enormous amount of energy trying to meditate their way through the problem of being human.

on climate change each week and use social media to educate the people to whom you are connected.

Sit quietly, with your eyes closed (or downward cast and unfocused). Allow yourself to contemplate your strengths and imagine how you might harness them for the benefit of others. Write down a list of ways you could rise to the call, even if they don’t look like dramatic contributions or if they take a very different form than you might have imagin

When I lead grief retreats or teach writing workshops—which are largely populated by women—it takes about five minutes before community begins to magically coalesce before my eyes. Without my doing a thing, the people in the room gravitate toward one another and take the risk to trust. They notice one another’s wounds and tend them, detect one anot