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

deepening Create an event especially for women on a spiritual path. Maybe it is a silent meditation in solidarity with Syrian refugees or for the restoration of the Amazon rain forest. It could be a writing group using the writing practice methods of Natalie Goldberg (see “Writing Practice Guidelines” for a taste). Perhaps you will be singing sacre

We look to one another, with all our imperfections and vulnerabilities, our mixed messages and hidden agendas, our startlingly gorgeous and ferociously honest wisdom. Connection is liberation. Cultivate it.

Maybe you say, “No, thank you” to any kind of organized religion and, instead, cultivate a direct relationship with the Beloved in the temple of your own heart.

The singular true believers will advise you against all of this multiplicity, recommending that you pick a single tradition and “go deep.” As if your polyamorous spiritual proclivities render you a dilettante. They will mistakenly judge your way as superficial and undisciplined, rather than as the mind-blowingly, heart-openingly, soul-transfiguring

In Spanish, giving birth is called dar a luz, “to give to light.”

“We can’t rush to meaning,” she says. “We need to stay in the middle of the fire, the center of our pain, long enough for it to transform. This is alchemy. This is where fierce compassion is born.” From this place of transmuted pain we cannot help but act as a force of love and healing in the world. It begins with saying yes to the terrible blessin

What Dr. Jo has discovered by companioning people in their darkest descent is that human beings have a deep need to be present with our losses rather than turn away from them.

The deathbed now feels like the birth bed felt then. Like the universe is taking in a big inhale, recalibrating, and exhaling a new reality.

Where death touches our lives, it transfigures the inner landscape. Nothing will ever be the same after someone we love has left this world. Whether they drew their last breath at one hundred or never had a chance to draw their first breath at birth, our loved ones who have died seem to teach us the most about being alive.