On a deeper level, I’m always practicing being done, in every sense—because birth, death, love, and life’s turning points arrive unannounced, their timing held close in the hands of the universe. One of my meditation teachers likens us to ships sailing out to sea, destined to sink; we just don’t know when. Another advises, “Stop making stuff.” He m

“Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard.”

— Jeremy Goldberg

“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that life sometimes

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

— Nelson Henderson in Songs of Joy by Joan Chittister

“Without being aware, it’s not possible to really live in a free way. Otherwise we are just in habitual reaction to whatever is arising.” – Jack Kornfield

"Disease can manifest at four different levels: the physical (diarrhea, heart palpitations, facial tics, postural changes, etc.); the emotional (fantasies, illusions, destructive patterns of behavior, etc.); the mental (obsessions, compulsions, schizothymia, paranoia, etc.); and the spiritual (indolence, indifference, bitterness, accidie, loss of m

“Be grateful for the problems you have. They’re specifically designed for you, your growth, your development and the things you need to possess as an individual in order to grow and become the individual you’re destined to become.”

― Inky Johnson, Serendipity Podcast

Just stand wherever you are — in the kitchen, in the shop, or in the bathroom — and wrap your arms around yourself as tightly as you can. Rock yourself. Before long you will be able to feel God holding you in the same way you are holding yourself. You will be comforted the way you were comforted as a child when your mother held you in her arms and

I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one's own meaning.

—C.S. Lewis

Jesus (a good person) still had to die for the Christ (the universal presence) to arise. It is the pattern of transformation . . . What has to die is not usually bad; in fact, it will often feel good and necessary.2

Can you see the necessity of healthy and mature religion? Why else would you take the jump from a safe, comfortable sense of self into