Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it.

It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.

If you asked me, parents were supposed to affect the life of their child in such a way that the child grows up to be responsible, able to participate in life and in community.

I was the angriest daughter on earth, and also, one of the most devoted.

I don't want something special. I want something beautifully plain.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening.