Peace is not merely the absence of warfare, any more than true health is simply the absence of disease. Nor is peace simply a quiet state of equilibrium-impossible to achieve in an evolving system. Though refraining from harm is an essential first step, lasting peace is created by actively redressing harm done. Peace is a creative process of actively joining I and thou into a co-creative we. It requires authentic communication, empathic listening, and wildly creative solutions.

Like a garden that is carefully tended, the rewards are well worth the effort.

Ascetic spirituality is a symptom of the very disease which it intends to cure.

Love is not a matter of getting connected. It is a matter of seeing that we already ARE connected within an intricate web of relationships that extends throughout all life. It is a realization of 'no boundary' -- that we are all made of the same stuff, riding through time on the same spaceship, faced with the same problems in the world, the same hopes and fears. It is a connection at the core, that makes irrelevant skin color, age, sex, looks or money.

As you transform yourself, you transform the world.

To love ourselves is to act respectfully toward ourselves, to enjoy our own company when in solitude, to honor our limits and speak our truths.

To lose our connection with the body is to become spiritually homeless. Without an anchor we float aimlessly, battered by the winds and waves of life