Words are how we think; stories are how we link.

The reason I spend thousands of lifetime hours creating something 99 percent of which no one else is likely to ever read is that writing itself is the gift.

With compassion, we see benevolently our own human condition and the condition of our fellow beings. We drop prejudice. We withhold judgment.

Ritual consists of the external practices of spirituality that help us become more receptive and aware of the closeness of our lives to the sacred. Ritual is the act of sanctifying action - even ordinary action - so that it has meaning. I can light a candle because I need the light or because the candle represents the light I need.

Millions of people are joined in the knowledge that writing brings insight and calm in the same way that prayer, meditation, or a long walk in the woods does. They have discovered that writing allows the racing mind to move at the pace of pen and paper or the pace of typing on the waiting screen - that journal writing is a spiritual practice.

Story is the mother of us all. First we wrap our lives in language and then we act on who we say we are. We proceed from the word into the world and make a world based on our stories.

Creatures of a very particular making, we need to know the cultural blinders that narrow our world view as well as the psychological blinders that narrow our view of our personal experience.