Wonder and despair are two sides of a spinning coin. When you open yourself to one, you open yourself to the other. You discover a capacity for joy that wasn't in you before. Wonder is the promise of restoration: as deeply as you dive, so may you rise.

History is what scholars and conquerors say happened; story is what it was like to live on the ground.

Writing makes a map, and there is something about a journey that begs to have its passage marked.

Curiosity restores is a state of heightened awareness. Culturally, this has been considered a child's activity. By the time we're grown, we're supposed to know enough not to get bogged down in life's miraculous detail. But the spiritual journey reactivates our sense of miracle and invites us to pause again, squatting over the sidewalk cracks, to ponder the lives of ants and stars.

We make our lives bigger or smaller, more expansive or more limited, according to the interpretation of life that is our story.

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.

My real journey had very little to do with traveling Europe, and a whole lot to do with traveling my own mind.