From the time we begin school, if not sooner, we are taught to be blind to our assets and only see our deficits. We are carefully marked on how many we got wrong on a test and, rarely if ever, asked how we know how to spell the ones we got right. By the time we are adults, we are well versed in every one of our limitations, skilled in our incompetence. If we were fish in an aquarium, it would be as if we kept smashing against the glass, and forgot the fact that we were perfectly capable of turning ever so slightly and swimming gracefully in the water all around us.

I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

Forgiveness in no way justifies the actions that caused your wounding, nor does it mean that you have to seek out those who harmed you. It is simply a movement to release and ease your heart of the pain and hatred that binds it. It is the harvested fruit of a season of darkness, followed by a season of growth and of very hard work.

I will not die an unlived life...I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me...I choose to risk my significance.

Gratitude is like a flashlight. If you go out in your yard at night and turn on a flashlight, you suddenly can see what's there. It was always there, but you couldn't see it in the dark.

I wonder why it is that we so often imprison ourselves in the opinions of other people. There can be no punishment worse than conspiring in our own diminishment.

As adults, we must ask more of our children than they know how to ask of themselves. What can we do to foster their open-hearted hopefulness, engage their need to collaborate, be an incentive to utilize their natural competency and compassion...show them ways they can connect, reach out, weave themselves into the web of relationships that is called community.