The reality, certainly in my life, is that we all have love stories that go terribly wrong; we all have horribly broken hearts. And somehow we endure. We're not destroyed by it.

Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to understand about forgiveness and surrender

Who amongst us lives without sacrifice?

To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business-not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything is flaking away into... rhetoric and plot.

Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.

Sanity and clarity are more important for me and I'm willing to give up a lot of shimmer for it. I'm willing to have more boring friends, who are sane.

I completely respect the ways people are bound in the lives that they have, whether it's because of forces outside of their control or choices that they've made that they want to honor with their own responsibilities and obligations - taking care of people around them or being a part of a community, or their work.