When you come to a place where you have to left or right, go straight ahead.

I write what I would like to read.

I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.

But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.

I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.

When you come to a place where you have to left or right, go straight ahead.