The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.

This is the ongoing purpose of full attention: to find a thousand ways to be pierced into wholeness.

If we devote ourselves to the life at hand, the rest will follow. For life, it seems, reveals itself through those willing to live. Anything else, no matter how beautiful, is just advertising.

As the seed buried in the earth cannot imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that once cracking, it cracks all the way.

We need experience to release what matters.

For being human, we remember and forget. We stray and return, fall down and get up, and cling and let go, again and again. But it is this straying and returning that makes life interesting, this clinging and letting go - damned as it is - that exercises the heart.

The simplest and bravest way to counter the plight of disheartenment is to move toward what is precious.