Four hundred year old trees, who draw aliveness from the earth like smoke from the heart of God, we come, not knowing you will hush our little want to be big; we come, not knowing that all the work is so much busyness of mind; all the worry, so much busyness of heart. As the sun warms anything near, being warms everything still and the great still things that outlast us make us crack like leaves of laurel releasing a fragrance that has always been.

I think happiness is overrated, but joy is the key to the thousands of possible moods we can feel. And when we can rest in that joy, then peace is the moment of openness that holds all feeling.

I would want to affirm how rare and magnificent and messy it is to be alive, how there is really nothing between us and life, though so many things get in the way, and how our heart is the strongest muscle and resource we have.

Part of the blessing and challenge of being human is that we must discover our own true nature.

Accepting what we're given is a practice in being present to everything beyond us that lets us become intimate with the nature of life.

As nature erodes the earth into magnificent forms, life through endless experience opens us further and further to the essence of what matters. Each time I've been opened further, the way I experience life and receive things has changed.

We are love. But in an everyday setting we have to make choices. We have limits. We can love everyone and we can't love everyone.