The things that can restore us have to get in, too. This is what the wisdom of an open heart is all about. All the spiritual traditions speak of this but I love the Tibetan tradition: "A spiritual warrior always has a crack in his heart because that is how the mysteries can get in."

The resource of life is everywhere, even in the smallest of things and we're never very far from it.

In the way that I experience life, the physical world is really just the tip of the iceberg of reality. Whether it's trees or stones or water or animals or stars, everything has an ineffable interior quality.

The paradox is that we have this amazing capacity in our minds and hearts to learn and gain insights and then to build a kind of personal storehouse of knowledge. The underside is that those insights harden and fill the spaces in our hearts and minds. They become assumptions, conclusions and judgments.

I would rather be fooled than not believe.

Everything in life opens and closes, sheds and renews. We are no different. Listening in its endless forms is the way we stay open, the way we stay in relationship, the way we refresh who we are and what we're doing here.

I had over twenty years ago damaged the cilia in my ears. This has taught me many things. One thing I learned, paradoxically, is that there is much to be heard in silence.