There is no getting around the fundamental fact that we need to interact with everything in order to manifest the wholeness we are born with.

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

But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.

There is no getting around the fundamental fact that we need to interact with everything in order to manifest the wholeness we are born with.

To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

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.

The fully engaged heart is the antibody for the infection of violence.