To journey without being changed, is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journeying is to be a pilgrim.

In life as in water, when we curl up or flail we sink. When we spread and go still, we are carried by the largest sea of all: the sea of grace that flows steadily beneath the turmoil of events. And just as fish can't see the ocean they live in, we can't quite see the spirit that sustains us.

Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.

Perhaps the hardest thing I've learned, and still struggle with, is that I don't have to be finished in order to be whole.

The many ways to listen have been reaching into me for years. To enter deep listening, I've had to learn how to keep emptying and opening, how to keep beginning. I've had to lean into all I don't understand, accepting that I am changed by what I hear.

Even when clouds grow thick, the sun still pours its light earthward.

Each of us is born with an incorruptible spot of grace.