After you get stung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it.

The only way I have ever understood, broken free, emerged, healed, forgiven, flourished, and grown powerful is by asking the hardest questions and then living into the answers through opening up to my own terror and transmuting it into creativity. I have gotten nowhere by retreating into hand-me-down sureties or resisting the tensions that truth ignited.

There's a gap somehow between empathy and activism. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of 'soul force' - something that emanates from a deep truth inside of us and empowers us to act. Once you identify your inner genius, you will be able to take action, whether it's writing a check or digging a well.

The only wrong thing, perhaps, is permanently hesitating on the verge of courage.

And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and its accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through anothers eyes or heart.

How do we accomplish this matter of gathering life together in God? We must begin primarily by refocusing our attention keeping our minds and hearts directed toward God. The essence of the centered life is attention to God in all we think, say and do. It is the growing realization of His presence in our most down-to-earth living.