I don't think there is anything as powerful as an active heart. They do not fear the wisdom of emotion, but embody it. They know how to listen. They are polite when they need to be and unyielding when necessary. They remain open, even as they push boundaries and inhabit the margins, understanding eventually, the margins will move toward the center. They are tenacious, informed, patient, and impatient, at once. They do not shy away from what is difficult. They refuse to accept the unacceptable. The most effective activists I know are in love with the world.

To engage in civil disobedience is to feel the abundance of courage, the gratitude for a democracy that still invites us to speak from our hearts, to act from our conscience and have faith in the consequences of moral action. Abundance is a form of consciousness.

What I fear and desire most in this world is passion. I fear it because it promises to be spontaneous, out of my control, unnamed, beyond my reasonable self. I desire it because passion has color, like the landscape before me. It is not pale. It is not neutral. It reveals the backside of the heart.

I really do believe if there is hope in the world, then it is to be found within our own communities with our own neighbors, and within our own homes and families.

To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.

The hostility of this landscape teaches me how to be quiet and unobtrusive, how to find grace among spiders with a poisonous bite. I sat on a lone boulder in the midst of the curlews. By now, they had grown accustomed to me. This too, I found encouraging-that in the face of stressful intrusions, we can eventually settle in. One begins to almost trust the intruder as a presence that demands greater intent toward life. On a day like today when the air is dry and smells of salt, I have found my open space, my solitude, and sky. And I have found the birds who require it.

When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship.