WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES when we go against our instincts? What are the consequences of not speaking out? What are the consequences of guilt, shame, and doubt?

The danger is in what we codify, commodify, and exploit.

Finding beauty in a broken world is acknowledging that beauty leads us to our deepest and highest selves. It inspires us. We have an innate desire for grace. It's not that all our definitions of beauty are the same, but when you see a particular heron in the bend in the river, day after day, something in your soul stirs. We remember what it means to be human.

What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.

If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.

Tortoise steps, slow steps, four steps like a tank with a tail dragging in the sand. Tortoise steps, land based, land locked, dusty like the desert tortoise herself, fenced in, a prisoner on her own reservation -- teaching us the slow art of revolutionary patience.

These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.