Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. After the listening you become accountable for the sacred knowledge that has been shared.

How do we take our anger and transform it into sacred rage? How do we create a language that opens the heart instead of closing it? To bear witness is not a passive act. It's an act of consequence that leads to consciousness. It matters. I am curious. I want to know why. I was raised with a scripture that says, "The glory of God is intelligence." And to me our greatest intelligence is following our instincts, trusting our intuition.

I write from the place of inquiry. The first draft is a discovery period to see what I know and what I don't know. My task is simply to follow the words. There are surprises along the way. I just have to get it down. Call it the sculptor's clay.

I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.

Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find. For me, we find this beauty through relationships, with people in place with other species. Integrity is the word that comes to mind. Integrity and presence.

A friend of mine said to me not long ago, "Terry you are married to sorrow." I looked at him and said, "No, I am not married to sorrow, I just choose not to look away." To not avert our eyes to suffering is to trust the power of presence. Joy emerges through suffering. Suffering is a component of joy. Whether we are sitting with a loved one dying or witnessing dolphins side-by-side watching the oil burning in the Gulf of Mexico, to be present with the world is to be alive. I think of Rilke once again, "Beauty is the beginning of terror." We can breathe our way toward courage.

I remember a phone call from a friend of mine who lives along the MacKenzie River. She said, "This is the first year in twenty that the chinook salmon have not returned." This woman knows the names of things. This woman is committed to a place. And she sounded the alarm.