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.

There are times we have to put our body on the line for what we believe, for the injustices we see even within our own families.

I think it could be argued that I am not heard, in the broadest sense. That is not my concern. My concern, a question really, is, do I have the courage to speak? If I speak I believe someone will respond. It then becomes my responsibility to listen to that person. And in listening, together we create a space where people can be heard. It's the conversation that I care most deeply about; this is the space I want to honor, respect, and protect. This is my faith in the open space of democracy.

Despair shows us the limit of our imagination. Imaginations shared create collaboration, collaboration creates community, and community inspires social change.

The middle path makes me wary. . . . But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement. . . . In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set. . . . We become missionaries for a position . . . practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world.

I think about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said that it's the questions that move us, not the answers. As a writer, I believe that it's our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustices that we see and to create a prayer of beauty. The questions serve us in that capacity.

Abundance is a dance with reciprocity - what we can give, what we can share, and what we receive in the process.