If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath— our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.

The greatest barrier to own own healing is not the pain, sorrow or violence inflicted upon us as children. Our greatest hindrance is our ongoing capacity to judge, to criticize, and to bring tremendous harm to ourselves. If we can harden our heart against ourselves and meet our most tender feelings with anger and condemnation, we simultaneously armor our heart against the possibility of gentleness, love and healing.

Because we do not rest, we lose our way.

The more spacious and larger our fundamental nature, the more bearable the pains in living.

Emptiness is the pregnant void out of which all creation springs. But many of us fear emptiness. We prefer to remain...surrounded by things...we imagine are subject to our control.

For thousands of years we have gathered in circle--around fires, around bodies, around altars--because we can't do this alone.

All life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life.