Meditation helps me feel the shape, the texture of my inner life. Here, in the quiet, I can begin to taste what Buddhists would call my true nature, what Jews call the still, small voice, what Christians call the holy spirit.

Gratitude invites a sense of sufficiency.

Every single choice we make, no matter how small, is the ground where who we are meets what is in the world. And the fruits of that essential relationship- the intimate, fertile conversation between our own heart's wisdom and the way the world has emerged before us- becomes a lifelong practice of deep and sacred listening for the next right thing we are required to do. We make the only choice that feels authentic and honest, necessary and true in that moment.

Effortlessness is the ability to slow down and listen for the spaces between the joints... Deep within all things there is a natural rhythm, a music of opening and closing, expansion and contraction.

What if the healing of the world utterly depends on the ten-thousand invisible kindnesses we offer simply and quietly throughout the pilgrimage of each human life?

When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.

To pray is no small thing. It is nothing less than a sacred pilgrimage into the heart of the whole world.