On March 11, 2011, a mammoth earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami that wreaked havoc in more than fifteen cities in northeastern Japan. Waves reached as high as 120 feet. More than 19,000 people were killed, and 2500 more have never been found. In thirty minutes, the town of Otsuchi was destroyed. In trying to make sense of his grief, a gardener from Otsuchi, Itaru Sasaki, said that he needed a place to air his grief. So he moved an empty... Read more

Despite the things that crack and break, there are these unexpected moments of calm, like the swing of a hammock in the one patch of light that warms our legs. These moments keep everything from falling apart, like the bluebird atop its small house, its blueness so pure it makes me drop all worry. The miracle isn’t always parting some vast sea. More often, it arrives like the strum of a guitar or a piece of silk slipping on the... Read more

At the party, I overheard you say: “I want to help but don’t know how.” I didn’t know you yet, so I said nothing. But I woke in the night wanting to find you and say: Just pick up the nearest blanket and look for someone who is cold. Or repair the thing next to you that is broken. If you’re too tired or weak, just close your eyes and simply hold the unknown fate of others in the palm... Read more

There is always a practice before the practice; a sitting before the incomprehensible long enough to feel and sometimes understand the Mystery each instrument and craft is designed to invoke. In Japan, before an apprentice can clay up his hands and work the wheel, he must watch the master potter for years. In Hawaii, before a young man can ever touch a boat, he must sit on the cliff of his ancestors and simply watch the sea. In Africa, before... Read more

The prophet Zarathustra, whose name means undiluted star, said that gravity is the irrefutable force of love that binds us together. And the Chinese sage Mencius said that our impulse to drop everything to save a child from falling into a well—this holds everything together. And the rabbis of Eastern Europe rang their bells at dawn like spiritual roosters, barking that God is dormant until you are in relationship. They would chant, “Get up and make God visible!” Isn’t this... Read more

When I say that I retrieve the poems, I mean I am part of a relational process that allows the intangible forces of life to be seen in the world. I speak about discovery and retrieval over authorship, because I don’t believe we create things out of nothing. At least, that has been my lifelong experience. It’s more a conversation with the unknown and the unseeable. I am not retrieving from some other world but from this one. In ancient... Read more

This is how it happens. Everything runs smoothly till suddenly the body, like a car, overheats. It coughs and creaks. It won’t start in the rain. For me, my stomach was unable to process all I swallowed, and one day it stopped working like a backed-up sink. One too many bites and the pain was unbearable. After a week of tests, I was at the store picking up cottage cheese when I realized I had to keep living. I put... Read more

Another great paradox is how the soul, the most intimate of all our connections to the Mystery, is so intrinsic and personal, and yet, at its very inception point, it remains eternally impersonal. This is akin to how intimate the light in a barn is for the sheep and horses and farmer who feeds them every morning. Their experience of the light that filters through the crack in the roof is very personal. But the vast, formless, undying light outside... Read more

The Japanese word for emancipation, todatsu, means “a fish slipping out of the net.” It implies that we must face and shed everything that gets in the way, if we are to transform. We are constantly challenged in life to slip out of the net, whether that net is imposed on us and of our own making. Having slipped out of several nets through the years and having woven even more, I’m drawn to understand our various forms of entanglement,... Read more

When humans forgot the Oneness that Binds them, Zeus became so discouraged that he abdicated his throne as the protector and father of all gods and humans. In his absence, Phoroneus, whose name means “bringer of a price,” became the first king of men. Ever since, there has been a price for everything. In 1886, shortly after Thomas Edison commercialized the electric light bulb, about 1000 birds died after colliding with illuminated towers in Decatur, Illinois. The price for constant... Read more