Meditations for the Heart, Mind, and Spirit

Nietzsche said the only kind of writing he loved was that written by a person in his or her own blood. “Write with blood,” Nietzsche said, “and you will find that blood is spirit.” Spirit, or essence, finds its way into our words only when we risk offering ourselves wholly—the totality of our selves —not part, but every part, the sanguine and the shadowed, the composed and the awkward, the beautiful and the ugly strains of who we are. And this very much is  a risk because suc

The conversational nature of reality is not to be taken for granted. Nor is this mere metaphor. A vexed spirit settled by the setting sun. The rain to wash away our worries for a spell. A mellowing mood offered by a meadow for the mind to meander and so find a measure of freedom from the known. When we rush through our days we seldom notice the gratuitous volume of our surroundings, our hearing muffled by the mayhem of the world and the unmanageable pace so many of us set for

No one knows why we are here. And those who say they do are full of it: assumptions, presuppositions, passionate convictions and the like, but nothing certain, not even close. The fact that all beliefs (including this one) can be legitimately questioned brings us back always and again to the starting point of the unknown, and, likely, for the vast majority of us, the need therefore to unlearn so much of what has been inscribed into us through the willfulness of others, in ord

The mind is incredibly fragile, or flexible, depending on our point of view, a shift happening in our mood or thought either way in mere moments and by the most incremental of means: a temperament transported by a trifling word, a subtle scent or song, an accident or coincidence, some fortuitous interaction, untoward happening, or countless other strands of unexpected encounters that line our days, transform our experience, and so configure and constitute our consciousness. T