“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”...

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we...

A lot of us feel like our lives should have come with instructions. Or maybe they did, but we lost the only copy a long time ago.

Surround yourself with skillful teachers. Let them teach you, but don't let them do it for you. That learning is yours to do.

Every year, I tell the congregation not to worry about mistakes because there aren’t any; there is only us, telling an old story about love getting born into this aching world.

The crisis was an opportunity to learn to be fully me and love it, inner turmoil and all. I learned that strength comes from authenticity, never from perfection.

Knit six purl six sets of two rows four rows six rows up to twelve, patterns, repeating, steady, soothingly same. This is not what life is like. Life is like picking up a tousled hunk of yarn pulled out of the basket by an impatient child looking for a string too many times. You find an end. You...

In her 1975 theological treatise Suffering, German liberation theologian Dorothee Söelle* examines the ways that suffering can knit humans beings closer together, and can draw us more fully into the process of loving. She uses the term apatheia, “the inability to suffer,” to describe the...

As a hospital chaplain, I often listen to painful stories. We call it compassionate presence, but I may be crying inside. When words fail, I pray and sing.

Spirit of Life I find you In those humble places. The quiet, still spaces where I am held in A love greater than myself. You are the wind in my breath; The fire in my soul; The subtle Heartbeat of creation all around me....

[S]piritual and meditative practices are not meant to erase pain. That's a symptom of our pain-avoidant culture, and not an accurate portrayal of the practices themselves. It's a misuse of so many beautiful teachings to force them into roles they were never meant to play....

America has not yet faced our history of slavery, nor the malicious colonization and oppression of the Indigenous peoples.

We are broken, O God. We are broken. We gather in vigil again to mourn the death of school children and school teachers. Death and violence are the reasons that draw us together in sorrow, in anger, in anxious grief and loss....

Set up for this ritual: It's especially meaningful to have a congregant bake bread for communion. (If that’s not possible, store bought bread will do.) Cut the bread into cubes and place in baskets lined with napkins. Have a basket of gluten-free crackers available as well. To hold the juice, one...

What had to die was my shame: my belief that I was not worthy of such love. I discovered a greater love within myself as a creation of God, worthy of these gifts.

Emotional tempests aren’t always easy to weather — pain, grief, disappointment, even love — but the flatness of life without such currents is the slow silence of drowning.

It has been a difficult week in the news, and as always, we have silent personal struggles in the midst of everything else. And so I invite you into a spirit of prayer....

In the days ahead, many of us will gather with family and friends, people with whom we may have long and complicated relationships. It helps to prepare. Let us enter into the spirit of prayer or meditation. Dear Spirit, Great Mystery that has blessed us with Life, help us to feel grateful....

There is too much beauty in this world to give up on it yet, and it is always too soon to surrender to cynicism....