Advent is about the new story being written in our lives.

A new disease, without any cure, is pushing us apart. And, yet, we cannot escape one another. We need one another. Whether I acknowledge it or not, the guarantee of safety does not exist.

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.

It is essential that we find ways to breathe life into that which reminds us of our power, our humanity, our compassion, and our interdependence.

Spirit of Life, ancestor of the stars and the sun, you who embrace the vastness of space and us along with it, be with us today. Hold us in our worry, our exhaustion, our grief. Keep us close as we sit with our truth, whatever that may be....

It was disruptive and strange to know that someone had died to bring this hope, and to wonder how the donor’s family mourned at the same time we rejoiced.

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.

God, teach us to consider also how others experience the world. To understand how my reality and their reality are different and yet they share qualities of the same core desire. Teach us to listen for shared feelings, for places of connection. Teach us to be curious and open to hearing differences.

Oh, divine Love, With the kindling of this flame, may we realize and love our true selves: Our true, round belly selves. Our true, bags under our eyes, selves. Our true, naturally hairy, selves. Our true, wrinkles on our skin, selves. May our self-love help keep our chalice ablaze.