If your heart doesn’t feel crushed, you're not paying attention.

I’ve spent much of my life anguishing over why and how we could ever treat one another with such cruelty. There’s huge tragedy in that. How that could be our way? Why would anyone contribute to so much pain? Where does that all begin, how did we get here from a heart that was only meant for love? And why is the answer to a problem that seems so obvious, so hard for us to see? Is the difficulty held in the shame of what we have let ourselves become?…

This virus has only initiated an external closure. A closure of our external environment. We can’t allow it to have dominion over our internal world. Because we’re in charge of that, that’s ours, it belongs to OUR heart! It’s our internal stance that we have control over, and that’s what’s most important to us... we might give that away, but no one can take that away. We need to remember that.

Is it possible to make our difficult times into an awakening - times of waking up to life?…

Fear and vulnerability simply bring a message. It’s courage that helps us receive and respond to it in a healthy way…

The difficulties, the pain that we meet in life, has the ability to crack us open. It wakes us up, shakes up our hearts, as though part of its job is to help us see life from a completely different perspective. In a way, our troubles help us welcome ourselves back to the strengths we may have forgotten we have…

Our challenges show us who we are and what we’ve become.

They show us what needs to be changed, and what we need to strive for. And they show us, through their reflection, what we’re meant to be. Our challenges are the best exercise in integrity and volition that we have…