More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress. But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn't be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.

- Henri Nouwen, Catholic Priest

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments...you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way.

- Chekhov

It is all in the air.
It is all gathering in the underground
Coming together majestically
We should listen to the things
Forming in the air,
The things forming in the underground.

We should do some deep serious working
On the spirit of the age
If we are going to bring about
A marvelous future,
If we are going to have some control
On how the unknown will affect us.

The air must be altered,
The underground must be understood,
For the overground to be different.

- Ben Okri, excerpted from Mental Flight

What was your original face before you were born?
- Zen koan

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
- Blaise Pascal

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


- Derek Walcott

i thank god for this most amazing day:
for leaping greenly spirits of tress
and a blue true dream of sky;
for everything which is natural
which is infinite
which is yes.


- ee cummings

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

"I now see the soul as that wild creature way back there in the woods."

- Parker Palmer