Intrinsic Heart

Four Quartets, East Coker (excerpt) I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet...

All the Words All the words have leaped into air like the cards in Alice, like birds flying, forming, re- forming, swerving and rising, and each word says it is love. The cat says it is love. It says, ‘I...

One day I am sitting in my old body at my old desk reading young essays — essays sent to me by holy children of various sizes — and I can feel the joy sloshing and rising in me as...

COURAGE Courage is the price which life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; Knows not the livid loneliness of fear Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy can hear The sound...

Listening My father could hear a little animal step, or a moth in the dark against the screen, and every far sound called the listening out into places where the rest of us had never been. More spoke to him...

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree...