you can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

i may be helping feed others, but it is me who is being nourished.

if there is anyone at home to suffer, they will.

if we forgive God for his crime against us, which is to have made us finite creatures, he will forgive our crime against him, which is that we are finite creatures.

absolute attention is prayer

love can see the evil and not cease to love.
hate cannot see the good and remain hate.

there are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

no matter how slow the film, spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer it has chosen

i saw in Louisiana a live oak growing,
all alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
and its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself;
but I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves, standing there, without its friend, its lover near - for I knew I could not;
and I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
and brought it away - and i have placed it in sight in my room;
it is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(for I believe lately I think little else than of them;)
yet it remains to me a curious token - it makes me think of manly love;
for all that, and though the live oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space,
uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover near,
i know very well I could not.

excerpt from a song to myself

i exist as i am - that is enough;
if no other in the world be aware, i sit content.

one world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself;
and whether i come to my own today, or in ten thousand years,
i can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness i can wait.
my foothold is tenon'd and mortised in granite;
i laugh at what you call dissolution;
and I know the amplitude of time.

the conversation is not about the relationship • the conversation
is the relationship

one of the greatest gifts we can share with others in pain, despair, or confusion is a clear sense of our own peace and knowledge that we are loved.

man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.

i do not talk to God so as not to bore him.

the sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

what i know for sure is, you cannot run your life without surrender... what I know for sure is that god can dream a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself.

there is a paradox to freedom that limitation often makes us more free • a painting is made possible by the canvas; a violin string, as an eastern poet once wrote, is not free until it is strung up on a bow, when it is free to make music • as the israelites leave egypt, they approach sinai only to be freighted down with laws, expectations and obligations • they are finally free, and on their way to be wed.

sinai is a metaphor for marriage • couples sometimes see marriage as an impediment to freedom, but to be alone is not to be free, it is to be alone. Freedom to love, to be close, to discover another - and to know oneself - is a freedom deeper than those who do not lastingly love can know.

in the garden of eden, adam was matched with havah • eve's name means "life," and in choosing her, adam chose life • in standing at sinai, israel chose freedom • under the chupa, both bride and groom realize that to choose another is to choose life. If that choice is a wise one, it enables us to be free.

don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.