I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you...

I am openly prideful, secretly judgemental, and cowardly in conflict.

Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can’t let this one go....

I also know that I won’t go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life; I don’t think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies...

Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who...

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years–I was not rescued by a...

I have nothing against any of these terms. I feel they are all equal because they are all equally adequate and inadequate descriptions of the indescribable.

Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will...

Because what my gradmother did with her fine coat (the loveliest thing she would ever own) is what all women of that generation (and before) did for their families and their husbands and their children....

I’m tired of being a skeptic, I’m irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof...

When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please...

The child is taught form earliest consciousness that she has these four brothers with her in the world wherever she goes, and that they will always look after her. The brothers inhabit the four virtues...

There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations.

Richard didn’t even have time to ask if I thought I’d ever amount to anything in this life before I looked him eye to eye and said, “I already have, mister.

Instructions for freedom”:1. Life’s metaphors are God’s instructions.2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.3. The day is ending, it’s time for...

Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.

Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don’t really want to live in it.

Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it. Then I remembered that line from Jaws and couldn’t help smiling:...

I had to do something about my longing, so I got up, went to the kitchen in my nightgown, peeled a pound of potatoes, boiled them up, sliced them, fried them in butter, salted them...

I’ve spent so much time these last years wondering what I’m supposed to be. A wife? A lover? A celibate? An Italian? A glutton? A traveler? An artist? A Yogi? But I’m not any of...

Fear–who cares?

The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word zwei, which means ‘two,’ and the word zweifel, which means ‘doubt’ – suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic...

In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first...

One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.

I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward...

We need courage to take ourselves seriously, to look closely and without flinching, to regard the things that frighten us in life and art with wonder.

Struggle was the explanation behind all the most troubling biological mysteries: species differentiation, species extinction, and species transmutation. Struggle explained everything

Where did you get the idea you aren’t allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You are part of this universe, Liz. You’re a constituent–you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the...

… to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.

This is what intimacy does to us over time. That’s what a long marriage can do: It causes us to inherit and trade each other’s stories. (p.237)

Il bel far niente.

Who will ever kiss this encyclopedia of a head?

Real, sane, mature love—the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school—is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.

This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, “There are only two questions that...

Simply put, I got pulled through the wormhole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the workings of the universe completely. I left my body, I left the room, I left the...

The sentences still form in my mind, and thoughts still do their little show-off dance, but I know my thought patterns so well now that they don’t bother me anymore. My thoughts have become like...

… the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one’s humanity.

My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn’t that crazy? To still have a broken heart almost two years after a love story ends? 

We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses–one foot is on the horse called “fate,” the other on the horse called “free will.” And the question you have to...

noble” – be willing to someday join a larger conversation about how we might work together as a society to construct a world where healthy children can be raised and healthy families can prosper without...

I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn’t wake him to share in my distress.

At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.

Parla come magni,’ It means, ‘Speak the way you eat,’ or in my personal translation: ‘Say it like you eat it.’ It’s a reminder – when you’re making a big deal out of explaining something,...

I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but...

I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.

My friend Kate once went to a concert of Mongolian throat singers who were traveling through New York City on a rare world tour. Although she couldn’t understand the words to their songs, she found...

Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don’t need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.

Tiramisu for desert.

When Catherine told me about this (tragedy nearby), I could only say, shocked, “Dear God, that family needs grace.”She replied firmly, “That family needs casseroles,” and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing...