My intention in writing these letters is to speak to you, my friends and readers, from a transparent and authentic place about what I am learning as we live here together on this planet--all of us, participating in this infinite web of life. And life on this planet is not easy. It’s not neat and tidy, and the lessons we are given are often overwhelming, heartbreaking and chaotic. That’s just the way it is. 

I’ll be 60 next year, and I’ve passed through some of the toughest  learning  in my whole life this year. I’m realizing that it actually takes a long time to really grow up, a long time to become capable of sharing genuine wisdom and compassion with others.  In the process life shakes us up, burns us, tenderizes us, until we are open enough, free enough, strong enough, to stand on our own two feet and see what  really moves us.

So if I speak to you honestly about what is unfolding for me, and for the people I work with, and the people I know and love, I have to say that I think we are all being pushed by some kind of evolutionary force right now. I really don’t know what this force is, but I feel it pushing us, calling us to move beyond all our safe and familiar places. It seems to be taking us, like a wild river, into a way of being that feels radically new, strange, disorienting, and very awkward at times. That’s all right, and it’s much easier to bear if we don’t take it too personally, if we realize it’s happening to a whole lot of us.  Whether we like it or not, whether we think we asked for it or not, it’s still happening.

A few months ago my daughter went to Kelowna, a city 5 hours by bus from our town. She went for a short visit, and was returning on the night bus, arriving the next morning. I went to pick her up at the bus station at 5:30 in the morning, and there was no sign of the bus. I waited for a while, not really concerned at all, because I knew that nothing much can happen to anyone on a Greyhound bus. While I was waiting, I called my partner Jonathan, to see if she had phoned him.

He told me about a story he had just seen on the news. It happened  the night before, the same night that my daughter was coming home, on a Greyhound bus travelling in Alberta,  the province right beside us.  A man who was on the bus walked to the back, pulled out a machete, and beheaded a young fellow who was asleep on the back seat.

I was shocked and horrified by this piece of news, and very glad to see the bus from Kelowna roll in a few minutes later, with my daughter on it safe and sound. But I couldn’t seem to shake whatever that story had stirred up in me. I realized that my thoughts about what could happen or not happen  anywhere in this world are just that-ideas that have nothing to do with reality.

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My intention in writing these letters is to speak to you, my friends and readers, from a transparent and authentic place about what I am learning as we live here together on this planet--all of us, participating in this infinite web of life. And life on this planet is not easy. It’s not neat and tidy, and the lessons we are given are often overwhelming, heartbreaking and chaotic. That’s just the way it is. 

I’ll be 60 next year, and I’ve passed through some of the toughest  learning  in my whole life this year. I’m realizing that it actually takes a long time to really grow up, a long time to become capable of sharing genuine wisdom and compassion with others.  In the process life shakes us up, burns us, tenderizes us, until we are open enough, free enough, strong enough, to stand on our own two feet and see what  really moves us.

So if I speak to you honestly about what is unfolding for me, and for the people I work with, and the people I know and love, I have to say that I think we are all being pushed by some kind of evolutionary force right now. I really don’t know what this force is, but I feel it pushing us, calling us to move beyond all our safe and familiar places. It seems to be taking us, like a wild river, into a way of being that feels radically new, strange, disorienting, and very awkward at times. That’s all right, and it’s much easier to bear if we don’t take it too personally, if we realize it’s happening to a whole lot of us.  Whether we like it or not, whether we think we asked for it or not, it’s still happening.

A few months ago my daughter went to Kelowna, a city 5 hours by bus from our town. She went for a short visit, and was returning on the night bus, arriving the next morning. I went to pick her up at the bus station at 5:30 in the morning, and there was no sign of the bus. I waited for a while, not really concerned at all, because I knew that nothing much can happen to anyone on a Greyhound bus. While I was waiting, I called my partner Jonathan, to see if she had phoned him.

He told me about a story he had just seen on the news. It happened  the night before, the same night that my daughter was coming home, on a Greyhound bus travelling in Alberta,  the province right beside us.  A man who was on the bus walked to the back, pulled out a machete, and beheaded a young fellow who was asleep on the back seat.

I was shocked and horrified by this piece of news, and very glad to see the bus from Kelowna roll in a few minutes later, with my daughter on it safe and sound. But I couldn’t seem to shake whatever that story had stirred up in me. I realized that my thoughts about what could happen or not happen  anywhere in this world are just that-ideas that have nothing to do with reality.

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