Archive for the writing/books Category
To Honor
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.
Once we know something, experience something, feel something, there is an understandable tendency to put it away, to bury it, to forget its importance in our lives. But integrity and aliveness have something to do with keeping what is true before us. This is the art of honoring what we learn. This reflection explores what it means to honor ourselves, each other, and God.
How do we begin then to inhabit our destiny of being here? I believe it starts with reverence and listening, with honoring every bit of life we encounter. So at the deepest level, when I say I honor you, this means that, when I become conscious or aware of you, I make a commitment to keep that truth visible from that moment forward. To honor you means that what I’ve learned about you becomes part of our geography. It means that what has become visible and true will not become invisible again.
To honor myself, then, means that, as I grow, I will not ignore or hide the parts of my soul and humanness that become more present in me and the world. To honor myself means that I make a commitment to keep the truth of who I am visible; that I will not let the truth of my being become invisible again. Or if it does, I will stay devoted to retrieving it.
To honor God means that we vow to keep all that we become aware of in view; that we will not pretend to be ignorant of things we know to be true or holy. And if we forget or get distracted or derailed, we will stay devoted to retrieving the ever-present sense of the sacred.
So at the deepest level, the most essential level, listening entails a constant effort to feel that moment where everything touches everything else; a constant effort to live below the sheer fact of things. This fundamental listening invokes a commitment to keep what is true before us, so we might be touched by the life-force in all things. Such listening opens us to the never-ending art of tuning our inner person to the mysteries that surround us. We do this through the work of honoring what we experience, through the work of keeping what is true visible. All this is the work of reverence.
—excerpt from Seven Thousand Ways to Listen,
just published from Simon & Schuster, October 9, 2012
A Question to Walk With: How do you honor yourself, that is, keep the truth of who you are visible?
The Two Breaths
Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.
This reflection comes from a conversation with a gifted photographer I met. His story helped confirm for me that we live a life in every breath. In truth, each heart-breath is an atom of life-force being born one more time. We as human beings have the incredible burden of sensitivity, but the incomparable reward of being awakened over and over again.
At a gathering in San Francisco, I met Marco, a careful and patient photographer from Santa Clara. When asked what surprised him during the last year, his voice began to quiver. He’d witnessed two breaths that had changed his life. His daughter’s first breath. Then his mother’s last breath. As his daughter inhaled the world, it seemed to awaken her soul on Earth. As his mother exhaled her years, it seemed to free her soul of the world. These two breaths jarred Marco to live more openly and honestly. He took these two breaths into his own daily breathing and quickly saw their common presence in everyone’s breathing. Is it possible that with each inhalation, we take in the world and awaken our soul? And with each exhalation, do we free ourselves of the world, which inevitably entangles us? Is this how we fill up and empty a hundred times a day, always seeking the gift of the two breaths? Perhaps this is the work of being.
—excerpt from Seven Thousand Ways to Listen,
just published from Simon & Schuster, October 9, 2012
A Question to Walk With: What is your experience of the first breath and the last breath? Where do they live in you?
The One Conversation
In the interviews I’ve been blessed to have with Oprah, we seem to enter what I would call the “One Conversation,” the one ongoing story of how we spend our time on earth. All our lives contribute to this conversation. All our stories contribute to the one ongoing story. Let me share some reflections on where that conversation has been taking me.
I keep returning to the ever-present riddle, that being who we are is the necessary adventure. It unlocks everything, not because our self is so important but because our essential nature that our self carries is the immediate doorway to everything that is life-sustaining. We learn early on that being who we are means fending off unwanted influence without cutting ourselves off from the chance to learn from others. Regardless of the culture we are born into, it isn’t long after we arrive that everyone starts pointing and telling us where we need to be and what we need to do to get there. There’s no time to really ask why. Soon, things happen and we are thrown off course and now there’s all this effort to win their approval, no matter who “they” are. If lucky, love will distract us more than suffering. If blessed, we are broken of everyone’s plans and regrets and thrown like a hooded bird into a sea of light. If trusting the fall, we find our wings.
As Far As the Heart Can See—available in audio
You can now buy the audio for As Far As the Heart Can See instead of or in addition to the print book!
On Amazon Amazon or Barnes and Noble
An excerpt will be available here on Monday!
Mark’s new audio books are now available!
The Book of Awakening is available at:
Finding Inner Courage is available at:
