Like many folks I am in a place of stunned heartache over the world events of the past few weeks. It has made it seem almost impossible to find the words to even begin to speak to the confusion and fear and sorrow that seems to permeate so much of our collective experience right now. And I know we all have our ways of dealing with what is happening. All of them valid. All of them necessary. One of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Steven Levine, who did so much beautiful work around death and dying, talked about the challenge of this life as the practice of “keeping your heart open in hell.” And that is a question we are all being asked to engage with at this pivotal point in our journey to becoming more fully human. How do we keep our hearts open in the face of violence and shootings and ages old oppression and injustice? How do we keep our hearts open in the face of so much grief and horror and pain? How do we keep our hearts open in the face of denial and unreasoning prejudice and calcified beliefs? How do we keep our hearts open […]