So the book does not need to be read in order. You can feel free to move about the chapters and poems, to linger with what touches or challenges you, to stay in conversation with whatever lights your heart. I encourage you to clear a path to your own sense of meaning. Toward that end, I invite you to keep a journal. You may, when moved, find it helpful to take a break, go for a walk, to enter your journal, or discuss a story or feeling that has arisen with a friend.

Often, when speaking of the all-encompassing Mystery of the Universe and the Oneness of Things, I capitalize the largest energies of life that can only be pointed to. When I refer to the Whole of Life or the Spirit that informs our lives, I am honoring at once the ineffable forces that are particular for each of us and yet common to all of us.

This book is also a weaving of prose and poetry. So let me say a word about the nature of poetry. Poetry is the unexpected utterance of the soul. Such deep utterances are teachers that help us make the journey from our head to our heart. For me, the poems arrive with their wisdom. I retrieve them, more than create them, and they become my guides. What they have to say becomes my inner curriculum and, by staying in conversation with the poems, I learn and grow. Whether you write or not, this way of learning is available to us all, as we meet and learn from the moments of our lives. Whether familiar with poetry or not, I invite you to receive the poems as you would a friend who’s eager to share intimately. Let the feeling reach you first. For the purpose of a poem is to awaken your own feeling.

Throughout the book, you will also encounter Questions to Walk With. These are journal questions, invitations to be in conversation with yourself, and table questions, invitations to be in conversation with a friend or loved one—each as a way to personalize the common passages in life, and to explore where the lessons and challenges live in you. Please, use and develop the questions you’re drawn to; change them and share them as you’re moved.