When I fall asleep with the words of the long-gone resting on my chest, I know it was never about expertise. It was always about that elusive, ever-present joy—my most faithful teacher. I am reminded of Mary Oliver’s insistence: “Joy is not made to be a crumb. It is made to be a feast.” And indeed, it has been.

Some mornings I wake to a heaviness, a kind of weather system that settles over me, muting everything except the reality of its unwelcome presence.

In this world of political violence, division, and isolation, what we most need is not more noise, but the courage to breathe slowly before all that frightens us, and to meet it—not with fear or striving—but with gentleness.

Ending war and violence is not just the absence of battle—it is the presence of justice, care, and reverence for life. This is the greatest gift we can offer its survivors—and the generations yet to come.

If I’m honest, I wish I had spent less time chasing validation and more time giving the world my undivided attention—receiving its ordinary magic with reverence. I wish, too, that I had spent less time poring over theology and church history, and more time with the treasures of literature, poetry, music, and the visual arts—the places where human longing and divine mystery meet in colors, words, and sound.

With age comes the awareness that my generation’s season is fading. My father and brother are gone, as are most of my uncles and aunts. Their absence reminds me daily of a truth we all share: no one escapes impermanence.

This is why resisting cruelty and hate is never wasted. It is always a choice between life and death, between indifference and care.

Mary Oliver once wrote: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.”

Never forget: you are an artist simply by being alive. Your desire to create—to write, to paint, to sing, to dance—that yearning in your heart is more than enough.

Even in darkness, we can give thanks for the chance to respond with courage, to meet cruelty with compassion, to answer despair with creativity.

Truth is not always found in tidy explanations or well-rehearsed doctrines, but in the tender, ordinary things that carry love across time.

One of the quietest, most effective weapons of oppression is not always brute force—it is exhaustion. Wear people down enough, and they grow too weary to resist. The violent “new normal” becomes ordinary. The moral lines we thought could never be crossed fade into the background.

Mindfulness may not seem fierce enough for dismantling systemic racism. But in truth, it offers a radical foundation—an inner discipline that sustains outer transformation.

When we answer harm with harm, we keep the wheel of suffering spinning. Like children on a teeter-totter, each side tries to push harder, climb higher, win. But no one ever gets off. No one ever learns. And as the cycle deepens, we start to believe in enemies—fabricated, projected, chosen.

So I ask you—not just as an artist, but as a contemplative, as a human being—
What beauty are you called to birth?
What truth are you ready to reveal?
How do you want your art to help mend the world?

I longed to point people past the rituals to the Radiance behind them—the love that whispers beneath creeds and committees, the presence that doesn’t need labels to be felt.

At a very young age, I learned how to climb ladders. Not the kind you find leaning against a barn or tucked away in a garage—but the invisible kind. The ladders we’re told will take us somewhere important. Ladders that, in truth, were never mine to begin with.

With each breath—inhale, exhale—
Life moves gently through us.
The pulse of being continues.
Blessing is not something distant. It is here.

To those emerging into adulthood today, trying to make sense of a world filled with contradiction, beauty, injustice, and mystery, I want to say: You deserve something better than the religion many of us inherited. You deserve a spiritual path that is wise, courageous, and tender—a path rooted not in fear or control, but in wonder, love, and liberation.

Tired of the constant pressure to prove something. Tired of trying to convince people, as if truth were a contest. Tired of the way performance often replaces presence, and slogans take the place of real connection.