The Love Is All Around Us. I

I Came Out Of The Nine-hour Surgery And I Had Tubes In Every Direction, And Those Nurses At The Mayo Clinic, I Could Cry For Four Days At The Kindness Of Those Nurses. The Care, The Detail Of The Care, The Attention That Just Never Wavered, Never Complained. The Love.

Cherish Your Solitude. Take Trains By Yourself To Places You Have Never Been. Sleep Out Alone Under The Stars.

What I Would Argue Is That Real Spirituality Is The Ability To Keep Encountering Two Opposite Thoughts At The Same Time And Still Maintain Some Kind Of Morality And Perspective In The World. It Is Not The Elimination Of One Side Of The Equation Or The Elimination Of What You Don't Like; It Is The Investigation Of Everything.

I Was A Young Feminist In The '70s. Feminism Saved My Life. It Gave Me A Life. But I Saw How So Much Of What People Were Saying Was Not Matching Up With What They Were Doing. For Example, We Were Talking About Sister Solidarity, And Women Were Putting Each Other Down. We Were Talking About Standing Up For Our Rights, And Women Weren't Leaving Abusive Relationships With Men. There Were Just So Many Disconnects.

Each Time I Had Five Hours Of The Poison Going Into Me, I Just Pictured Everything That Needed To Be Burned Away. I Pictured Wars, I Pictured The Things My Father Had Done To Me, I Pictured Brutality, And When It Was Over, I Am Light.