Behind all our attempts to manipulate and control the world so it's just as we'd like it (and behind the pain, frustration, sorrow and disappointment that our inevitable failure brings), we're just trying to find a way to feel safe and to feel at home.I think we'd be better off knowing this.Then we'd set aside our mission to control what can't be controlled. And we'd work on how to feel safe and at home in the world as it is - in this ever-changing, surprising, vast and mysterious life in which we find ourselves.
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Given that we are the only creatures (that we know of) that can tell stories about ourselves;and given that we live totally, inescapably in the stories we tell;and given that stories of any kind can be more or less truthful, more or less kind, more or less generous, more or less creative, more or less freeing of our enormous potential...... given all of this, don't we have a profound responsibility to question the stories we were handed? To not just take things 'as they are'?And to actively find - and consciously live by - the most truthful, kind, generous, creative, possibility-freeing stories about ourselves, about others, and about life that we can?
In the 
A meditation for those days when we feel small, abandoned, or on the outside of our lives.Bless these feet that carry me by day and by night.Bless these hands that touch, sense, and bring the world towards me.Bless these lungs, transforming air into life on every breath,and bless this heart, for the continued heritage of all heartssince the first broke into the stillness.Bless this mouth, that can say what only I can say.Bless this body for love, joy, grief, rage, despair and hope.Bless this 'I' for incompleteness.Bless this mind that discerns, wonders, confusesand occasionally makes sense of the chaos.Bless the uncountable mistakes, accidents, chances and failuresthat keep life going and delivered me to this moment.I do not know, really, what is mine to do.But I do know that I am here,along with so many others.So bless the here-ness of me, and may it be my offering,My thanks, my home.
Episodes 11 and 12 of 'Turning Towards Life' are now available on our new 
If you were parachuted into your life from outside - into your life and body as it is today - you might start to see what's there through new eyes.Perhaps you'd be more immediately grateful for the people around you, for the love, support and attention they bring you that you had to do nothing to earn. And perhaps you'd see the difficulties in your life for what they are - difficulties to be worked with, rather than confirmations of your inadequacy.Enormous possibilities and freedom to act might come from inhabiting this world in which you're both supported and have problems towards which you can bring the fulness of your mind, body and heart.Being parachuted into your life might put an end to self-pity, because you'd come to see how the body you inhabit has been training, practicing all these years building skills, strength and an understanding of the life it's been living and the difficulties it's been facing. Maybe you'd see that you are precisely the one best equipped to deal with the detail and intricacy of this particular life. And perhaps you'd discover a way to look honestly at your situation and the resolve to deal with it, step by patient step.Maybe if you were parachuted into your very own life, you'd understand that everything that has happened to you - so far - is not a shameful failure but the exact preparation you need for living today, tomorrow, and for the years to come.
In the Jewish world today it is Yom Hashoah, or the day of remembering the Holocaust.Last night I joined a beautiful ceremony at the community which I call home. At one end of the room, a table filled with the shining light of tens of memorial candles. And in front of it, one by one, the testimonies of survivors and their families, woven together with prayers and with music composed by those who lived and died in the ghettoes and camps.Already in the 1930s, one of the speakers who was a child survivor of Auschwitz reminded us, the seeds of dehumanisation were being planted in public discourse, and in law, in countries across Europe. By the time the genocide and its unspeakable horrors began in earnest there had been years of acclimatisation in language, and in speech, and in shifts in public culture. The Holocaust, as Marcus Zusak reminds us in his extraordinary novel 
In recent days I have been studying my relationship with time, and how much trouble it can bring me. Most often there is not enough time. And I become sure of this as I become sure of all the poor choices I have made, all the hours I have wasted.Sometimes, if I'll quiet myself and look afresh, I'll see the questionable construct upon which all this stands. It starts with "there's something wrong" and includes "there's something wrong with me". It assumes that time is inevitably in short supply - that whatever I have done can never be enough. It assumes that enough is not, in fact, possible. And that I must use whatever time I have left in an impossible game of catch up, an attempt to atone for my mistakes, to redeem uncountable time already squandered.But what if it is the case that things just take the time they take? That trees take the time they take to grow? That the sun takes the time it takes to rise? That it takes the time it takes for human beings to live?What if we were to live lives in which we learned to trust in time, to befriend it, rather than run from it as if it were an enemy, or something to be grabbed at with desperate hands? What if we learned to savour time, like we might a good wine?And what if sometimes we trusted that we, and the work of our hands when attended to with diligence, attention and care, grow at a pace that is quite natural and not ours to control?
Once again the feeling in my body is as it was 
At every moment in life, you can choose whether to be a blessing or a curse to others.How you open the door to her when she comes come, how you reach across for him when you wake, how you speak when you order your coffee, how you move through a crowded train, how you are with a crying child, how you put out the bins.How you answer the phone, how you begin a meeting with your pressured and anxious team, how you write the next email, how you announce your intentions, how you respond when you're hurt, how you listen to the request of a lost stranger.The capacity to bless will have its seeds in your capacity to bless yourself, which always means welcoming yourself and what you're experiencing rather than denying it, raging against it, or judging yourself for it.Will you turn towards that of you which loves without dismissing, or denigrating, or criticising it for its impracticality?Will you turn towards your fear and acknowledge how afraid you are with dignity, rather than pretending it isn't true?Many of the curses in the world arise from our denying our own very basic, vulnerable, mysterious, confusing humanity. Much of that comes from being afraid and pretending that we're not - a curse upon ourselves which curses others as we go. And many blessings come from the discovery that this one, brief, precious life simply won't go exactly how we want it.Of course, it's rarely as simple as just 'deciding' to bless as we go. Too much of us has been shaped by years of habit for that. But the good news is that the capacity to bless - which is given to all of us - grows with practice. And that you can start today.