“Aliveness requires my wholehearted participation in the freshness of each moment. An intimacy so real that it threatens to annihilate my former sense of self as I allow myself to be so taken by the vibrant beauty of the little purple flowers in my backyard garden, and to be so touched by the horror of the beheadings on TV and the atrocities of war. To come alive is to come awake in my body to sensual delights and repugnant ugliness of the current world situation and allow the full, messy, intense, experience to flow through me. To break my small heart open, over and over again, to ever-greater capacities to love.”