“My work is loving the world… let me keep my mind on what matters… which is mostly standing still and being astonished.” – Mary Oliver

Long ago, when I was upset about one more war, I went into my apple orchard to pray. It was a very small prayer–a question really. I simply said, “Is there anything I can do to bring more Love to this world?” The answer – which you could call inspiration – came so quickly and so clearly, “You can be living proof that there is a different way to live.”

Today, the Radiance Center is my living proof: Proof not just for you–but also for me. There really is a different way to live. Recently, I realized that long before this epiphany in the apple orchard, I was being taught different ways to live and to love.

My first teacher was illness. I have danced on the edge between form and formlessness from the very moment of my birth. While most might see years of paralysis, pain, wheelchairs, and oxygen machines as adversity, I am grateful.

Of course, I don’t deny that my disability has been difficult and, in fact, the cost has been not only physical but also emotional.  A child who isn’t strong enough to play with friends doesn’t know how she fits into society.   (more)

My most passionate and insistent and tender teacher of love has been my husband. We have been married for 40 profoundly intense and wonderful years. We have filled our years together with laugher and love and purpose. And, as all couples do, we used one another to explore our beliefs about being disappointed or a disappointment, unloving or unlovable. Relationship requires not only loving our mates but also loving ourselves.  Mates are the reflection that invite (and push) us past politeness and into the depths of our psyches and our souls.    (more)

One of the most profound teachers of love in my life has been parenting our children. After ten years of marriage, my husband and I realized that we had extra love that needed to be used. We began with the adoption of one incredible baby boy and, before we knew it, we had seventeen legal children (adoption and guardianship) and another 25 or 30 loaned to us from the streets or from families in crisis. These children came through our home blessing us with their courage and their hearts.  I was often in awe that a child could go through such trauma and arrive on our doorstep still looking for love.  Their hearts broke our hearts open.    (more)

And now. . . I am being taught so much more about loving in two seemingly opposite ways. Life has taken me to another level of delight as I currently divide my time into “inner and outer” expressions of Love.  During the inner phase of retreat, I automatically go into magnificent Stillness.  That Stillness nourishes me like a deep well. . . sending up a steady flow of inspiration for evolving/writing/recording.  That time in Silence supplies me with “aha’s” of life.  These exquisite times do not require effort.  They are not something that I am “supposed to do” in order to be so-called “spiritual.”  Instead, this is where I go when I stop trying. . . stop listening to my stories. . .  stop believing that there is anything that I have to do.  I once went into Silence with the intention of giving myself a week of delicious Stillness.  When I came out fourteen months later, It took quite an adjustment to get myself to speak and interact again.    (more)