This life, a gift of grace for an unknown reason, must be lived purely, because at death we return with its accruements to our source. Life is entrus… - Anne Truitt

I am, and I am going to be, the kind of person I have trained myself to be. In a way that almost amounts to just retribution, I am stuck with the results of all my choices.

Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.

What could my work [as an artist] ever mean to this man? A kind touch of my hand in a moment of fear or pain would have been more in his service than the endeavour of my whole lifetime. This incontrovertible fact stuck in my craw for weeks … he remains in my mind, central to my thoughts about my life. And to my recognition of limitation. In the range of my character at any given moment, I have acted in the only way it seemed to be that I could have acted. This in no way means that I have done what was right; only what was possible for me … It takes kindness to forgive oneself for one’s life.