Given a half a chance, when it comes to having a delicate talk with my Mother, I’ll run for the hills. I’ll do anything to put this off, to avoid lighting the reactive family touch-paper. I'll dodge confrontation, get in line, and keep things ‘just about ok’.

And nothing changes.

Do you know this?

Were you raised into any religious tradition?

When you were younger, did you ever see a picture-book image of God as a wise old man with a beard looking down on you from up in heaven?

What am I alive with this morning are the words discipline and accountability. Writing each day has been a discipline. It’s been purposeful, creative and required me to exercise my writing muscle. It's also been vulnerable, and stretched my edges.

Last week I planted a Japanese maple on the allotment. It'll be 10 years for this tree to mature and then it will thrive beyond my life.

When you feel into the magnificence of some gardens you see, do you ever wonder who created them? What was their vision for the future?

I'd always thought that the only way to listen was with my ears.

How else would I listen?

There is our listening to the external world, the sounds of life around us, and then there is how we listen internally. There’s a deeper landscape here. Life is always calling us to be more present with it, now. The Divine nature of life draws us forward into creation with it.

Do you ever have the experience that the most important moment of your life is happening right now - and you're missing it?

The ancient Greeks had two words for time. While chronos time is the logical, linear time of our clocks ticking, kairos time is where we fall through the crack in time into a deeper moment of our soul’s longing.

Who are the people in your life that deeply engage your attention and earn your respect? They may be close or distant to you, but when you listen to them speak, it's crystal clear to you what their values are and what they stand for.

You know when you go for a walk at sunset and the light shifts all around, and then there’s a beautiful, incredible night sky.

You sense there’s something more going on than just you looking at the sky but yet it’s all so vast you somehow can't grasp it. You long for deeper relatioanship, but somehow you feel you miss the moment and pass on...

You know when you get caught in the deep chaos of life and things don’t make sense. And however hard you try to work the thing out, the chaos just seems to get stronger and stronger. Despite your best efforts, everything gaets on top of you and it feels though there is no choice but to endure it, fight it - or let it bring you down.