I love acknowledgments pages, and award acceptance speeches, and other public expressions of gratitude where people spell out how their individual success is interconnected with the gifts of other people.

"One Today: A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration, January 21, 2013," by Richard Blanco

American prisoners are an independent lot—or that's what most of them want you to believe. But there comes a time when even the hardest among them need help. Moreover, sometimes these tough guys are the first to reach out to those in need.

"...I don’t want to stereotype, but you’re some kind of Asian, right? So, math is, like, in your DNA?” I was rendered temporarily speechless....

What happens when we affirm and promote: "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” as our first principle and leave celebrating the inherent worth and dignity of every person until the end?

What's the riskiest thing you've ever done? Jump out of a plane? Travel to a foreign country? Ride a bike downhill with no hands? Change jobs? Make friends with a stranger? Swing upside down on the monkey bars? Tell someone you love them?

When I was a kid, my father had a reason why just about everything my siblings and I might do was risky and might ultimately lead to death, or at least dismemberment.

When Jesus was baptized the spirit descended upon him like a dove and God said, "This is my son, in whom I am well pleased." It must have been a great feeling, but it didn't last long.

Making room to be more inclusive means letting go of some more stubborn aspects of a given culture. It means making room to be changed. But change can also bring new promise and possibility—something better than the past.

Am I going to take the most familiar, safest routes or will I open myself to new possibilities and new ways of doing things? Such untrodden paths might challenge me, reveal my inexperience, my biases, and expose the soft underbelly of my vulnerable, human self.