We Need Not Avoid Our Active Lives,

And When You Get Down To It, Lily, That Is The Only Purpose Grand Enough For A Human Life. Not Just To Love But To Persist In Love.

I Watched Him, Filled With Tenderness And Ache, Wondering What It Was That Connected Us. Was It The Wounded Places Down Inside People That Sought Each Other Out, That Bred A Kind Of Love Between Them?

If Someone Should Ask Me, 'what Does The Soul Do?' I Would Say, It Does Two Things. It Loves. And It Creates. Those Are Its Primary Acts.

Soul. The Word Rebounded To Me, And I Wondered, As I Often Had, What It Was Exactly. People Talked About It All The Time, But Did Anybody Actually Know? Sometimes I'd Pictured It Like A Pilot Light Burning Inside A Person--a Drop Of Fire From The Invisible Inferno People Called God. Or A Squashy Substance, Like A Piece Of Clay Or Dental Mold, Which Collected The Sum Of A Person's Experiences--a Million Indentations Of Happiness, Desperation, Fear, All The Small Piercings Of Beauty We've Ever Known.

There Is No Place So Awake And Alive As The Edge Of Becoming. But More Than That, Birthing The Kind Of Woman Who Can Authentically Say, 'my Soul Is My Own,' And Then Embody It In Her Life, Her Spirituality, And Her Community Is Worth The Risk And Hardship.