REDWOOD: For people who are living in such a linear-focused society, what are some tools they can use to expand their experience and perspective?

BREHONY: I think that a lot of it is taking time. Meditation, prayer, even just silence. You know, how many of us sit in silence? Even here, in your nice quiet office, if I were to sit simply I'd hear noise. That was one of the things that Robert Gass talked about in the Chanting book, that there are very few places in the world to really find that silence. And yet we can. I think the world would have less problems in it if everyone would take ten minutes a day to sit quietly. I really do. I think it could be as simple as that, because I think that’s where the Self appears. Meister Eckhart said, "There is nothing so much like God as silence."

That’s one way. I think another way to wake up, which is a major theme in Ordinary Grace, is to get out and do something for somebody else. It expands our view of what our own life is. I make that same point in my new, as yet untitled book – that your suffering should be acknowledged, and it should be grieved and felt and experienced in the depth that it is. But even in the midst of it, to go out and give a hand to somebody else changes your point of view.

Daniel Redwood is a chiropractor, physician acupuncturist, and writer who lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He is the author of A Time to Heal: How to Reap the Benefits of Holistic Health and Contemporary Chiropractic. A collection of his writing is available at www.DrRedwood.com. He can be reached by e-mail at danredwood@aol.com

© 2000 by Daniel Redwood