To heal: 

 with my father's death just over a year ago, a series of health issues, mostly mild, but adding up to the longest stretch of discomfort and distress in my lifetime, and now added too with Bell's Palsy - it's been a difficult year. As it has for so many of us, economic woes, the pandemic still in play, political division, the violence of mass shootings so frequent now. It's an age of underlying stress, draining us physically, emotionally, spiritually, and carrying on through life as if unaffected by any of this won't provide us with the needed time to heal. 

and we certainly need to heal.

I need to heal. 

writing helps, expressing my concerns, sharing fears, and allowing myself the vulnerability that only true creativity provides, the deepest, most scared part of me revealed through words. Art is indeed therapy, even if it's shared with just a few, or no one at all really, as long as we allow ourselves to be fully expressed, vulnerable in all we offer. 

writing is my needed time to heal.

meditation is beyond my sanctuary, it's my own interior silence shown back to me, an exploration of my quietest point of mind and its spacious nature. It's here that I see that everything belongs, truly so, with no real distinctions made between preference and what occurs, how life flows without concern for my demands, simply offering itself through every possible expression. Meditation is just a moment of this, sitting still, allowing, a much needed time for me to heal. 

and motion...staying current with the world through mind and body, moving, walking, dancing across the landscape with the ease of our belonging here. Nature heals, and it doesn't have to be difficult to be effective, a moment standing in a garden, swaying with the caress of gently offered breeze, a soft and slow walk through woods and fields. Even a breath, drawn fresh and again given back to the sky in gratitude for its value, one breath...it's enough for us to heal. 

these are my means of healing, available to me now, and through their use I hope my own immediate world becomes a little kinder, a more gentle place to be around. 

it's what I have to offer. 

~

Peace, Eric