maybe we can meet over these words

how life has become like a gem I can hold and treasure, in all its color, light, and sharp edges

pen and gouache drawing of a child’s hands contorted over a black rectangle, surrounded by yellow horizontal paint strokes - bad_french

It’s a fascinating thing to begin thriving when it feels like so much of the world is falling apart. Such a faceted and fascinating thing - I can turn it in the light and see it’s wholeness and goodness, regardless of what [war, famine, political realities] it might turn to reflect.

I don’t have any answers, but I do have the knowledge of what it feels like to be OK in my body, in this life. This is new knowledge for me in this lifetime, still fresh. It feels safe and, rather than like something to be protected at all costs, something to be shared as often and as openly as possible.

I’m OK because I’ve learned that it’s more important for me to feel safe in my body than it is for me to do literally anything else.

I’m OK because I’ve taken a couple of years to figure out how to even tell what my body might be trying to tell me in any given moment about how safe it does, or does not, feel. And because I’ve learned to then honor what it’s telling me, regardless of external expectations or how I think I “should” feel.

I’m OK because I can trust what my body is telling me and I can opt out of things that keep me from feeling safe and in turn, from sending good into the world (social media, the news, talking about politics).

I’m OK because Buddhist meditation is my keystone practice, supporting everything else in this little eco-system of a life with infinite ease, so long as I make time to return to it. And for the first time in my life, I can return to it regularly. I trust myself to do so.

That’s the practice. Because if I can continually find that safety, I can continually share it. I can watch it unfold around me in the people I love and the people who work at the grocery store and my colleagues, and I can imagine it all rippling outward, and I trust that that is enough.

I just practice trusting that. And then it is.

For me, practice is about cultivating the capacity to alleviate suffering. There is no end point, just an endlessly manifesting vow to offer each moment to the well-being of all things.

-Ben Connelly, Inside the Grass Hut

Yes.

I’m doing a good job. You’re doing a good job.