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Hello friends, Take a deep breath. Tune into your body. How do you feel? Are you tired? Jumpy? Energized? Agitated? Exhausted? All of the above? Take another deep breath. How is your heart? I don’t even want to begin to assign possible markers for your emotional state, because the possibilities are so personal, always, but especially right now. Some of us are alone. Some of us are caretakers. Some of us need care. Some of us are caregivers who also need care. Some of us are busy. Some don’t feel busy enough. All of this, in the midst of world events, affects our emotional states, or what we call our hearts. The physical heart is a muscle, of course. And muscles can feel strong or weak, vital or weary. Battered, bruised, or well cared for. So… I suggest we all take another deep breath. Drop our attention to that space high up within our protective ribs. Perhaps place a hand gently there. Breathe again. How is your heart? And what does your heart need today? What is one way you can offer your heart what it needs? I’ll close with this: Today, I feel grateful you are alive, out there somewhere, connecting with these words. We are in this together, us and our hearts. And as poet and psychologist Scherezade Siobhan writes: "We best rescue each other in daily heartbeats." Best wishes - Thorn My Kickstarter campaign for Resistance Matters: Essays on Love and Action launched on Tuesday. It's the only way to preorder this revised, expanded book of essays on our times.
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Hello friends, I took the train yesterday, from northern Oregon to the middle of Washington State, heading for a big reader conference called Lore and Luster, where I'll be selling books and meeting readers for two days. We crossed the Columbia River, and beheld the snow capped beauty of Mount Hood. We passed small old towns and countryside, brick buildings, and stands of trees. Four astronauts just made a broad circuit around the moon, sending home photos of astonishing beauty, and pictures...
Hello friends, Whenever times feel overwhelming, and I’m not sure what to do about it, I return to the basics: prioritizing creativity, going for walks, and local mutual aid. Why? The world always needs more creativity, the healthier I am the better able I am to help, and mutual aid or community service offer tangible, immediate help. The other thing I think about is the importance of building networks, which is a simple thing we all do, every day, whether we realize it or not. Some of us...
Hello friends, When was the last time you paused because something was so beautiful, you needed a moment? When was the last time you were emotionally moved by nature, a painting, a song, a film, a dance? And how often do you make space to welcome beauty in your life? “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” wrote Margaret Wolfe Hungerford. She was speaking of subjectivity. That each of us finds different things—objects, people, places—beautiful. But there’s more to it than simple taste or...