right on target

He's always been incredibly wise.
It's not just because he's dying that his words rang with truth.

My response to his query "How are YOU doing?" had been "I feel like I'm on speed. It's impossible for me to 'settle', to be still. I feel SO disconnected. I have to spend time centering myself this weekend and I'm not sure how I'm going to do that."

He looked intently at me and said "It's always harder to hit something that's moving. You might want to be curious about what you're afraid would catch up with you if you stopped running."


Bulls-eye! and I knew, again, precisely why I love this man!

When cases come at me as fast as they have been lately, when every room contains another story filled with pain and horror revealing the worst ways in which human beings treat each other, there's no time to feel, to process... and to be honest, I'm afraid that if I let myself feel, I'd be immobilized by grief and disgust and unable to get done what has to be done.

If I truly let myself take in the pain I see daily, I'd never come back the next day.

And when the days are as long as they've been lately, even when I get home, there's no time to deal with my emotions; there's only time for the most basic of chores.

I need space.
I need quiet.
I need to have my feet make contact with the earth as I walk down a trail.

I need to breathe in more than pain.
I need to feel the sun on my skin and the warmth of a hard rock under my ass and the palms of my hands as I sit and listen to a river - and my own thoughts.
I need to cry.
I need to talk more to God.

I'm headed out to give myself all of that...
trusting that the universe will give me so much more in return.

A heart away from nature becomes hard.
~Standing Bear

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal
and
give strength to body and soul.
~John Muir