Unprecedented Times Need True Presence

Today I am grateful for family, friends, and faith. I am also grateful for my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual capabilities.

These gratitudes are my sources of strength; the connections, love, light, practices, and habits that help energize me and keep priorities straight. In this unprecedented and unsettling time we are facing with Coronavirus and all that it is impacting, these become even more important.

There are global concerns, and national, community, family, individual ones too. Things are evolving rapidly in recent days and there is a sense of powerlessness that comes with all the uncertainty.

True presence and staying in today are always wise guides, even more so in times like these.

Consider this quote from Howard Thurman:

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart 

giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.

It is a challenge to be still and quiet when so much information is coming at us and our sense of normalcy feels shaken, but in that still quiet is where we regroup and move forward. That beats staying stuck and spinning in fear of the unknown. Strength, courage, and hope emerge in a faithful pause. 

There is much we don't know in this moment. The next hours, days, and weeks will reveal themselves one at a time. We will each manage better, and be of better service to the wider cause, by staying right here, right now as best we can.

Unprecedented times call for us to stay grounded. Gratefulness grounds us and is always possible. 

True presence begins with this very breath.