What Is True?

"And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise." -Phillipians 4:8, New Living Translation

Since school dismissed for the year, mornings have become mine again. There's real space to unfold, slowly and fully, in my own head and in my own home.  Early mornings are filled with that sappy kind of sweetness that's easy to miss when hurrying and rushing to begin are a practice. I haven't found an alarm necessary in months.  My days now start somewhere between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. - my body, more specifically the things happening in my head and heart, decide when.

I roll out of bed, pulling myself together in familiar dark morning shadows. I whisper a good morning here and plant a kiss there, and shuffle down the hallway. Push the shutters apart, crack the kitchen window. Open the patio door. Start the coffee pot. Light a candle and incense. Get the diffuser going. Welcome the new and fresh energy into the house, into me. I love this part. This welcoming part. The getting still part. This space to talk to myself, my God and my Ancestors part.

There's so much possibility in the breaths taken here.

I've had to acknowledge that the pandemic and everything it brought about did a number on me. I want to say it crushed me. The reality is it did that and more to so many of us. I've grown weary of looking at all 2020 (and on) pressed out of me. Thinking about it. Talking about it. Holding it. Trying to figure out how to let it go. Turning it over in my mind. Petting it. Attending to it. Worrying about it.

I'm tired of heaviness, blame, selfishness, conflict, and the cost of...everything.

Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable.

The sun is starting to position herself for viewing. I step out onto the deck. The cool wood feels good beneath my bare feet. At the end of a yawn, I swallow a mouthful of life. Isn't it incredible how wonderful a breath of fresh air tastes? How it feels inside you and all it communicates? And how one really delicious inhale and exhale can save your life and give you the hope to keep reaching for more?