Holding Your Soul

And warming our loneliness.

Emily Mason, Underwater Spring

Now more than ever, reading soothes my weary, weepy spirit. Including three key reads for you today, a one-line summary of a full day of silence this past weekend, along with an offering of movement to calibrate your chemistry in under three minutes. Thank you for being here.

First.

Where would we be without Thich Nhat Hanh’s work? It’s the ground under my feet right now. During the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1965, after a bombing destroyed the village of Ben Tre killing almost one thousand innocent civilians of Vietnam, Thich Nhat Hanh overheard an American military man say the unthinkable.

“We had to destroy the town in order to save it.” Such a destructive narrative still drives humans today, as indicated by the fresh hell we are witnessing on our phones. That soldier’s comment prompted Thich Nhat Hanh to write a short poem, entitled “For Warmth”—his sacred words, born of such deep practice, are resetting my nervous system daily.

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