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“Attention” Mary Oliver tells us, “is the beginning of devotion.”
Devotion to what?
To what are we devoting our attention, our energy, our time?
Our minds wander and fixate on pasts that haunt us with nostalgia or regret or, more likely, a bittersweet combination of the two. The future distracts us with its blinding uncertainty and anxiety.
The present is often no easier. We are weighed down under the burden of expectations, our own explicit expectations and the darker ones that kept us safe enough as children.
How do we live well in the here and now? How do we find wholeness in lives that are fractured with pain and struggle? How do we pay attention and mine for gold in these lives that groan under the pressure of expectations? Who would want to live in the present when it is often so unbearably painful?
There is real pain here, but there is real beauty here, too.
As a therapist and as a person, I know that our memories are faulty. We almost remember things as better or worse than they actually were. We underestimate our ability to handle a hazy future.
The present moment is the only one we can know for certain.
Here, today, is the place where your pre-schooler says “I love you” completely unbidden a dozen times a day. The dog lays his soft head in your lap in the morning when the house is quiet. Today you laugh out loud at a meme your best friend sent you at lunch. Here is where you notice that there are blackberries growing alongside the weeds right in your very own neighborhood.
This newsletter exists to draw our attention to the good, true and beautiful here in our ordinary lives and foster a deep devotion to what we love.
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What people are saying
“Reading Krista’s words is like having a drink with your best friend who happens to be a therapist and has just enough trauma to make her funny and relatable.” - Kelsie Stites
