Tonight’s illustration acting as prayer…

This might sound so simple. You will feel better if you pick up a pen and put it to paper. Your hands are craving the invitation to move. I am telling you the truth. These times require that we tend our hearts and bodies and minds. Pen and paper can help, really.

We need to tend our energies, not just once in a while. Every single day, several times a day, right now, is a good time to breathe. The stress mounts and the stories confound. Our reality as we know it is shape-shifting. Our bodies and brains struggle to know how to be. But I will tell you this.

Breathing happens when the pen moves. Right now, you can pick up a pen and begin to let your energy flow out the end in shapes, marks, and sparks. It doesn’t matter what you draw. Just move the pen as if it has a life of its own. Let your pen be a wild pony.

You can even close your eyes. As you do this, you say to yourself, or something like, I am releasing any energy that is trapped inside of me that does not belong to me. I am letting go of what I am holding so there is more space to love and learn and be present.Right now as I move this pen, I become more myself again. It is happening now. Right now, you can pick up a pen and begin to write what comes. It doesn’t matter what you write. Just move the pen and let the words fall out the end. Watch the end of the pen as it moves on the paper.Pretend it is a thread emerging from within the inner tapestry of your body that must be stitched into creation now. And as you write with your magical thread, say to yourself, or something like, The energy inside of me that feels impossible to hold is being released right now. As I move this pen, I regulate myself,I care for myself, and I know there is enough space to love right now. I choose presence right now. I am here. I am alive and I love and I’m becoming more myself again and it is happening right now. My mother used to say we can write a poem anytime.Just pick ten things right around you and make a list and string them together like beads. Oh, won’t you… Right now, you can pick up a pen and let the energy flow out. Your body isn’t made to hold all of these images and stories and headlines.

Picking up the pen allows them to spill out of the too tight places and squished up, tangled up, emotional landscapes. They need light and pens and paper. The sorrows around us, it is all happening, but it did not have to happen. And we grieve because we know this isn’t how it is supposed to be,but it is how it is right now. The desire to help and serve can feel maddening because sometimes we feel helpless. Self-expression turns helplessness into life force. We are not helpless. We are helpful beings. We are walking each other home. We remember it will not always be this way,

Yet the turn in the story toward what our heart desires isn’t in sight yet. Right now. Will you pick up a pen and just keep that energy moving? Don’t let it freeze in place. Don’t let it get stuck. Those images and energies, they don’t belong to you. You cannot hold them all inside.It won’t help anyone for you to try to hold the pain of the world. You can love just as much without digesting the pain. Your empathy is being overtaken by the collective suffering, and that is understandable, but, dear one, right now, you can call it back.

Mark the page with your truth, your shadow, your angst, your love, your hope, your optimism. You know, the optimism that won’t go away?Bring it, bring it, bring it, bring you. The page does not fear your grief. The pen does not resist your pain. When I say you might feel better by picking up the pen...

It is not so that we don’t see what is happening or to bypass reality. Rather, it is an invitation to feel just a little tiny bit better so actions are more clear and energy is more available and heart is not defended. It is hard to not have a defended heart, the pen and the paper open.

Consider saying this or something like this. Right now I call my energy back to myself. Right now I release holding what isn’t mine to hold. Right now I love with my whole heart without taking on someone else’s pain. Right now I pick up the pen and self-express the impossible.

If this gets me through the next day or hour or minute, So be it. If this clears my mind and shows me the actions I need to take, that is good enough. If this keeps me from being frozen and numb, I will take it. This pen and this paper hold my prayer.

Dear One, your hands are craving the invitation to move. Dear ones, my prayers flow together with yours in this great river of life. Tonight, as I draw the elemental feminine rising up from stardust dreaming, I express my pain with a pen. I am stardust dreaming of becoming earth and tree and bird.I am stardust dreaming of becoming water, sparking life into creation through lightning. I am stardust dreaming of becoming fire, the sun shining on smooth skin. I am stardust dreaming of becoming the sky. The clouds rise up from my mind. The sun and the moon and the stars are in my pen and in my paper.

Without the sun and the rain and the tree, there would be no paper, no pen. Everywhere I look,I am stardust dreaming of returning home to myself. When this world has become too dense for beauty to reveal herself, then I remember I am stardust dreaming of becoming me, and that is enough.

One day long ago, a star dreamed of having an identity, and that identity is me. When I create, I remember the ancient stardust that I am. ”We are all cooling sacks of stars” says Sue Hoya Sellers.Prayers and candles and pen and paper from Minneapolis and all that are hurting for so many reasons.

It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is. And so we must choose to continue on in a good way, loving, healing, and becoming. Start us dreaming. Thich Nhat Hanh says, if you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper.

Without a cloud, there will be no rain. Without rain, the trees cannot grow, and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist.

Sending love from my heart to yours. Can you feel it?

Shiloh Sophia

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