Staying Healthy in Body, Mind and Spirit
As I was driving home from the office earlier this week and listening to Fresh Air on NPR, I was struck by what I heard. Terri Gross was interviewing Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries about his memoir, When Truth is All You Have.
In the episode, Jim was recounting his work to reopen cases of innocent men and women wrongly convicted of murder while he was taking a leave from studying to become an ordained minister. He felt that he was doing the work of God all the while feeling pressured to work faster and harder by the sheer enormity of the work and, in this particular story, a rapidly approaching execution date. In the busyness and urgency of his work, he felt himself drifting away from God. He was not taking time for the things that sustained him - reading scripture, prayer, sitting quietly in contemplation - and he knew that this was not healthy. Yet he didn’t feel good about taking time for himself while knowing that an innocent man’s life hung in the balance.
This got me thinking about the urgency of this moment in history…the global pandemic, our heightened awareness of social injustice and so much more. I recalled the early days of the pandemic…so many questions. Is it safe to go to the grocery store? How long does the virus live on cardboard? Will I lose my job? How am I going to pay next month’s rent? How do I work from home and help my kids with online school? What if we run out of toilet paper? How many people died in California today? What if I get sick?
Four months after our county’s “Shelter in Place” order, it is clear that COVID19 is not going away any time soon. We cannot continue to maintain the frantic pace of early COVID days. It’s simply not healthy to spend so many hours digesting news, research and opinions while being physically isolated from each other. Perhaps we need to “socially distance” ourselves a bit from the “noise” in order to re-discover what is true and good so that we can engage with our world in a way that is healthy and helpful to ourselves and to others.
What are you doing to sustain yourself?
I have heard so many inspiring stories from my patients about what they are doing to sustain themselves and to help their communities during this pandemic. There are first time gardeners eagerly watching their tomatoes ripen and sharing baskets of zucchini with their neighbors. There are families and their dogs walking together in the evening, meeting and getting to know their neighbors and their neighbors’ dogs. Kids are drawing chalk art on the sidewalks…and statements of solidarity and inclusion. People are cooking and baking and making bread from their own sourdough starter. They are ordering take-out from their favorite local restaurant to provide their support. People are hiking and spending time in nature. They are learning to meditate. They are connecting with others in new ways for everything from “cocktail hour” to and AA meetings, to book club, church and dance classes. They are sewing masks. They are volunteering at food distribution sites and delivering groceries to their elderly neighbors.
This is a marathon, not a sprint. Take time every day to do something that sustains you. Then, help someone else. We all have something to give. We are limited only by our imaginations.
What are you doing to sustain yourself?