At the end of this year, I notice that I look different from how I used to- about Presence Without Explanation.

Yesterday, I took a walk without words. Without naming what I saw. It was a brief exercise during an online retreat. And immediately the ground, shapes, lines, directions, and texture appeared. Not as a story, but as a presence. As if I were looking like a sculptor or an architect.

That experience stayed with me, perhaps because it reminded me that words are not required for everything to be taken seriously. There is Presence Without Explanation.

Shortly after, I read a book that had been recommended to me. It was heavy, dark, and painful. And suddenly I knew: I don’t need this. No grim stories are required to prove depth.

For a long time, I believed seriousness and heaviness belonged together. But lightness — or light story — does not have to lack seriousness. I am learning more and more clearly that gentleness asks for something else: attention, precision, feeling, and the ability to sense boundaries.

Earlier that day, I came to the same realization in an everyday moment. When children were teasing a duck while there was ice on the water. I spoke to them. They went away. Later, someone passed by with an unleashed dog, and the duck had to fly off anyway. When I walked past their house, the children made mocking sounds, teasing me. I pretended not to hear them.

I didn’t have to fix the world. Only to be there, in that moment.

Perhaps that is what this year has taught me: that I don’t have to express myself more forcefully to stay clear, and that I don’t have to carry everything to be involved.

I close this year trusting that path.

Thank you for reading along,

Erica