A New Year

This is a message from a dear inspiring teacher, Erin Loecher. Her work is beautiful and deep. May these words sink in as you read them, as they did to me... May the maker of your path be the Highest Truth, may you allow your steps to be lead by the One true Spirit. May you stop trying on your own. May you be able to let go your self-righteousness and let go all search for self-merits. Instead, soften and surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Thank you to be here and take your time to pass by.

I pretty much think you’re fine just the way you are.⠀ ⠀

Sure, you might benefit from a crash course in assertiveness. It might do you some good to cut the sugar, to read the classics, to schedule yourself a detox bath twice a week.⠀ ⠀

But it might not.⠀ ⠀

It might just make you feel gloriously defeated when you fall into bed at the end of the night to find Catcher In The Rye gathering dust (again).⠀ ⠀

It might offer the false assumption that you are what you do, that you’re only as strong as your weakest habit, that you’re incapable of change. I don’t believe this to be true. I think there is inherent worth in change, and I think there is inherent worth in the decision NOT to change.I think there is a certain beauty in taking stock of yourself, in peering into your own green eyes, in surveying the wrinkles and the grays and your innermost imperfections and saying to you and you alone: You know, NOT BAD.⠀ ⠀

Perhaps you’re still sensitive, still a thin skin. You still eat too much cheese. You still forget to exfoliate. You still need an Introvert Time Out at family functions. You still can’t multi-task, still haven’t mastered a yoga headstand, still haven’t learned all of the words to We Didn't Start the Fire. Maybe you weren’t meant to yet. ⠀

Maybe you weren’t meant to at all. Maybe you were given your precise body, your very nose, that freckle on your left knee, as little more than a means to wander and watch and observe something larger than yourself – flawed eyes in a flawed world. Perhaps this isn’t about you, not really. (Perhaps it never was.)⠀ ⠀

In a month where we’re encouraged to pick apart bits of ourselves, may we step back and see the landscape we're given. May we resist the arrival checkpoint, plunge deep into a sea of grace. For ourselves.⠀

And mostly, for each other.⠀

Happy New Year, friends. —Erin Loecher