It’s time to center joy

Recently, I’ve been (re)exploring the practice of savoring, which remains just as integral to what I do and how I live as when I first established The SAVOR Project several years ago. If anything, my understanding of what it means to savor has deepened into a taproot that also branched out into many other areas of my life. Especially spiritually and creatively. In ways that I’m still struggling to define. Not surprising, given what I’ve lived through, what we’ve all lived through, and what lies ahead.

On days when I become lost in my own thoughts or in my own troubles (yeah, that’s pretty much every day), I turn to the nature poets to lead me out of the woods. Or back into the woods, or into the garden, if that’s what I need. Ross Gay is one of my favorites. I adore everything he’s written, from a series of letters exchanged with Noah Davis in The Sun, to his collection of essays The Book of Delights, and his newest book Inciting Joy.

“The way I think of joy is that it is what is luminous about us when we’re helping each other, when we’re holding each other through our sorrows.”

Ross Gay

I need to step away from this screen now to do (be) other things, but trust me when I say that he’s a writer worth reading. You can check out his recent Seattle Times interview here.

Or if you catch this blog post in time, I hear there’s still digital passes (FREE) available to tonight’s reading through Seattle Arts & Lectures. I’ll be in the audience, savoring every word and listening to a master gardener of joy.