This week I am bowing down to the body.  Our body condition is our first reality and the one that supersedes everything else.  I am reminded of this as I work on our new Positive Community Cures project which trains teens to make organic food for acutely sick people. We have a woman on our staff who has, in her 20s, struggled with cancer. We are bringing food to another woman in her 20s who has lymphoma. One third of everyone you know will have cancer in their lifetime.

Health is the only real currency we have.  It determines the quality of the hours we spend both waking and sleeping and dictates what we are able to do with them. Curing ourselves is the thing that drives most businesses, including mine. And yet, it is ironically also the thing that we most take for granted.  We can’t seem to clearly make the basic connections between what we eat and how we feel, whether we move and sweat and why we are stiff.

And then there are mysterious and seemingly incurable diseases that strike out of nowhere.  Friends of mine are struggling as they watch their daughters’ condition deteriorate under the weight of a disease that is little known and even less understood.  The single NIH study that might give answers has just been cancelled and they are working to get 10,000 signatures on a petition to reinstate the research. If you can take a moment to add your name, you will not only save the lives of people you may not know, but you will be confirming the reality that healing and curing is our only real business in this life.

Bow down to your body and give thanks for the multiple miraculous ways that it makes your life possible. Have compassion for its need to heal and nourish it with the rest,  exercise and nutrition it deserves. Consider it not only a real thanksgiving, but a true homecoming.