Anyone else been particularly attentive to how weariness is showing up in your life? And how this moment/day/week may call for rest? I have!
Even as we reflect on Rest and celebrate Pride month, we have much going on in the life of our congregation.
Please bring photographs of a father figure(s) in your life to place on the altar on Sunday. We will celebrate Father's Day during our children's time and remember our father figures in our prayers.
We are also marking Pride Month reflecting on an expansive/extravagant welcome to people of all abilities, and will be focusing on how abilities and needs change as we age. In other words, part of what we will be celebrating is our elders and the particular gifts they bring and what extravagant welcome looks like for our elders.
Following worship, we're having a new member's class, and we will welcome new members on kick-off Sunday, September 8th!
And, as we think about rest, resting can look like (from Tricia Hersey "Rest is Resistance"):
Closing your eyes for ten minutes.
A longer shower in silence.
Meditating on the couch [or floor or lounge chair] for twenty minutes.
Daydreaming by staring out of a window.
Sipping warm tea before bed in the dark.
Slow dancing with yourself to slow music.
Experiencing a Sound Bath or other sound healing.
A Sun Salutation.
A twenty-minute timed nap.
Praying.
Crafting an altar for your home.
A long, warm bath.
Taking regular breaks from social media.
Not immediately responding to texts and emails.
Deep listening to a full music album [or even just to one song].
A meditative walk in nature.
Knitting, crocheting, sewing, and quilting.
Playing a musical instrument.
Deep eye contact.
Laughing intensely.
And as Hersey writes: "Let our rest be a resurrection. Let the veils be lifted so we can feel, see, taste, and smell the power of our rested selves. May we realized a full mental shift must be made to reimagine and reclaim rest as holy. May we be excited by the impossible and move through any cynicism or hopelessness to emerge on the other side steady with love, persistence, and hope. Rest can save, sustain and prop us up when we feel weak and our back are against the wall.... May the portal of rest be our refuge. May we go there often."
