Overheard at my house yesterday: “Even if aliens are real, I still have stuff due this week.”
Prayers of sticktuitiveness and then celebration for Mason and all those completing courses of study this May and June!
As a visiting Deacon (a volunteer one at that) May has been my month to share a devotional. It’s been an action-packed month full of anniversaries, milestones, endings, the continued flow of information, mis- and dis-information and imagining plans for what’s next. For too long, we were steeped in grief for all we’ve lost until one day after another many of us felt a freeing relief at being vaccinated. We’re rusty and awkward but filled with joy at returning to hugs! Then we look around and know that our position is still precarious. Leaders falter in providing guidance while some old pieces of governance are being restored and imaginations are turned to reinvention of the most broken parts. Will there be a reckoning? A rebirth? One minute it’s Mother’s Day and then it’s the anniversary of George Floyd’s death. Somehow in the news headlines, folks who ascribe to the nation’s most popular conspiracy theory are rejecting reports that many individuals in our government have known about documented UFO activity for a long time?!
What has become of us and what will we do next? All of my pandemic thinking boils down to this anxiety. It’s a knot inside that doesn’t allow for movement, sometimes even for breathing. I often try to sit with the uncertainty not as anxiety, but as a point of observation on a daily spectrum. Sit quietly and practice breathing in and out. Let the questions evolve into a grounding of what I know matters and a stretching into my imagination of the best version of myself, ourselves. Breathe in. Let the questions go. Breathe out. Let the answers go. Breath in Hebrew is Ruach; a word I’ve kept with me since a favorite class in college on the Bible as literature. Wind, breath, spirit. Ruach. It needs to move.
Overheard at my house today: “Our bodies are matter which has formed into tools used by the universe to experience itself.”
A prayer about breath as our most sacred tool…
God, we need and crave support to continue on our journey
Covid has gripped us, fragmented us, stolen our breath
Help us reclaim our path, renew our covenant, and reconnect with you and each other
Help us to know that the support we need and crave comes from our breath and your spirit
Working together
Being together
Amen