Ocean Song

Posted on October 29, 2024 by admin

Places sing calling songs.  Just now, they might be missing their people. We might learn that by allowing ourselves to miss them… In our bone-deep missing, and in our willingness to remember ourselves as worthy of being missed, we could begin to hear [their] songs.

Adam Wilson

I can hear the ocean call to me. Its sound obliterates the noisy thoughts within my head. I breathe easier and relax as waves pull or push the waters away or toward the shore where I sit. Clouds drift above me. The sun is warm. The breeze feels cool. Sometimes the song’s volume and tempo increase as waves angrily crash against the shore and dark clouds approach, and I am forced to seek shelter. The ocean has its moods, and so do I.

I don’t live at the beach, so I cannot physically hear its song every day, and yet it still calls to me. I carry the unique, familiar rhythm deep within me. When I close my eyes and breathe slowly I can hear the ocean singing its song of gather and release. It is like putting a seashell to my ear, a childhood wonder.

Each time I return I feel as if the ocean has been patiently waiting for me. Instinctively, I slip back into the timing of its refrain, lost in the sound of one wave replacing another, like chords in a song. My thoughts are suspended. There is only this moment. All the other moments, past and future, happy and sad, have been tumbled over and over by salty waves until they are so small I no longer notice them. I walk along the beach, picking up little treasures the sea has left behind and put them in my pocket. 

~Lisa Kiel

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Heart-Beat

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Bob Patrick

Have you ever heard your own heart beating? It might have happened in some big, demanding moment.  Maybe you had to engage in some very demanding physical activity (running, lifting, holding, carrying) and when you finished the activity, you could feel your heart beating very fast, very hard, and you could even, for a moment, hear it in your ears. Then, with a little extra breathing, the moment fades and so does the sound of your heart. 

Have you ever intentionally tried to listen for the sound of your own heart? This is a little trickier, but if we get very still and very quiet for a moment, we can often begin to hear our heart beating. Sometimes it helps to lie down to do this. Start first by just paying attention to your breath. Listen to your breath going in, going out, going in, going out.  Soon, you may begin to notice a slight movement in your chest, the feel of your heart beating. Begin to imagine the sound that goes with that felt beat, and before long, you may actually hear your heart beating.

Why do this? Listening to our own heart beating requires us to turn off all of the other competing sounds that surround us all the time. It requires us to draw as close as possible to our physical source of life–our heart beat. And from that point, we are capable of receiving our own heart’s messages to us. We begin to notice what we have been holding there–for safe keeping, for love, for protection, as a wound, as wisdom, and more. The more frequently we practice this kind of heart listening, the easier it becomes, and the more our own hearts will have to say to us. 

~Bob Patrick

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Guidance

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Bob Patrick

In these remaining days before our national election, there are so many voices and messages vying for our attention. If we want to be responsible participants in our democracy, most of us feel like we have an obligation to listen, to understand, and to take in all of this information so that our votes and the other ways we participate in our democracy are meaningful. Doing that, however, can be overwhelming and exhausting. It can leave us feeling lost, hopeless and defeated.

There is a story in the Hebrew scriptures of a man who was known to be a prophet of the God of Israel. His name was Elijah. Although this story was not about democracy and elections and the kind of politics that we are facing, he was deeply involved in the life of his people and their use and abuse of power. He became, at some point, deeply overwhelmed by it all, lost and hopeless, and he sought some way forward for himself. 

The story says that Elijah ran away from all of the chaos to a cave seeking direction, meaning and guidance. His God moved him to go out to the mountain. There, a mighty wind blew so fiercely that it tore rocks off the mountain, but guidance was not there. Then an earthquake struck, but guidance was not found in the earthquake. Then, there was a fire, but guidance was not found in the earthquake. 

There are other stories in the Hebrew scriptures where the Guidance of their God did appear in wind, or in an earthquake, or in a fire. These were ways in which no one involved in the story would have been surprised at the appearance of guidance, but this time, for Elijah, guidance was not found in any of these natural signs.

After the great wind, the earthquake and the fire, there came to Elijah a still, small voice within himself. And when he heard it, he covered his face, and he received the guidance he was looking for. 

Whatever you call it: God, meaning, direction, guidance or something else, in times like these, the overwhelm we feel is real, and it may require us to find a little space where all of the ordinary means of guidance fall away, a place where the voice inside, the one we actually already know, can speak to us.

~Bob Patrick

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Breathing

Posted on October 24, 2024 by admin

Is meditation your friend? I know it should be my friend, but true confession: I am terrible at maintaining a relationship with meditation. I know this is to my detriment. I know all of the benefits of meditation, but I have a very busy mind that sometimes focuses on all the wrong things. Lately, because of the external environment of divisiveness and confusion, I have become embroiled in the daily warfare of information and disinformation. These are uncertain times. The pandemic has taken its toll on our psyches, and I am empathetically feeling all these tensions as they steadily rise.

So what’s a desperate individual to do? I decided that I needed support to stop spinning in what may be and become grounded in what is. While scrolling through my phone apps, I looked at the little category called apps I haven’t used in a while, or something like that, and there sat, lonely and neglected, the app I once used to help me still my mind and go to sleep at night. Come to find out, it also has a good morning program where I can choose to start my day with my meditation coach. 

Long story made short: I opened the app. It was happy to see me, and now in the mornings, I am happy to see it. My coach seems to read my mind. He tells me to avoid judging myself, my feelings or my thoughts. He grades on a curve and already knows all the difficulties I’m facing. His voice, familiar and calming, guides me back to my center. Slowly, I’ve begun to look forward to sitting in my favorite chair, breathing, listening and breathing again. Thoughts, feelings and moments come and go. I keep breathing.

~Lisa Kiel

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Listening to Our Innermost Self

Posted on October 23, 2024 by admin

There is a room that is called the quietest room on earth in a laboratory in Minnesota. It is completely covered in the highest quality acoustic tiles and is a cube suspended inside another cube with springs that reduce outside noises. Even the floor is a suspended mesh over even more acoustic panels. Essentially, when you are inside you experience negative sound.

People who have spent time inside have experienced having their hearing so extremely augmented that they can hear their own blood pumping, lungs breathing, and even their eyes blinking. 

I have never had the opportunity to be in this room, so I can only speculate about the experience from reading other’s accounts. But it seems to be a very impactful experience.

Have you ever been in a loud room and moved away into a quieter one? Have you felt the ringing in your ears? Not heard, but viscerally felt that ringing in your head?

It’s disorienting. 

That’s something most people who have been in the quietest room on earth say. It is disorienting. Able bodied people who plan to spend more than 20 minutes in the room are heavily encouraged to bring a chair with them due to the disorienting and physically dizzying effect of hearing nothing outside of yourself.

Deeply listening to nothing other than the small room of air and your own biological machine.

Deep listening.

Cover your ears as tightly as you can. What can you hear? Do you experience the overwhelming loudness of yourself?

What is inside of you that you don’t always allow yourself to hear? Can you listen deeply to your innermost self? What do you have to communicate?

~Aline Harris

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Is This A Task?

Posted on October 22, 2024 by admin

This past weekend I was struck with a very harsh reality from my family. As we sat down for breakfast Saturday morning I asked if they would be OK if I wrote that morning…. And that invited a deep conversation where my family told me they were worried about me and that they felt they were a task to be placed on my calendar.

In the entire discussion, I sat and listened to them as they expressed their concerns. One was that I don’t look happy when I’m doing the work of the congregation. Another concern was that I look exhausted and tired when I come home, like the church work I do is a chore. But the one that struck me and made me think was that they felt like they were a task. 

I’ve been sitting on this for several days, I don’t want them to feel like a task. Listening deeply to them I want them to be able to come to me and plan things spontaneously, and also know and recognize that the things I do for the congregation I do out of love that these programs and events don’t fade away with no one to plan and organize them. 

This also got me to think deeply about the congregation. Maybe; just maybe, these programs and events need to fall to the wayside if no one is willing to step forward and take them on. Is this the deep listening to the congregation that we need to move into the future on fundraisers and events? Do some things that aren’t as intensive in planning and organizing need to arise? These are questions that I ask myself and although I haven’t asked others, the answer seems to be there.

My family, friends, the congregation, they are not tasks to me. I love doing the work. I don’t love doing the work alone… and now the deep listening comes to me. I’m also not a task, I am not a task for others or myself. I love to help. I love to do things for people, but I don’t love doing it alone, which I do often (unfortunately by my own devices as I get embarrassed to ask others for help). 

I’m working on asking for help, delegating and reminding myself to ask “is this a task for me?”

Candice Carver

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What Was That Noise?

Posted on October 21, 2024 by admin

Driving around the other day, I was hurrying from one errand to the next when a small voice from the car seat in the back spoke up, “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That noise”
“What noise?”
clink
“That noise”
“I think that was the handle of that metal bucket clinking against the bucket.” I replied as we drove over a small bump in the road.
“That was the bucket,” she repeated, letting herself know what the noise was.
clink
“That was the bucket,” she told me. She didn’t want me to worry about what that sound was. That sound that I hadn’t even heard until she had pointed it out.
What else was I missing?


“What was that noise?”
“Was it the bucket?”
“No! The other noise!”
I tried to hear past the sound of the air conditioner, the low hum of the motor, and of course, the metal bucket.
There was someone mowing their lawn nearby. There was a loud motorcycle passing through. There was the rhythmic click of the blinker. Even the sound of my own deep breathing as I dealt with a preschooler’s relentless curiosity. So many noises I had been ignoring.


What noises have you been ignoring?
Just for a moment, think like a preschooler. What is that noise? What about that one? What else can you hear when you are deeply listening?

~Aline Harris

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