Awakening
You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with [someone], and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating… Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. ~Anais Nin
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
~Rumi
We all know what it was like. The world was alive once. When we were little. The trees whispered words. Animals spoke to us with their eyes. Playgrounds could become castles. The stars somehow told us we were special. Life could speak.
The magic wasn’t imprisoned in childhood. We’ve all had adult moments when we’ve “come alive” — wonderfully lost in our work, our creativity, or a kiss. Time both stopped and was set on fire.
It happened as well in moments of alignment. When our inner life and outer life fell into step. We were finally “us.” Everything was clear, and enough.
There it was in the flower too. Actually, in so many simple things: freshly baked bread, blackberries, a deer standing still staring at us without blinking, our children laughing. For those fleeting moments, we lacked nothing. We felt gifted beyond comprehension. We knew what “rich” really means.
And it’s not that these moments of awakening don’t still happen. There’s just something about how we’ve got things organized that places a fog between them and us. As Anais Nin says, we believe we are living, but really aren’t. It’s surprising actually — how easily we let dullness sink in, how often we allow life to be muted.
Welcome to Awakening, our Soul Matters theme for the month of April. As we begin to emerge from the 2-year long period of hibernation we’ve been in due to the pandemic, we will continue to explore spiritual practices for leadership that can bring real life and vitality back into our lives together. On April 10th we will have a special Stewardship Sunday service exploring the spiritual practice of “faithful risking.” This will be followed by Easter Sunday on the 17th and something yummy from your Worship Team on the 24th!