Pay Attention To Your Breathing-A note from your Director of Music

When I breathe in,

I’ll breathe in peace.

When I breathe out,

I’ll breathe out love.

Breathe in, Breathe out,

Breathe in, Breathe out

• Sarah Dan Jones

I’ve written about the hymn #1009 before and this month geared towards asking ‘what does it mean to be a people of attention?’ is calling me to write about “Meditation on Breathing” again.  For as the DRE for SoulMatters, Katie Covey, writes “We turn our attention to our breath to find our center. We turn our attention to our breath to find freedom from worry so that we may turn our attention to other people’s pain.”   This time I’ll share the composer’s own reflection on the song found on the blog “Notes from the Far Fringe” (link is external)

“The song has since taken on a life of its own…When folks talk to me about it (like when I sing it when visiting out), they range from parents using it to sing their kids to sleep, adults using it in meditation, hospice choirs. Once, a man told me about how he and his husband had purchased two pigmy goats – they were in the back seat being driven to their new home and making all kinds of noises. The men started singing the chant and the goats calmed down (I often tell that story and note how the chant is multi-species!!).” – Sarah Dan Jones

With full breath and full love,

Your Director of Music – Ebee Bromley

Attention At the Table-From the Desk of your Director of Religious Education

In this month where we will explore what it means to be a people of attention – when’s the last time you noticed who you were eating dinner with?  – when’s the last time you noticed what you were eating?  I mean really noticed.

Starting your dinner with a short meditation or prayer is something that some people and families do  to turn our attention to gratitude for what we have. Here are three examples:

Sent from the families of Boulder Valley UU Fellowship in Lafayette, CO:

“Here’s a grace that Natalie’s kids learned at the UU church in Memphis when they were little (early ‘70’s) and said at home:

May we have eyes that see,

Hearts that love,

And hands that are ready to serve.

Another family shared this grace from school:

The silver rain, the shining sun,

the fields where scarlet poppies run

and all the ripples of the wheat

are in the breads that we do eat.

So when we sit for every meal and

say our grace we always feel

that we are eating rain and sun

and fields where scarlet poppies run.

In our own church in class our young children say this prayer before lighting the chalice you could very well change the word church to home for table use:

This is the church of the open mind

This is the church of the helping hands

This is the church of the loving heart

I’d like to invite you this month, if you have a prayer or meditation you use to email it to director.religious.education@uuberks.org.

With Gratitude for each and everyone of you,

calling my attention

by nadine j. smet-weiss

spiritual director

deluged

by the demands

of the day

flooding forth

fracturing and

fragmenting

my ability

to focus

on anything

at all

i heave a heavy sigh

and that whisp

of breath

calling my attention

to this moment

here

now

becomes

my spiritual practice