Each moment is a new moment,

Each day is a new day. 

Pause. Breathe. Win the moment. 

This mantra that Soul Matter’s Soulful Home packet shares with us this month reminds me of Borris, the spider.  Have you met Borris yet?  He’s been hanging out at your church since our fall Movie Night. Each week he talks with Erin, our Sunday morning assistant and sexton.  Each week he tells her a new place that he would like to observe us from.  He likes to hang up somewhere high, where he has a good vantage point.  One week it was next to the Black Lives Matter banner.  One week it was from our Christmas trees.  Some weeks he has hung out in the chandelier as people greet each other and find their name tags. 

Getting a good vantage point can be hard for us humans sometimes.  Finding that vantage point is so important when we are working to make the world a better place.  This mantra “Pause. Breathe. Win the moment,” is adapted from Charles Oteyza for the National Education Association last year.  Soul matters reflects, “Oteyza offered this so that education advocates who work tirelessly for justice in our education system can ‘ …remain present, impactful and connected, [taking] a moment to pause, recharge, and refocus.’ Doing so, he says, allows us to sustain personal health while continuing to contribute to the justice work that is so important to us.” 

There is so much in this world that we would like to be better, so much that feels too big, too insurmountable.  The biggest challenges are not completed in a single action.  They take the next right action done over, and over, and over, and over again.  

Sometimes we need help getting to a place where we can notice everything.  Like Borris, we need to ask for help.  Tuning into our breath can sometimes be the help we need.  When we breathe with awareness, using something like square breathing or a similar technique, we mark the air going in and out of our bodies, it helps us slow down and feel more grounded.  When we’re grounded, focused, we can more easily choose that next right move, choosing the next action to help us in the moment. Those moments add up.  Together we can do great things. Breathe. 

Yours in the exploring, 

Your Director of Religious Education,

Ebee Bromley