Sunday
When even two or three of us gather in the name of truth, honesty, and love, in the name of courage, compassion, and kindness, we find ourselves feeling joined by another presence—the presence of Christ, the way, the truth, and the life.
—Brian McLaren
Monday
Contemplative practices—both solitary and communal—help us resist conformity with wisdom and courage.
—Brian McLaren
Tuesday
We must form squads of love and make a path through together … no matter how fearsome the mob. Only a community—the band that refuses to join the rabble—can keep us from going completely over the edge.
—Diana Butler Bass
Wednesday
It may not be in our power to determine how things will unfold, but it is in our power to decide how we respond. It is in our power to hold on to the practices that nourish us, inform us, and give us courage.
—Adam Bucko
Thursday
The exterior work of social justice is only as strong as the interior work that births and fuels it. Storytelling, listening, movement, and music all represent the gentle, interior healing necessary to empower the hard work of social change.
—Liz Walker
Friday
Somehow our occupation and vocation as believers must be to first restore the Divine Center by holding it and fully occupying it ourselves.
—Richard Rohr
Week Fourteen Practice
Resting Back and Trusting the Unknown
Buddhist teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo offers an embodied meditation to calm our nervous systems in times of stress and unknowing:
In a sense, our culture, our society is dissolving. We are collectively entering the chrysalis, and structures we have come to rely on and identify with are breaking down. We are in the cocoon and we don’t know what the next phase will be like. Learning to surrender to the unknown in our own lives is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown.
To begin the practice, find a comfortable position, sitting, standing, or lying. Connect with your body and how it’s making contact with the chair or the floor. Allow yourself to rest back in some way and really feel the support of whatever is holding you.… Every time you breathe out, let your body rest even more into the support of the Earth.
Allow your face to soften, releasing the forehead, the muscles around the eyes, the jaw …
Let the tongue rest in the mouth …
Be aware of the shoulders and as you breathe out, let the shoulders soften …
Bring attention to the chest and belly, allow them to release and soften on the next exhale …
Notice your arms and hands, with the next exhale let them grow a little heavier, releasing tension …
Feel your legs and feet, as you exhale release, soften, and let go …
Feel your whole body now as you inhale and exhale, allowing the whole body to soften and release its weight even more onto the Earth.…
You can bring this quality of resting back into your daily life. When you notice yourself leaning into the future, tensing up, trying to predict what will happen, straining to figure out what to do, whether on your own or with others, see if you can actually physically rest back. Open up the front of your chest, let your arms hang by your sides, and lean backwards slightly. This can support your mind to rest back, release, and let be, even for a short moment and to whatever degree you are able.
Reference:
Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons on Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption (Parallax Press, 2021), 22–23, 25.
Image credit and inspiration: Paul Tyreman, Untitled (detail), 2018, photo, United Kingdom, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We walk forward on our own pathway through the sand and stones, aligned and inspired by Spirit.
