Month: January 2021 (Page 2 of 2)

New Year’s Resolutions

January 14, 2021 /

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Last week we asked you to share one goal that you have for yourself for the new year. Here is what you told us:

 

  • 2021 is the year of the Ox who is the slowest animal in the Chinese Zodiac reminding us to go slowly and exercise patience. So I am going to try to follow the lead of the Ox in practicing mindful patience, not expecting fast or easy
  • Complete at least two of the three publications for family I have in stage 3 (of 4). I CAN do this!!
  • Create!
  • Daily meditation
  • Down-size physical stuff!!
  • Eat better & lose weight
  • Exercise
  • Find positivity when it gets hard.
  • Get back to a normal life.
  • Get back to working with a nutritionist for eating a healthier diet.
  • Get focused & organized! 😅
  • Get more involved with birding.
  • Get strong! Time to take my fitness to the next level
  • Get vaccinated and feel better.
  • Get vaccinated.
  • Have fun! I had almost no fun during 2020 thanks to COVID and not being able to live as I normally do.  I intend to do some limited traveling and bike tours during 2021.  And to re-paint my house!  Just a small (huge) undertaking!
  • Have more patience
  • I commit to being an intentional listener to others. I love to talk but will aspire to listen more. Permission given to nag if I stumble.
  • I feel fairly well informed about white privilege and racism, but my goal is to read more deeply and become more knowledgeable.
  • I just moved to Vail- got job at Shaw Cancer Ctr- I’m in Heaven!
  • I want to work on ways to get Congress to expand and improve Medicare for everyone in our country.
  • I would like to be able to help the community out as much as I can while still staying safe until the time I can get a vaccine.
  • Improve my diet for overall health.
  • Just focus on the present: Get through the day and the week and have an award waiting there afterward, not matter how small.
  • Just keep my eye on the present: make it through the day and the week.
  • Keep hoping I can believe the majority of Americans are decent people. Keep attempting to be kind.  Not let my bubbling anger and hate steal my joy and color who I am.
  • Letting go of sugar. Finding new internal footing.
  • Make time for play and fun activities
  • My goal is to make a concerted effort to reach out to people who may need some extra attention vs just letting it by chance land in my lap.
  • My goals are to significantly reduce my family’s carbon footprint and find out ways to promote truth in our country.
  • My personal goal is to continue to dig deep into my personal spiritual practice so that I can be part of the solution – not just a spectator or worse.
  • Not original but: better eating, more exercise and less weight. I am going to learn how to drive a mobile home safely!
  • Practice and encourage kindness.
  • Sell my company.
  • Send real handwritten birthday greetings to friends and family instead of, or in addition to, via social media.
  • Spread deep kindness – great book I’m reading!
  • Stay in a learning mindset. Every two weeks, actively do something that pursues deep learning (like participating in a book club).
  • Stay in the upright position (not fall & break a hip). And keep smiling.
  • Stress management!
  • Help my teen kids get through everything.
  • Take a walk-talk with my spouse every day practical, hopefully adding a dog to the equation.
  • To bring attention to every judgmental thought. Of course, I won’t be able to meet that standard, but with ongoing intention I think I have a shot at changing my internal environment and, often, my way of relating.
  • To finally get unpacked in my new apartment and get some furniture.
  • To get my health back in to a total body of well being
  • To have more joy in my life
  • To practice compassion and deep listening towards myself and others. To listen for what my soul has to say about the next steps of my life.
  • To refrain from giving people advice/suggestions that they didn’t request. Thanks and Happy 2021!
  • To remember to use the practices that work for me: yoga, journaling, exercise, intentional prioritization of tasks. Includes carving out quiet time for myself each day.
  • To stay in better touch with some friends with whom I chat with a few times a year. Would like to be closer to them.
  • To take grandkids on a road trip next summer to a national park.
  • Trying to be a better person in each moment that I live
  • Trying to remember that accountability is love in action, and constantly feeling off-balance is not necessarily a bad thing.
  • “Two goals: 1) Simplify 2) Be more congressive (working together)”
  • Walking strenuously / hiking every day

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Changing the world in ways too small to fail

January 8, 2021 /
The start of 2021 is not a usual “new year.” We can’t make plans in the usual ways, and we can’t count on it as a new beginning the way we usually think about January.
 
Instead, we find ourselves in a unique in-between space, as we look back at the incredible change and challenges of 2020, and look ahead to the uncertain hope of the year ahead.  
 
Looking back, we feel the loss, disappointment, and heartache of all we’ve experienced. 
 
Looking ahead, we try to imagine how the vaccine will change our world once again. We also feel the ways our hearts have broken open over the past year into new understandings and new becoming.  
 
This liminal space offers us the chance to listen to the shifts in ourselves, and in the world – all these lessons of the past and the shape of our lives, today, and to find there our place in the great unraveling, and the great turning. The call that beckons to each of us to do our part to bring into being a new way – not just any one person, but for all of us, collectively.  
 
Rather than great heroic acts or tidal wave shifts, this emerging way of being and beckoning call is made manifest in the ordinary, everyday smallest moves of our real lives. Moves that are too small to fail. Barely noticeable on their own. Yet over time, they spiral out across family systems, across communities, across all of life. Leading us to our most authentic self.  Partnering with Life in a greater sense of abundance for all. 
 
Why Tiny Revolutions? 
This is not the usual new year. We can’t make plans in the usual ways. And yet this is not just a time to hold our breath and suffer through. We’re remembering the ways we started 2020 and feel all over again the pain and the shocks of the year as it hit us. And, it’s not over yet. 
 
So, we need to lean into this natural time of reflection. We need to intentionally go inward, to dig in (rather than numb out*), to discern and to take small, gradual steps towards the future self and the future life that is emerging. (*Although if you are in a place where you can only numb out, then we invite only your self-awareness and self-compassion for this state of your heart and time of life.) 
 
We need a way to make sense of where we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going.  Instead of making plans, we need to develop practices and discern guideposts that will help us live with intention and accountability and in covenant regardless of how the future shifts in the days to come. We need to lay down tracks that will help us move towards what we love, consider what we want to keep from this time, and ground us with intention in who we are becoming.
 

With love,

Rev. Gretchen

Anger, Heartbreak, and Chaos at the Capitol

January 7, 2021 /

Usually when I write a post like this, especially in this last year, I start with a wish that I hope that this finds you doing well. But tonight, I am hoping that this finds you angry, and deeply disturbed.

 

Because what happened today in our country should anger and disturb all of us.

Thousands of rioters pressed in on the capitol this afternoon, scaled the walls, broke out the windows, banged on the door of the chamber as they attempted to certify the election results. A shoot out on the House floor had Representatives crouching and donning gas masks. The crowd called out for Vice President Mike Pence, as his willingness to perform his constitutional duty was seen as a final betrayal. Afterall, that’s what the President had said in the rally immediately preceding these appalling acts of domestic terrorism.

 

I’m sure many of you were busy with other things throughout your day so if you haven’t had a chance to see videos, or read or listen to the reports, take the time. This day will go down in history, and it should. If it happened in any other country, our leaders would be clearly condemning the attempted coup.

 

In his statement, former President Barack Obama described how we should not fool ourselves into believing today’s events were a total surprise. “For two months now, a political party and its accompanying media ecosystem has too often been unwilling to tell the truth – that this was not a particularly close election and that President-Elect Biden will be inaugurated on January 20. Their fantasy narrative has spiraled further and further from reality, and it builds upon years of sown resentments. Now we’re seeing the consequences, whipped into a violent crescendo.”

 

That it should not surprise us does not mean, however, that it should fail to move us. As I write this, Congress has returned to do its work, and while I agree that this is ultimately important for its signal of the persistence and resilience of our institutions and our country, I can’t help imagine the trauma that all those who were ducking in aisles and contemplating fighting their way out through the violence had experienced earlier in the day.

 

They and we all need to take the time to feel the fear, the uncertainty, the shock, and the anger that this experience inspires in all who would affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. An affirmation that faces attack by all those who would seek to undermine the results of a repeatedly proven fair and free election. And an affirmation that we start to question when we’ve watched federal police in riot gear confront protesters for racial justice all year and yet today, protestors were met instead with police ready to take selfies with them as they desecrated the nation’s capitol.

 

We need to make space for all of our feelings so that we can allow our fear and our anger to keep us connected to – rather than distant from – what we love.

 

Anger is a complicated emotion, and we’ve seen today how it can often lead us to danger and division. But that’s why we need to give anger its rightful due. Because behind our anger lives our heartbreak. Heartbreak for our nation. Heartbreak for our shared humanity. Heartbreak for people of color who didn’t need the last few years to know about the failed American dream. Heartbreak for the real lives (and this year we see so explicitly, the deaths) that are impacted when the love for power overshadows a commitment to democracy.

 

What heartbreak lives behind your anger?

 

If you remember the interview I had with Florence Field a few months ago, she spoke in the end about the fragility of democracy. Today we saw her words play out in more explicit pressing ways than many of us have ever seen in our lifetimes. And so my prayer this evening is that we will let the heartbreak that drives our anger remind us of our deepest values.

For me, that starts with reminding us that part of what it means to affirm the inherent worth of every person is to hold them accountable for their behavior. Whether we’re talking about rioters storming the capitol or the President who incited them.

 

And it includes nudging us to remember that don’t just commit in our faith to affirming our first principle, but also our fifth. In the days to come, may we each work to protect, renew and strengthen our democracy. Not because it is a perfect institution – and certainly not because our country has yet shown itself as a perfect example of its best. But because it offers us a way to live out our inherent worth and dignity within a diverse and even divided community. And it will not thrive without our diligence, our commitment, and our vision.

 

Though I started this post with a wish for disturbance, ultimately I hope you are finding the tools and the resources to move through this uncertain time with strength and resilience. As I said last Sunday, we have shown this year that we can persevere through great challenge and find through it all a persistent joy. Please reach out if you are struggling a little more than usual, and know that you are not alone.

 

With love, and in faith,

 

Gretchen

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