Dear Friends, Yogis, Lovers of Life,
Happy September to All,
September has always felt like a threshold month to me. Maybe it is the conditioning from all those years of school, maybe it is because I am from a sailing family that cherished Summer so much, maybe it is due to the love affair I have with the flowers in my garden…I find the shift toward Fall a bit challenging!
Even when our lives are no longer shaped by the school calendar, there is something about these first days of September that whisper “change is coming”. Summer is still with here, but the light is changing, the sound of the wind in the trees is a little different, the evenings arrive a little earlier and our routines feel like they are preparing to shift.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what happens when we pause at these thresholds of change instead of rushing across them.
A threshold can be as large as a new season of life, or as ordinary as stepping onto the yoga mat, walking through the door after a long day, beginning a meal, waking in the morning, or taking that first conscious breath.
When we pause, even for just 5 breaths as many of you hear me say often, we have a chance to wake up to the life we are actually living in the moment.
And I’m discovering that gratitude often lives right there, at the threshold, and it is a kind of inherent gratitude that is simply waiting to be noticed as though it is our natural resting state.
This Sunday, September 6, I’ll be leading the 10:00 AM service at Westminster around this theme:
Blessing the Threshold: Crossing into a New Season with Gratitude
We’ll explore threshold moments as a mindfulness practice through reflection, music, silence, meditation, and a few simple experiences together. If this way of beginning September speaks to you, I would love to have some of my yoga and kirtan community there with me.
You certainly don’t need to be a member of the church or identify in any particular religious way to come. My hope is that the morning will feel spacious, contemplative, welcoming, and very much in the spirit of the practices we already share together. Here is a short video that can introduce you to the Unitarian Universalists values. I suspect they will resonate since they are values I think we all aspire to.
And throughout September, perhaps we can experiment with one simple practice:
Pay attention to the thresholds.
Pause, breathe, notice, smile, proceed.
Before entering the next room.
Before starting your car .
Before rolling out your yoga mat.
Before answering the phone.
Before sending an email.
Before eating.
Perhaps that tiny pause at the place where one thing ends and another begins, can become its own kind of sacred ritual, a way of meeting our lives instead of sleepwalking through them.
Please scroll down for details on our Kirtan Jam this coming Sunday @ 5:00 and my weekly yoga class offering.
Sending each of you loving wishes
for peace, health & happiness,
now and always.
With Love & A Deep Bow,
Rev Shelley
Please note Kate Ward will sub for me on Sept 10th.
Come, ease your tension, care for your body and nurture your inner life in a way that feels restorative and inspiring.