Dear Friends,

On Sunday mornings following our meditation, reflection, and prayer, I invite you to share a time of stillness together. I don’t ask for silence, for silence is something on the outside of us, environmental, beyond our control in so many ways. Can you make the traffic stop, the dog cease her barking, the child finish their marvelous and incessant questions? I can’t. And as a child, I loathed the adult control of my voice—the “Be quiet!” The “speak only when spoken to.” The “children should be seen and not heard.” I personally do not like to be silenced or to feel that I am being silenced. Culturally, whole swathes of folx feel they are never listened to. And often, by the “powers-that-be,” they aren’t. Silence can feel like death.

I can’t make silence happen. I don’t even want to. But I can bring myself to stillness. Or, at least, I can try to bring myself there. Stillness offers me respite from myself—from my busy hands and over-active mind. Stillness offers a moment of rest, the possibility of doing nothing at all for a moment. And when I manage to still myself, I also find the stillness in the world between all the noise and distraction and responsibility. The stillness in me resonates with the stillness in the world, and, if only for a shared moment, I am in peace.

May you friends, find moments of respite, rest, and peace in the snatches of stillness within your life as you remember, today and every day, that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so, and may it be so.

Blessings, Rev. Rita