Dear Ones,
It is good to be home. My trip east to see friends and family, to experience still-beloved landscapes in Buffalo and Pittsburgh and Elk County, PA, was all that I could have wished for. And much like when I am here in Mankato, I spend my time cultivating relationships and practicing, in the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, being native to the place where I am. My hope for you is that you, too, are cultivating relationships and practicing being native to this beautiful place.
Here are a few of my thoughts on the subject. Cultivating relationship: reaching out to others in curiosity and care, being yourself wholly with others, allowing others to reach to you in curiosity and care and honesty. Practicing being native: caring for the earth on which you live and work, honoring the gift of life as part of the beings that compose our material reality, enjoying and celebrating what is before you.
I give you today my daily photo out my window, through which I cultivate and practice. I would love it if you sent me a photo representing how you do that, too, 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