Slowing Down, Taking Care
Meditations and Comments By The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
October 10, 2004
(Hymn 90: “From All the Fret and Fever of the Day”)
(Responsive Reading 540: “The Peace of Autumn,” by Tagore)
--Source: Sing the Living Tradition
Introduction:
Today, instead of talking a lot about slowing down and taking care, we will slow down and take care. The format for this service, starting after we celebrate community, is to sing, to read, to meditate, and to reflect on a few comments on my part. I will guide the meditations briefly, then we’ll flow into silence for about three minutes, after which I will ring the bell and speak for a short time, adding to your reflections and so you don’t have to do anything energetic for a while longer. After that, we’ll repeat the cycle: sing a hymn, listen to or read a reading, meditate, and reflect on comments. Hopefully, in this way, we will slow down, go deeper, and take care.
(Ring Bell)
Focusing Meditation:
Now we slow down and find our peace.
Now we breathe deeply
in the quiet of this place.
Feet flat on the floor,
back straight,
breathe in a sense of healing,
breathe out all tension, fear and worry.
Sense the people on each side of you,
all around, breathing deeply,
slowing down, creating peace.
Be here now.
(3 minutes)
(Ring bell)
Comments: “Slowing Down”
A few weeks ago, at our Board meeting check-in, we went around the group to share how we were doing. “Don’t ask!” said one person. “I’m up to my ears,” said another. One person pointed to a bottle of Pepsi on the table beside her papers and said, “This is my dinner!” And on around the room. Not one person wasn’t frazzled, anxious on some level, barely there. When it was my turn, I said, “I ate my broccoli and rice in ten minutes, but I’m here! How come, when you’re in a hurry, broccoli somehow takes forever to chew?”
Slowing down is really hard to do the way our society is set up now-a-days. Work expectations and requirements, family demands, over-committing to volunteer activities out of excitement at the thought of being wanted and involved, not thinking of the other demands that have a prior hold on us. Suddenly, we have no time left to just be -- be quiet, be with ourselves, be mindful of the beauties around us.
I’m tempted, sometimes, to move to France. Not because they argued against the war in Iraq, but because they have a four-day work week so everyone has three days off to drive down to the Riviera and lie on the beach. At least, that’s the fantasy I have.
Where’s our ministry of being, being present to ourselves and others? Why do so many people work while on vacation, instead of being present to nature, to family and friends, to sunshine, rain, seasons, the spirit of life that yearns to be noticed and appreciated?
But we don’t have to be off work to slow down. When I went on retreat at Green Gulch Zen Center, I worked half days in the community, stacking wood or chopping vegetables in the kitchen. Every now and then the leader of the activity would go over and ring a bell, at which time we would pause in whatever we were doing to be mindful, to bring our minds back to the here and now, to feel the texture of the wood or the cool wetness of the cucumber and to appreciate those around us. This slows us down to be present, and we can do it anytime, anywhere. You don’t need a bell to remind you, but if you do, your PDA has an alarm. It only takes a minute to pause, breathe deep, appreciate the spirit of life that surrounds you and is you, and then bring back into your work that sense of peace.
(Hymn 352: “Find a Stillness”)
(Reading: “Our Quiet Time,” by Nancy Wood)
(Ring Bell)
Deepening Meditation:
Listen to the stillness and
bring yourself back into yourself.
Remember your posture.
Remember to breathe.
Breathe in the sense of healing.
Breathe out the tensions that have returned
over the last few minutes.
Let go the frown on your face,
relax your cheeks, your jaw,
drop your shoulders.
Let the half-smile come to your lips
bringing the peace of the Buddha.
Let the stillness carry you deeper into your being,
even as you stay mindful of all that surrounds you,
remembering to breathe.
Feel where you are in your body.
Are you out of balance?
Or are you centered?
Seek your essence, your spirit, your harmony.
And breathe.
(3 minutes)
(Ring bell)
Comments: “Being Here Now”
Every time we board an airplane we have to listen to the attendant go through the list of what we call “safety measures.” One safety measure has to do with when the cabin loses pressure. Those little oxygen masks come down out of the ceiling above our seats, and the attendant warns each of us to put one on our own faces first before we put one on our children or neighbors.
That’s a wonderful analogy. To be safe, we need to take good care of ourselves in order to take good care of others. It’s not unusual for people to allow themselves to be pulled this way and that by others’ care giving needs until they become so stressed that they then get sick and need others to take care of them. Stress is a symptom of being out of balance in one’s life, and those who are stressed find that they no longer feel present to themselves and the world. Stress also interferes with the flow of our creative juices. Stress makes us less able to pay attention to work and family. Stress is, generally speaking, not a good thing.
How do we get back into balance? How do we find true harmony? Harmony is a beautiful word, isn’t it? All the parts of our lives make their own sounds, and when they are in balance, they blend together into one glorious melody. Harmony. Without balance we have cocophany. Harmony is a life in balance and singing beautifully.
I think many of us who are out of balance need to do several things. First, list all the things you are responsible for doing, and then prioritize them. Keeping the essentials, and that’s not all of them, decide which ones you are not essential to (and we really are not as essential to our tasks as we have grown to believe). Shave off the bottom of the list. Pare back to the essence of your life. Make space for yourself, for being here now.
Then, put into the calendar of your life--that record of your daily rituals--space and time for renewal, for stillness, for slowing down and taking care. Meditate, sit in the sun, drink some tea. And take walks every day if you can. They don’t have to be fast or slow, but a time to be aware and present and appreciative. It has been discovered recently that walking even a little every day, even slowly, can ward off Alzheimer’s disease. As in walking you care for your physical health, so is walking a way to care for your mental health. To walk and practice mindfulness is to still our minds and release our stress, so that we can discover once again that the world is alive and vibrant all around us. Such is our oxygen mask.
(Offertory)
(Hymn 401: “Kum ba Yah”)
(Unison Reading 595: “Free From Suffering”)
(Ring Bell)
Extending Meditation:
Slow down once again and find your stillness.
Posture straightens, muscles relax,
as you breathe in healing,
breathe out tension.
In the stillness, touch your essence if you can.
Breathe in, breathe out.
The breath goes in
and it always goes out.
From your place of stillness,
breathe in the suffering as well as the needs of the world.
From your place of stillness,
breathe out healing and peace for all creatures.
Breathe in what is,
breathe out what can be.
The breath goes in
and it always goes out.
(Three minutes)
(Ring Bell)
Comments: “Taking Care”
This past week was Mental Health Awareness Week. We received a notice from the Unitarian Universalist Association that proclaimed participation in the First Annual National Day of Prayer for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding, which took place last Tuesday. In the commentary, they quote a UU minister who observes that we tend to help each other in the case of physical illness, but we shy away from mental illness. He says the stigma and shame and secrecy keep us from speaking out about depression or bipolar illness or schizophrenia.
I don’t think it’s that bad in our congregation. We have been welcoming enough and supportive enough that some people felt they could share their mental illness struggles during Joys and Sorrows. In that ritual I’ve heard people speak about their depression, their fibromyalgia and the depression and tiredness that goes with that, their son or daughter with schizophrenia or bi-polar illness, their anniversary of sobriety. We have children among us deeply affected by their birth mothers using drugs during pregnancy. In this congregation, what we lack are support groups to provide compassionate care of each other through those struggles. And we do need to speak more openly about mental illness within and among us.
Many, many of us are caregivers. We care for the physical and mental needs of ourselves as well as others. We struggle with ourselves and those we care about, fighting with the desire to stop using medicines, worrying about the progress of a disease, wondering how much intervention is appropriate, wondering where and when to get help. We care for those who have difficulty taking care of themselves, and this community is a place to find support and healing in that daily struggle.
In this 40th anniversary year of the Civil Rights Act, I want to encourage us to consider the ways we are or are not welcoming others, regardless of ability, not just the obvious physical abilities, but the oftentimes more hidden mental disabilities.
“Kum ba Yah” means come by here. It is a cry for help, for attention, for appreciation. Someone’s crying, someone’s laughing, someone’s singing…The world needs and the world suffers and with all of that, the world rejoices. By slowing down and taking care, we can find the beauty and the strength to “come by here” and care for those who cannot care for themselves.
(Hymn 395: “Sing and Rejoice”)
(Closing Words: Wendell Berry, 697)
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson