When we talk of finding our center, it’s natural for calm and rest to be the first things that come to mind. Who would expect anything different? After all, the need for calm is everywhere we look. So, so many of us are tired. We’re overworked, over-busy, over-committed, overly scared. We are often so weighed … Continue reading Path of Finding Our Center (January 2023)

This month’s Soul Matters theme welcomes us to The Path of Wonder … This seems to me the main problem … How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? … How can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and … Continue reading Path of Wonder (Dec 2022)

This month’s Soul Matters theme welcomes us to The Path of Change …   I wonder, particularly in a time where everything seems urgent, what the role of pause and breath is, in this season, to help us gear up for whatever this transformational moment we find ourselves in is.     — Rev Jen Bailey … Continue reading Path of Change (Nov 2022)

This month’s Soul Matters theme explores The Path of Courage …   “Courage doesn’t always roar.” –– Mary Anne Radmacher Courageous people change the world.  So many examples of that this month.  October’s celebration of LGBTQ+ history month reminds us of the many who bravely moved (and continue to move) our world toward greater acceptance … Continue reading Path of Courage (Oct 2022)

This month’s Soul Matters theme explores The Path of Belonging …   You hardly knew how hungry you were to be gathered in, to receive the welcome that invited you to enter entirely… You began to breathe again… You learned to sing.   But the deal with this blessing is that it will not leave … Continue reading Path of Belonging (Sept 2022)

This month’s Soul Matters theme explores Celebrating Blessings …   A Soul Matters facilitator once shared, “I guess after plan A fails, I need to remember there’s still a whole alphabet out there.”  Who of us doesn’t need a little help remembering that? Especially after enduring Covid for so long. And the ongoing reckoning with … Continue reading Celebrating Blessings (June 2022)

This month’s Soul Matters theme explores Nurturing Beauty …   Beauty. We appreciate it. How could we not? We wonder at it. Get absorbed in it. Analyze it, if it’s got a frame around it.   We make it. Grow it. Point at it. Collect it. Share it. Save it.   But how often do … Continue reading Nurturing Beauty (May 2022)

This month’s Soul Matters theme explores Awakening …   You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living.  Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with [someone], and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating … Continue reading Awakening (April 2022)

This month’s Soul Matters theme explores Renewing Faith …   “Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat.”  — Frederick Buechner “Once a reporter asked A.J. Muste, “Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night in front of the White … Continue reading Renewing Faith (March 2022)

This month’s Soul Matters theme explores Widening the Circle …   Is it possible that being on the inside leaves you out of the loop? What if the margins aren’t narrow? What if that space of exclusion is also a position of perspective? What if being shut out allows you to understand the insiders better … Continue reading Widening the Circle (Feb 2022)