Safe Rest

I invite you to pause for a moment and take some time for some contemplative play.

Start by letting this image fill your mind as you focus on your breath and letting yourself slow down into this time and this space.  Letting your breath and this picture be all that you attend to right now.

Who do you go to to find rest and comfort? How will you seek out this rest and comfort consistently this year?

Consider these questions also:

What do you see?
What colors stand out to you? Why?
What does your imagination do with this picture?
What words come to mind?
What favorite quotes from your favorite spiritual literature come to mind?


I invite you to join in conversation with me in the comments below what has come of your contemplative play time today.

Fall Reflecting

Leaves of liquid gold and fire red
hang with tenacity
from quickly emptying branches
waiting until it is their turn to
gracefully let go and fall.

I look to the trees
and see a time of winding down,
of slowing to deep rest.

I hear God's gentle call
to let go of the busy
to let go of the need
to do more,
to be more.

I hear God's voice reminding me
that I to need seasons of
letting go,
seasons of deep rest.

Fall is my circle of life reminder
to let go,
to rest.

It is my season of
already and not yet.

It is my winding down
to simple breath
and being.

It is my Holy and wholly season.
Where I catch my breath
and find my
already and not yet.

Thanks be to God.
AMEN.

Cocooning time

After a while of deeply engaging my reflective writing practice I find that I enter a season of needing to be still, to give my words a chance to rest. It becomes a time for me to enter into a cycle of listening and practicing being fully present to my little corner of the world with out constantly being "on the look out" for the next great poetic topic. It is a time for me to enter my own little cocoon of everyday life letting the practice of living through just being nourish and nudge me to my next place of contemplative focus.

Another season of needing to rest and listen has entered into my life.  It is time to honor that need and let Chaplainhood enter it's cocoon so to speak, waiting on the transformative beauty that comes. 

In this time of Holy pause may you:

• remember to pause each day to look up, breath deep and wonder
• see the good work of God going on all around you
• connect to the great Hope that is promised in God's beloved presence with you.

Until we pause and play here again......

God's Invitation to Rest

I dove deep into your presence God.
Deep into the glory of being so close to you.
So close that I hear and see you all around me,
feel you so intimately in every fiber of my being.

This awareness of you is Marvelous,
Glorious,
Soul expanding.
And yet it takes work to absorb all that I experience being so close to you.
My own awareness has broken open, expanded and challenged me.

It is here in this expansive awareness that I hear you say:
"Time to rest my child.
Time to quit opening to words and knowledge.
Time to give your filled up soul time to absorb all that you have come to know of me."

It is here that you give me permission to pause.
To come up for air.
Reassuring me, God, of your ever so close presence.

As I float along on the currents of your love and gift of rest,
I know you will be waiting for me when I am ready to dive deep once more
into our next journey together into awakening.