Meeting ID: 815 0755 1772
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An Invitation to Engage with Our Holy Resilience
Opening Prayer: This evening I invite those of us gathered to contemplate various facets of resilience. While we are familiar with the psychological definition, guided by grace and filled with hope, modern day prophets are leading us to look at it more deeply. We are invited to an understanding that if we are grounded in the Holy One, we will have a greater capacity to bend, flow, let go, and eventually stand up again.
We can take the palm tree as one example of resilience:
The palms' physical characteristics allow them to dance with the storm rather than succumb to it. As humans, we can learn from the way palms endure a storm. When in a moment of stress or crisis, follow the rules of a palm: bend, don´t break, have an extended support system, and let it pass. This will allow us to evolve like the palm and withstand the hardships that come our way by dancing with the storm rather than toppling over.
Even if we do topple over, there too the Holy One can find us, for we are never truly alone in the storms.
Opening Song: Holy Darkness (John Michael Talbot)
https://youtu.be/EAeCzCDb9NQ?si=KKCDfxWePkTewS0F
1.Resilience is the ability to recover from stressful situations. To be resourceful, flexible and employ effective coping strategies
(pause for moments of reflection)
2.Surrender can lead us to be gentler with ourselves and others, and sometimes it enables us to ride through the waves of pain that life inevitably brings…. Paradoxically, when we choose surrender for the right reasons, it empowers us. A curious mystery comes from honoring the truth that surrender with gentleness can be its own form of strength. Our ability to hold our lives with a flexible, open posture allows God’s power to manifest in us.… When we give ourselves permission to try softer in this way … we remain attuned to our own experiences, which enables us to connect to our truest selves…. We are able to move toward integration, wholeness and peace, open to what may come. Essentially, we grow in our resiliency.
(pause for moments of reflection)
3.Ironically, refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings a person ten times more suffering in the long run…We really are our own worst enemy when we deny this.
(pause for moments of reflection)
4.The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.
(pause for moments of reflection)
5.I don’t often “feel” like a beloved child of God. But I know that it is my most primal identity and I know that I must choose it above and beyond my hesitations.
Choose now and continue to choose this incredible truth. As a spiritual practice claim and reclaim your primal identity as beloved daughter or son of a personal Creator.
Thus, grounded in God, we can “dance with the storm”.
Petitions: We are in deep need for resilience in our lives, in our community and in our world. Who or what would you like to pray for now?
Closing Prayer: (Pat O’Neill)
When I say ‘happy new year’,
I’m not for a moment,
expecting this to occur,
for that is not possible,
a year must be all things.
Happiness must come and go,
like the tides and the winds,
just as sadness,
and all the emotions in between.
When I say ‘happy new year’,
I’m really wishing you,
a baseline of peace,
of gratitude.
Because if you can sit with these things,
for the most part,
happiness will thrive,
when it does arrive,
and sadness will know its place in the mix.
If you can nourish these things,
daily,
you will also grow hope,
for it flourishes in such soil.
And hope is the key,
to this enigmatic state
of ‘happiness’ we seek.
When I say ‘happy new year’,
I’m really wishing you more happy days,
than sad days,
more joy than misery,
more laughter than tears…
and the wisdom to accept,
that they all belong.
Happy new year, my friends.
Happy new year.
Closing Song: You Raise Me Up (Josh Groban) https://youtu.be/oni0tO_HN30?si=ihDBzO02JICDby7C
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