St Thomas

A core principle of centering practices, including mindfulness, meditation, and centering prayer, is focusing on the present moment. Concentrating on one’s breath, or a centering word is often helpful to keep one’s mind from wandering. I have had a mindfulness/centering prayer practice for many years, but in all honesty, it’s a challenge. Sometimes I am very disciplined in practicing daily, and sometimes not. And I always struggle with my attention getting hijacked by a myriad of thoughts and concerns. This summer, I have had the good fortune of spending some extended time with two of the most exceptional mindfulness teachers I have ever known. To be in their presence is to experience what it is like to be singularly focused on the present moment, free from all worries about the past or future. These two teachers are my five and three-year-old grandsons, and when I am with them, I am…

Our office mail always comes with a rubber band wrapped around it. About a year ago, I started saving the rubber bands and making them into a ball. Each day I add a new band to the ball, which doesn’t seem like much, but my ball has gradually grown to the size of a baseball. Given its composition, it is naturally bouncy, and I’m finding it makes for a fun diversion when I take a break. I once used a rubber band ball as an illustration for a children’s sermon on the importance of having a group of supportive people in our lives. I held up a few individual rubber bands and asked the kids what would happen if I tried to bounce them on the floor. They looked at me rather strangely when I threw a few individual bands down to the floor, and nothing happened. Then I took…

American author and philosopher, Sam Keen, captured the essence of summer, when he wrote, “Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” Add to this a quote from English author and scientist John Lubbock, and you have what for me is a perfect description for summer: “Rest is not idleness, and to sometimes lie on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. Rest & Play is one of the eight areas of wellness in our Living Compass Model for Well-Being. It is perhaps not surprising that when people complete the Living Compass Wellness Self-Assessment, a high percentage of them report that they scored lowest in the area of Rest and Play (If you are interested in taking the wellness assessment, you can do so at https://www.livingcompass.org/assessment-introduction. Our culture values busyness and doing…