Rev. Lori: Wake Up!
A version of this reflection was originally published in the previous week’s Friday Flyer.
Hello Good People,
There are many kinds of sleep. There is the sleep that comes at night, when our bodies finally release the day. But there is another kind of sleep that can last for years. The sleep of routine.The sleep of numbness. The sleep of believing that nothing can change—not in us,not in the world. We move through our days on autopilot. We answer the same emails. We worry the same worries. We rehearse the same stories about who we are. And we call it being awake.
But every spiritual tradition, in its own way,
whispers the same invitation:
Wake up.
Wake up to this breath.
Wake up to this body.
Wake up to the person in front of you.
Wake up to the fragile, shimmering fact
that you are alive.
Find a comfortable spot, sit up straight, take some deep breaths. I invite you to consider at least 1 thing you are asleep to. I Invite into your consciousness something that you work hard to ignore. Where are there hard feelings for you right now? Where do those feelings live in your body? What do you do to numb those feelings? Why is this thing hard to think about? What makes it so? What could waking up to that hard thing mean to your life right now? What does paying attention to it mean for you?
Please consider this your “wake up call”!
Rev Lori Whittemore
(she, her, hers)
Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco Biddeford