Blog:FOREST LAKE TALKS

Dear Friends,

This weekend is the official start of Summer!!!  So many are looking forward to the end of school, the opening of the pool, and the long summer evenings.  There is refreshment that happens when the seasons change.  It happens again for us when the breeze turns cool and Fall begins.  It is like a new start.

This Summer, pay attention to how this “refresh” manifests in your own heart, mind and schedule.  For me it is summer flowers, fresh vegetables (from my containers if I’m lucky) and good watermelon.  How do you experience that sense of refreshment. It may include time with family, or walking on the beach or in the mountains.  Maybe this is just me, but refreshment comes when I have time to be fully present and to celebrate the good that is in my life.  So, taking time to cut flowers and bring them inside, helps me appreciate their beauty and thank God for the joy they bring me.  What brings refreshment to your spirit?

Then, ask yourself what prevents you from being fully present and celebrating the good every day?  What gets in the way of that spirit of refreshment?

I want to recommend a very simple but (in my limited experience) powerful practice that helps refresh me:  Gratitude.  Every night, before I go to sleep, I name at least three things for which I am grateful that day. Often, they are small things like clean sheets, the purr of a cat, accomplishing a task that was on my list.  But this simple practice helps me see the good and celebrate more than I worry and fret. There is a lot to worry about, but my worrying doesn’t seem to fix much.  I have found that gratitude, wonder and curiosity are much more powerful forces for change than worry, anger or stress. 

For me rituals also help ground me in the present and help me remember to be grateful.  Worship is one of those rituals.  What if, when we worship, we spent some time paying attention to the words of the hymn, reading the Scripture, or focusing on the part of the service that moves us?  Every Sunday worship service is an offer of refreshment.  This Summer, instead of thinking that refreshment comes from just sleeping in or staying home, what if we looked to worship as a time to “touch” that which is true and beautiful and life-giving, and then we looked for that during worship? What if we make time to give God thanks for the good that is in our life?  My experience is that God does send a spirit of refreshment and grounding when I am able to be attentive in this way.   I love the change of seasons and of schedule. This change offers us all a chance to reground, refresh, and cultivate a spirit of gratitude for what we do have.  May God grant you a spirit of refreshment!