Monthly Theme: Renewal

Go deeper into this month’s theme with reading, video and music

Diving Deeper

REFLECTION PROMPTS

  • Is there a person in your life whose way of being in the world renews your faith in humanity? If so, what about them and the way they live gives you hope for all of us?
  • How does your body tell you it needs renewal? What is it telling you now?
  • How would your life be renewed if you put presence before productivity?
  • Renewal often happens through becoming lighter. So, what might your inner wisdom be nudging you to shed, let go of, or give up at this time?

QUOTES

  • “You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest? … The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.” – David Whyte
  • “There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy.” – adrienne maree brown
  • “All you can do for another person is be an environment in which if they wanted to come up for air, they could.” – Ram Dass
  • “Practice not getting frustrated when your daughter takes 45 minutes to walk around the block. Learn something from her unabashed desire to take forever. Follow her lead instead of assuming she’s slowing you down.” – Lisa Olivera

BOOKS – This month’s recommended books are different pathways into feeling refreshed, giving yourself permission to rest, and renewing your faith in life, the universe and everything. Each has a different perspective and approach. I hope one of them seems right for you.

  • The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo – Poet Mark Nepo offers 365 very short essays on wide ranging topics, all of them an affirmation of being human and living fully and whole heartedly.  Read one a day, one a week, or read through it as with any other book.
  • Hope: A User’s Manual by MaryAnn McKibben Dana McKibben-Dana is a Presbyterian minister but writes for a general audience. She often offers ways of looking at things she says from a non-theist viewpoint. This book consists of short chapters, each with a personal essay, some thoughts on hope, and ways to put into practice what she’s discussing. If you need a shot of hope, this is as good as it gets.
  • How to Begin when Your World is Ending: A Spiritual Field Guide to Joy Despite Everything by Molly Phinney Baskette. Phinney Baskette is a United Church of Christ (progressive Christian) pastor who writes about her own cancer journey and journeys of others she’s met along the way and reminds us “whatever you’re going through, someone has been there before you and has found meaning in the madness.”
  • The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel. This short classic by an American religious and intellectual giant is considered by many to be the best modern theological work on the Sabbath – not as day of rest commanded God and all the orthodox religious rules that go with it, but more about the importance of rest and renewal, how countercultural the idea of rest has always been, and what we lose by losing times of just being and just being with each other. Now in the public domain, you can get a free PDF download from various places online, including from Yale here.

MOVIES

  • The Last Repair Shop – Winner of 2024 Oscar for Best Short Form Documentary. “In a nondescript warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain over 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind.”
  • Perfect Days – A minimalist approach emphasizes the ordinary and extraordinary in the life of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo.
  • Chef – A head chef quits his job and buys a food truck in an effort to reclaim his creative promise, while piecing back together his estranged family.
  • Coda – A triple Oscar winner. Ruby is the only hearing person in her family, and she struggles between a helping with the family business and going to music school.

MUSIC

ON THE INTERNET

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