News

Updated: Feb 26, 2021

Winter Wellness Group

This winter stands to be a long, cold, and lonely one to quote The Beatles. In this season of COVID-19, it is easy to feel out of sorts. Especially as we begin to be inside more than out, our physical separation impacts our bodies, minds, and spirits our wholeness may feel fragile.

In the interest of maintaining the integral connections of these aspects of ourselves Mother Kim, Estelle Brodeur, and Caroline Coffill are coordinating a weekly offering and a monthly check-in meeting on zoom where we can support one another and care for our whole selves with God’s inspiration.

We invite you to join this group however you see fit, and invite you to pray daily, participate weekly and check in monthly.

Gratitude

With the stress and uncertainty of our times, it can be challenging to maintain an orientation toward gratitude. Gratitude—both the feeling of being thankful and the active practice of noticing the positives in your life—can be healing and buoying in the face of worry and fear. Giving and receiving expressions of gratitude are associated with greater contentment, reduced anxiety, and deeper connection in relationships. Gratitude also helps us see and draw closer to God.
 
This article has suggestions for how you can incorporate the practice of gratitude in your daily life, including suggestions for activities you can do with children.
 
This video is a 5-minute gratitude-focused guided meditation, which you may find helpful to experience at the start or end of your day, or anywhere in between!

Serenity

With snow and inclement weather on top of the pandemic, who couldn’t use a reminder about serenity? Check out this helpful background on the serenity prayer and this video, too!

Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a process that leads to a mental state of nonjudgmental awareness of the present experience, such as sensations, thoughts, bodily sensations, and our environment. It enables us to distance ourselves from our thoughts and feelings without labeling them as good or bad. Mindfulness can be a particularly helpful tool when we face anxiety – which has arisen so much for so many over the last year – as it directs us to focus on the present moment and how we might take meaningful action to live according to what we value.

Check out this brief video that introduces why mindfulness can be so powerful in helping us see our thoughts and feelings as they are beginning, not after we have gotten overwhelmed by them. With mindfulness, we can choose what we will strengthen and bring into action, as well as what we can gently let go of.

Holy Listening

This week’s prompt is all about listening wholeheartedly, in your body, mind, and spirit. As we approach the one year anniversary of the global pandemic we are all called to listen deeply. There is a tradition following in the teachings of Ignatius, where you can immerse yourself in the scripture, by using your imagination to interact with scripture. It’s kind of like “virtual reality” from the 16th century. In today’s video we invite you to place ourselves in the scene – this reflection from Fr. James Martin gives a great primer for this.

Download PDF for printing

Interesting in joining? Start any time. For more information, contact Mother Kim.

Are you making time to take care of yourself this winter? Watch the video below from our own Estelle Brodeur.

Here are three wellness reflections to download.

You Are Never Alone When You Feel Love
Looking at “Connection Meditation”, a video by Peg Baim, and “The Relaxation Response”, a relaxation technique developed by Dr. Herbert Benson, we learn about meditation and the healing properties that it can bring to our bodies. To read more about this, and to see Estelle Brodeur’s personal meditation journey, click here.

Maintaining Balance in our Thinking

Our minds are always interpreting the world around us, trying to make sense of events. Sometimes we see the world accurately – as it really is – but often our minds take ‘short cuts’ and our thinking can become biased. These biases or ‘cognitive distortions’ can have powerful effects upon how we feel. Sometimes the thoughts we have don’t paint a fair picture of what has happened to us. For example, you might make a mistake one time and overgeneralize by thinking to yourself “I never get things right!”. This isn’t fair because it’s an exaggeration – it is likely that there are lots of times when you do things successfully.  We call these thinking habits ‘unhelpful thinking styles’ because they can cause us suffering.
 
Take a look at some common unhelpful thinking styles, and try to be aware if they pop up for you throughout the day.  No need to try to fight them from happening, but when they do arise, can you take a step back from your thoughts, consider other possibilities, and lend yourself compassion?
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Talk with Clergy and Staff

Feel free to contact the Rev. Brent Melton or any member of the staff. See the full Church Staff Directory.

Or, call or stop by: (804) 359-5628 or 8 North Laurel Street, Richmond, VA 23220