Reflections on our times and the Cultivating Resilience, Harvesting Hope Retreat
By Kimberley Mulder
We don’t know we’re holding our breath or breathing shallowly until “afterwards.” The tension passes, the stress alleviates, the crisis resolves and we discover that our shoulders were bunched near our ears and our ribs caged our breath.
Take a moment, right now, to take in a really deep breath that expands your whole torso, resizing your shoulders and waist for a moment, then release it for as long as you can. How do you feel now? What changed?
For many, we’ve been living scantly, almost afraid to take a deep breath or rest from our good endeavors because there is so much to do to help others, withstand toxicity and aggression, and deal with getting into “good trouble.”1
In an effort to provide a place to exhale, unburden, rest, and be renewed, Dominican Center partnered with Plainsong Farm and Christians for Peace and Liberation to offer the Cultivating Resilience, Harvesting Hope: A Retreat for Justice Seekers in October.
We gathered as the fog lifted under a high blue sky around the fire crackling warmly through the morning chill. As we listened to the sandhill cranes calling to each other in the fields behind us, we began to hear the call to our hearts to the sacredness of rest. We, Christians involved in many different ways of pursuing justice for our earthly home and its marginalized inhabitants, let the Spirit and the rhythm of the warm October day invite us into letting go. For some, it was the burdens of limitations or grief, for others the outcomes of efforts or expected timelines. For all, it was to let go of past and future to be present to the Spirit in the moments of that day. As we did so, delight and abundance kept presenting itself: in the comedic and friendly cats and dog, unexpected blooms and fruit not fallen to frost, the perfection of soft breezes through trees on a day not burdened with cold.
We journaled, walked, sang, and prayed. We composted our burdens, releasing them in trust that good will grow in their space. We made a community mandala that grounded us in the paradox of emptiness and abundance, letting go and receiving. We harvested native seeds to plant with our hopes. All the rhythms that day carried an invitation to take in deeply what is needed to nourish body and soul, and to release what we carry into trust. We were aided by the environment to breathe again more naturally – in body and spirit. In so doing, we cultivated resilience for walking the moral arc of the universe towards justice2 and harvested hope as we let go of our burdens.
God invites us all to cultivate resilience, to harvest hope, to learn again how to exhale when we’ve begun to live braced or forced or to a rhythm not our own. How might you say yes to the Spirit’s invitation in your present moment?
1John Lewis, 2018 Tweet and again speaking from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, 2020
2Martin Luther King, Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution”. Speech given at the National Cathedral, March 31st, 1968.
