If you’ve been following my blog posts you know that I write one blog per month about the Soul Matters Theme of the Month. One month = one thematic topic = one blog post. March’s theme was Balance, April’s is Emergence, and May’s theme will be Creativity. So I decided to put a little balance in my life by getting creative and this three month conglomeration of topics emerged as one single blog post.

In March I wanted to tell you about how as a single mother of a teenage boy, I need to balance my work life with my parenting life with my personal life. When there aren’t enough hours in the day, sometimes it takes some creative thinking to balance all of life’s responsibilities and commitments and still find time for some self care to emerge. But then March flew by like the wink of an eye and the Balance Blog never emerged. And now here it is the middle of April and I haven’t written the Emergence Blog yet.

Here’s a snippet of what Soul Matters has to say about emergence: “Make a bit of room. Leave a little space. Keep a lookout for the unexpected. These directions may not sound like anything radical or revolutionary. But it turns out that these are often Life’s favorite ways to help us emerge into something new . . . All around us, the culture shouts its heroic talk about striving and perfecting. Struggle is the dominant metaphor of the day. We talk of “fighting” to become all we can be. Images of sprouts breaking through concrete start showing up everywhere. Yet, we need to be careful because, more often than not, emergence and transformation is a much subtler art. It’s about stillness, listening and waiting to be led, not conquering, struggle and taking charge . . . when it comes to emerging into something new, the message of spirituality is “Be careful with what you’ve been taught and told because much of it takes us in exactly the wrong direction.” As a people of emergence, we are called to take a different tack. We’ve been entrusted with the wisdom that emergence is most often about breathing rather than becoming better, patience not perfection, depth not dominance; acceptance not striving, attention not constant improvement . . . That part about attention instead of improvement is especially important. It’s so easy to get transformation mixed up with fixing. And fixing is emergence’s biggest foe. Trying to perfect or prove ourselves is the surest way to stay stuck. The pursuit of constant improvement and perfection focuses us on our inadequacy and inferiority . . .”

This made me feel better because I was feeling like a real loser for not getting my blog posts written on time, as well as not changing out the Soul Matters themed bulletin board in the hallway. I was beating myself up because it’s half-way through April, and I still have the March theme on the board, and maybe I should just skip Emergence and go straight to Creativity, when literally, as I was thinking this to myself, I noticed a church member looking at the bulletin board. I went over to apologize to her for being late in changing it out, and she said she hadn’t seen it before and loved it and thought it was beautiful and she needed to hear the messages from it and was so grateful that it was still up for her to see it in this moment and then she even took out her cell phone and even took some pictures. I told her how much fun it was to put up the board, and I was thinking of getting creative and merging the Emergence theme with the Creativity theme to help me balance my time. Then she asked me if I wanted some help and I said “Awesome! Yes!” and so we formed a new Committee right there on the spot – The Bulletin Board Committee. She’s going to email me pictures and quotes, and I’ll print them out along with the ones I’ve found, and then we’ll have a fun time arranging them on the board together to make it look as beautiful as possible. If you want to get in on the fun just let me know at dir.are@tahomauu.com. This is how creativity can emerge when you’re trying to balance your life. Or . . . this how balance can emerge while you’re getting creative. Or . . . this is how your true self can emerge when you put some creativity into balancing your life. Or . . . well I could go on, but you get my point. Connecting the themes from one month to the next is part of what makes the Soul Matters conversations so exciting. They are such a blessing — this segues nicely because our theme for June is Blessing!

The Soul Matters packets can be found on our website at http://www.tahomauu.com/learning/soul-matters/ or you can pick up paper copies on the Adult Religious Exploration table in the hallway outside of the Sanctuary doors. We have a drop-in group that meets on the Third Sunday every month in the Youth Room after service at 11:45 a.m. Also, we currently have 8 spots available to sign up for our Sometimes Circle on Creativity on Saturday May 12^th from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. at the home of Mary Rhine for a potluck dinner and facilitated conversation. This is a “creative” potluck, so get brave and bring something new!

Namaste,

Susie Maharry