Mike Willock writes: In a recent worship service, Pastor Travis challenged us to pay attention. He preached on the story of Moses, who first saw and turned aside from tending his sheep to approach the burning bush out of curiosity and then he met God there. In this modern era, with all the dings and screen prompts and calendar reminders competing for attention, we can easily miss or even dis miss signs of God’s presence in our lives.   I thought back more than 20 years to a Todd Hall workshop led by Rev. Belden Lane. He occasionally sat in the east transept at Second on a Sunday morning. Belden had us spend the hour after lunch looking for signs of God in nature. I found the first one close to the dining hall – a spray of flowers blooming in a decaying tree stump. Wandering farther afield, I only heard, but never saw, a deer moving through the brush a stone’s throw from the road. Two down, one to go, so I kept going farther on. Finally, walking back to the conference center alon...

Tim Woodcock writes: I’ve been working my way through Thich Nhat Hanh ’s wonderful little book How to Connect. It’s what I’ve come to think of as a “strong black coffee book” – something that needs to be taken slowly because it's a little too powerful to appreciate quickly.  Having just taken a road trip to Michigan and back, doing far more driving than ordinarily do in daily life, I was greatly struck by his reflection “Stopping for a red light,” perhaps in part because it echoes some of what Vickie wrote in her June 8 blog post, “Tickets, Speed Limits and Prayer Life.” On this drive, I was also struck by the reality that you’ve got to embrace the place you are in right now – whether it’s grinding urban traffic around Chicago during a rainstorm or the rolling countryside of Illinois and Indiana as the sun comes out. To give this reflection a little more context, the previous entry in How to Connect mentions the use of bells in both the Buddhist and Christian traditions. He ...

  Tim Woodcock writes: On Sunday, Lori and Doug Dowd led a Christian Forum session on mindfulness and art. Lori began with a mindful meditation focused on the breath and awareness. Doug then offered a short talk on drawing as a way to understand the world, proposing that the practice of mindfulness is analogous to the relaxed-yet-attentive state of mind one experiences when making art based on observation. He then challenged us to take part in a low-stakes art exercise: Find an ordinary object – a plant, a household item – and to observe its structure carefully before beginning to draw. He also encouraged us to enjoy the sounds and tactile feeling of a no. 2 pencil moving across a sheet of paper.  Here are some of the results: