Sacrality Practice: Noticing the Silent Lives Around Us

This month, we revisit the practice of connecting with what you find sacred, hoping it continues to be helpful to you as you support others and savor the only moment we really have: the present now.

I find that slowing down and looking around me helps me every moment I remember to do so. Living in the Irish midlands generally means slowing down in front of life, which is growing all around us. Rather than taking a tree or bush for granted, I take time to explore the growth and appreciate or value it anew. This approach takes me into the area of beginning to take life as being sacred. I share oxygen/carbon dioxide with this plant growth. But other forms of life, non-human, are all around us. In that context, we are learning to share their time experience. They live in tune with their circadian rhythms and the time of the planet's rotation around the Sun.

This slowing of time allows us to see things in context. Life around us moves at its own pace, drifting in and out of our awareness. Let's not be at war with the natural ebb and flow of life. It, like us and like the plant growth around us, is part of the larger plane of existence. How can I begin to see every aspect of life as being sacred? A question I have yet to answer.

I have found it helpful to make tiny home decorations. I make them out of fallen flower blossoms, little twigs, shells, feathers, and other natural things I find on my walks. I put them around the house, and they remind me of the many silent lives around us.

What or who is living silently around you? What can you do to notice and honor them?