Roy’s Sunday Letter for November 19, 2023
This Sunday Letter is to Encourage, to Support each of us to engage, connect, and find the right social context to live open, fulfilling lives with partners, family, and friends both near and far.
As a culture and broader society, we are strengthened by a sense of the Sacred in our lives. The Sacred may be a combination of places, people, or events. Choirs, concerts, visiting a museum in person or online, a family or civic gathering, a memory of someone who inspired, a birth or death, or returning to a mountain top or valley in person, photos, or story telling with family and friends, are some of the ways we touch and are touched by the Sacred.
The Sacred can be both a mystery and transformative. We best approach the Sacred with a sense of awe and reverence.
Sometimes unintentionally, or due to life’s circumstances, the presence of the Sacred can become less. This limits the energy, courage and the sense of hope important in our lives.
I hope this Sunday Letter will encourage you to continue your deep rooted emotional and spiritual connection with the places, peoples, and events of the Sacred for you and your family.
Roy, sharing encouragement
Thank you Roy for your encouragement. The holidays are difficult for many reasons; good memories, bad memories and loneliness. All of us should be encouraged to move on and reach out. So grateful for this Sunday Letter.
Friend Maurine….Yes, holidays (except for 2nd and 3rd shift workers and those stocking behind the counter in all the stores).
Keep your volunteer hours up….each hour may reduce the loneliness just a little.
By the way, you are welcome here anytime, any reason.
There is always an open book and open bottle of wine…….Roy
Wonderful thoughts Roy.. habits and traditions gain importance as they are repeated and then become part of this Sacred referred to.. so very important to develop and maintain this.. provides a grounding and anchor points in this fast paced and chaotic world we find ourselves in.. Thanks very much for providing this definitive context for these Sacreds… happy Sunday.
& good words back from afar
i was in group share last week…someone talked about finding the Sacred in the quiet and the still.
My reply was yes, got that.
The real work, the real seeking is finding the Sacred in the noise, in the marketplace….Roy
Good words and thoughts! The Sacred is HERE, always has been and always will be. It is up to us to recognize it and experience it. And your words are an invitation to that connection. Thank you!
I thought of the word “shadows” later. Sometimes the Sacred hides in the shadows of our lives. Finding the sacred is not for the passive.
Always appreciate the encouragement….this was my first Encourage Sunday Letter. My main goa: Be Present.
&thanks for the volley ball updates. I did not know of our team. Roy
sometime a Sacred moment happens and you don’t recognize it at the time, it may seem routine or ordinary. But later, when you are alone with your thoughts a tsunami of sacred memories washes over you and you realize that you have been carrying that Sacred for many months, or years, or decades. Maybe if we shared with a trusted friend or a group of friends those sacred moments together, it might create a community of Sacred memorialists, and collectively we would grow even more sacred space, and moments in our lives. Thank you, Sweet, Sacred Roy for these lovely thoughts.
one part of my Sacred is in front of me…and so much of my Sacred is memory in the best of ways,,,,
Washington March 1963
Campus Ministers annual retreat, January, North Carolina…..4 days of lock-in of 25
Pulling of rural New Mexico road to find old guy making crosses from a mold and dried mud mix, 1996…..on my wall 2023
& more…..Roy
Thank you for your always inspiring letters. May everyone have a wonderful Thanksgiving and do not ever forget where all our blessings come from
Joe….I write from my experience more than what I know or think I know.
This Friday aftwrnoon I am beginning to draft the traditional 1 page Sunday Letter.
I am adapting some paragraphs from Do Not Go Quietly, a book about Aging For People Not Born yesterday.
I talked 2 hrs this week with a 85 yr old who taught piano at universities.
He talked about what he still dreamed, his desire to publish
s
my fingers somehow hit Send too early….o well.