Goodness Weekly 7.15.2024
find beauty in each day
a small beauty works fine
bask in it then let it go
other beauty awaits youKat Lehman
What’s Good
You might have noticed that our commercial kitchen is getting a refresh. We got a new larger butcher block from Habitat Restore, all the cabinetry is being repainted, and we’re upgrading many of our kitchen wares to commercial quality items. We are so grateful to the volunteers who have worked very hard to make our kitchen both more functional and beautiful. We’re happy to be able to offer this improved shared space to our commercial kitchen tenants, Sprouts School, and our church community.
If you are interested in renting our commercial kitchen please contact noelle@sunset-ridge.org.
This Week
Storytime Tuesdays, 9:30
Lunchtime Yoga Flow with NYX Wellness, Mon-Fri at 12pm, upstairs in Room 200
For weekly hours of One Another Coffee, Scott’s Pizza, and NYX Yoga, please feel free to check our calendar and follow us on Instagram for any updates.
A Message from Jess
Message from Jess Lowry, Executive Director, Sunset Ridge Collective
I read recently that change is the only constant.
I was considering this as I sat in the soon to be completed Charis Park while gazing at the two giant oak trees that canopy our community table.
What have these trees seen?
This piece of property, as you probably know, is changing—unrecognizable now as what once was an asphalt parking lot, and before that the site for an American Red Cross building.
About a month ago we were stunned to discover a photo in our archives that depicted a “park” for the War Memorial Hospital that was adjacent to our historic chapel. It appears that the former park was in the same location as what is now Charis Park. From land to park to building to vacant lot and back to park again.
These beautiful oak trees have witnessed and endured so much change.
If you know me, you know my love of butterflies—the symbolic connection I have to my deceased daughter Ava. Additionally, I am enamored by the process of their transformation. In my family we have raised caterpillars at home and witnessed what we could of this transformation in real time. And for all of the ways I am stubborn, I have always sought growth, change, and transformation in my life.
I firmly believe that change is not only constant and inevitable, but it is required and necessary for our growth. Perfectionism perhaps is really the desire for control masked as trying to get everything right–as if that were even possible.
And while we change and grow and the world changes and grows around us, there are people and places and things that ground us like the steady oak trees firmly planted deeply in the earth.
I wonder what it would look like to be a little more deeply planted?
To be rooted by the things that steady each of us, that make us feel more solid and open to change as an opportunity to learn, to grow, to become.
I invite you this week to consider the things that are grounding for you and to bring more of them into your environment, into your awareness, or into your daily practices.
Some things that are grounding for me—the smell of Grandma’s house, centering prayer, the feeling of my feet in water, the special rock gifted by a friend, the place where my head rests on my husband’s shoulder, the smell of our Chapel, meditation, being at the dining room table with my family.
Don’t worry, this becoming thing takes a whole lifetime…you’re simply on the way and I am too.
Love, Jess
Inhale:
I am aware of my surroundings
Exhale:
I am grateful I have breath
