Minister's Musings October Newsletter 2025

Ah October, my favorite month of the year, when the weather starts to be a little cooler, a little darker. It’s time for pumpkin picking, hayrides, bonfires and lattes. Schools are ready for fall breaks and harvest celebrations, with witches riding and monsters mashing towards Halloween. After several years of serving congregational life, with the end of summer being intensely busy, I recognize that October is a month that I must push the “slow down” button. October, while peppered with so many opportunities for community engagement, is really the lull in the impending seasonal storm before us that makes up winter gatherings, obligations, elections, and more.

I generally thrive on chaos, intensity, and rapid pacing but this isn’t sustainable long-term. Add to this the constant 24-hour demands that many of us face living in a tech savvy world, along with a barrage of doom in our media and the urgency to fix it and fix it quickly, we risk burning out. We can’t really live into our values of Unitarian Universalism, or be people who center love if we don’t, at least occasionally, slow down to remind ourselves about what matters most and why we do what we do. We serve no one well if we are burnt toast. Maybe it’s a luxury or a privilege for me to say, “slow down” or “hit the pause button.” Maybe you feel like you can’t jump out of the hamster wheel, maybe you feel like your job or family depends upon you operating at a break neck speed. Capitalism makes you believe this is true. But what if you took ten minutes to step outside to breathe in the fresh air or slowly sip a cup of water? What would happen if you reached out to your colleague to say, “Hey, I could use some help?” What if you walked just a little slower to your car to notice the sounds around you? What if you took the time to look in the eyes and smile to each person you encountered in a day rather than avoiding their gaze and rushing off? Could we make time for slowing down?

I believe life is a “both and” scenario. We live in a time of great urgency, a time to experience life to its fullest, and we must sustain a pace that is gentle and loving to ourselves and others so that we can be part of a peaceful world in which we strive to create. If we want a peaceful, loving world, we must be peaceful loving people. And there’s no rushing the process as much as I wish I could.

Dominique Browning writes, “Slow living, I have come to understand, opens up the prospect of slow love, the most sustaining sort of love I have ever known - a love that comes of an unhurried and focused attention to the simplest things, available to all of us, at any time, should we choose to engage: family, friendship, food, music, art, books, our bodies, our minds, our souls, and the life that blooms and buzzes all around us… Perhaps even more importantly, slow love comes out of the quiet hours, out of learning from the silence that is always there when we want it.”

So, my fervent wish for you this month is to slow down, engage in slow living, slow love. Fill your cups and be gentle with yourselves, beloveds, because you matter, you are worthy, and we are all powerful enough to change the world, one breath at a time.

With love at the center,
Rev. Sarah