Stillpoint 9-day vigil

A call to respond contemplatively to the current world crisis

​During this time of global crisis and social-distancing, Stillpoint At Beckside is offering a community-supported opportunity to contemplatively hold vigil for the earth and her peoples. 
Between April 1st and April 9th we will be asking community members to sign up for a day to offer their support for this vigil. By signing up for a day, you are offering your unique energy for our world during that day in prayer, in meditation, through movement, by fasting, through a creative project or however you are moved.

​You do not need to hold vigil for the entire day, but are rather committing to, at some time during those 24 hours, holding each other and the challenges of our hurting  world in loving awareness.

Post-Vigil Meeting

Monday, April 13th
6:30pm - 8 pm

​By registering for a vigil day, you will receive an invitation to participate in an online zoom meeting to share reflections, insights, and inspirations felt during the vigil.  
Phone call-in options will also be available.
By registering, you will receive more information about this meeting.

Resources for
​your vigil

​Below are some suggestions of poems, music, and other content that might be supportive during your vigil.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a stepping stone.
​We hope you find it useful!
VIDEO: A Contemplative Moment
featuring Barbara A. Holmes
On how contemplative prayer births prophetic proclamation and action.
Music:
​As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
--Denise Levertov  
Listen 
It is not my business
to seek enlightenment
or holiness;
mine only to listen to the wind
caressing all creation,
to be awed
at the tumbling of the waters
soaking all dried things;
mine only
to delight
in the song of the bird
and be attentive
to the rhythmic beating
of the earth
beneath my feet;
mine only
to receive with love
all that arises to meet me
at the dawn
of each day.

by Edwina Gately
WEBSITE: Creating a Home Retreat
Finding Freedom Wherever You Are (links to Buddhist teachings)
by Tara Brach
The Place Where We Are Right 
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
 
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
 
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
—Yehuda Amichai
Listen
I wake to a rising of robin voices,
their tiny chests puffed like ripe persimmons.
Acres of clouds strum across the day-blue sky,
wind breathes its endless score over heathered hills
and the sea beyond my window churns.

Somewhere a hazelnut drops rustling to the ground.
Peony peels herself open in a slow yawn
to reveal a multitude of pleasures.
Fox darts between hedgerows, breaking her silent reverie,
orange fur brushing against golden gorse profusion.

Beneath sirens and the perpetual groan of cars,
the march of trains and planes propelled by timetables,
beneath the endless clatter of your own mind, you can,
for a moment, hear the asparagus heaving headlong into spring.

My labor is to love this secret symphony.
You curl yourself around me at night,
song of your breath stuns me into the sweetest sleep.
And the blue glass vase sits on the table beside me,
holding roses you bought because they smelled like an aria.
When this is over, all I want to say is that I heard the music
of the very last petal

drop.
---Christine Valters Paintner, in Dreaming of Stones: Poems