The View from Here

by Rev. Cynthia Riggin, Minister of Congregational Life

As the election draws near, how are you tending to your well-being? Lately, I’ve found myself ending my emails with, “be gentle with your beautiful selves.” Our ongoing ministry of loving our neighbor as ourselves, rooted in loving our God as our God first and always loves us, is a marathon, not a sprint. Our movement work of collective freedom and flourishing is interwoven with our sacred self-care.

How would our movement work be different if it centered self care for the self as finding, as Cole Arther Riley names it, the “sound of the genuine” in ourselves and empowering others to do the same?

Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Sacred Self-Care: Daily Practices for Nurturing Our Whole Selves connects our self-care with our justice commitments:

“When viewed in this light, we can think of self-care as the practices that help us to develop and nurture wholistic wellness as beings who are beautifully and wonderfully created by God in God’s image and likeness, and to sustain our vitality as agents of God’s mission of justice, mercy, and peace in the world. Self-care is an act of faithful stewardship whereby we graciously and gratefully tend to the health and well-being of the divine gift that is our lives.

In a society built on slaveholding economy in which every person’s worth is determined by their productivity, prioritizing wellness is a subversive act. The practice of self-care in the pursuit of wellness is sacred. It resists the powers and principalities of a hyper-capitalist system. It reclaims the inherent dignity and worth that was bestowed on us at our creation. It proclaims the truth that God proclaimed about all of creation: that we are supremely good. We are sacred.”

Did you catch that? “Prioritizing wellness is a subversive act.” It breaks the cycle and opens up space for liberation, healing, and compassion to emerge and hopefully take root. 

I’m thankful church, to be on this journey with you.