There are moments that interrupt everything.

The plans.
The routines.
The sense of safety.
The belief that we know what tomorrow will look like.

​

The fires across our community have brought fear, grief, uncertainty, exhaustion, anger, numbness, gratitude, and loss. You may be feeling all of it at once. You may be moving so quickly through what needs to be done that you have not felt any of it yet. There is no right way to move through this.

​

But somewhere between the volunteering, the phone calls,

the meals being made, the updates being shared, and one unknown

unfolding into the next, there is a pause asking to be taken.

Not a pause that pulls us away from what is happening.

A pause that allows us to meet it more truthfully.

In moments like this, there are two paths available to us

​

We can move around what we are feeling.

We can stay busy, search for quick explanations,

cling to certainty, cast blame,become paralyzed in our despair

or try to turn pain into something positive before

we have allowed ourselves to fully acknowledge what is here.

​

Or we can choose to move through it.

We can choose to feel the grief without becoming the grief.

We can choose to acknowledge the fear without allowing fear to become the only voice we hear.

We can choose to admit that we do not know what comes next, while still remembering that we are held within the unknown.

We can choose to be changed by what we are witnessing without pretending that the change makes the suffering acceptable.

​

This is not about blissing out. It is not about spiritually bypassing the real pain, devastation, and uncertainty people are living through. It is not about telling someone who has lost their home, their safety, or the life they knew that this happened for a reason. Their loss is real. If that's you, your loss is REAL. 

​

The pain deserves to be witnessed, not explained away.

And there is also a deeper truth we can hold alongside that pain.

What has been lost matters deeply, but it is not the whole of who you are.

A home can be lost without a person losing their worth.

A life can be changed without a spirit becoming broken.

What once felt safe can feel shattered while something deeper within us remains whole.

To say that we are okay within the loss does not mean that everything is okay.

It does not mean that we are unaffected, untouched, or expected to move on quickly.

​

It means that beneath the fear, beneath the grief, and beneath everything that has been taken or changed,

there is the pure essence of our eternal being that cannot be destroyed.

And from there we are held. Connected. Worthy. Here for such purpose.

​

This is the pause we want to invite you into.

​

​

No amount of external change, no matter how generous or necessary, can become the whole answer

if we never pause long enough to listen to what must shift within us.

What really matters now?

Who are we being asked to become?

How do we show up for one another without trying to fix what cannot yet be fixed?

How do we witness another person’s pain without making them carry our discomfort too?

How do we allow this moment to deepen the way we love, listen, serve, and live?

This is another opportunity to come together, not only as a community, but as human beings

connected to one another, to ourselves, to Spirit, to Source, and to the deeper truth of who we are.

These moments are only meaningless if we refuse to let them change us.

So between the doing, take the pause.

Feel what is there.

Notice what is not there yet.

Let yourself be honest.

Remember that pain and wholeness can exist together.

And remember that you do not have to leave yourself in order to help hold someone else.

And then know that there is a way forward and where all is burned, new life will rise and we are being given an opportunity to be a part of that. How will we honor that? 

​

​

​