Living Saviour Lutheran Church has established a ministry for Health and Wholeness that seeks to connect faith and health. Through a process of education about health and spiritual practices, the ministry seeks to integrate the whole person.
This wholeness flows from humanity to our good creation as well. The ministry seeks to integrate how we care for the earth and its inhabitants, plant, animal, and human, while encouraging those practices which focus on a healthy environment to promote a healthy humanity.
Active Exercise Opportunities
Please reach out to the instructor prior to your first class or with any questions.
Yoga 4 You with Lori: (https://Ready4Yoga.com/)
Mondays – 6:15pm
Tuesdays – 9:30am
Thursdays – 9:30am and 6:15pm
Saturdays – 10:00am
Chair Yoga with Debby (www.feelgoodyogagirl.com)
Thursdays – 11:00am
Upcoming Events
Memory Care Ministry Workshop –The Memory Care Ministry Workshop is a free 6-week workshop that provides education and support for dementia caregivers. The workshop will run weekly on Wednesday evenings from July 15-August 19.
Topics include:
•the caregiving journey
•understanding the brain
•communication changes
•supporting independence
•responding to dementia-related behaviors.
Over the course of this 6-week workshop, we will learn, share, and pray together. All materials and refreshments are provided. It is not required that you attended each session, but greatly encouraged.
Register Here.
The focus for August is centering for contemplative prayer.
Tip #1: “The spiritual journey begins with a pause, a centering-in-God pause, and overtime becomes a constant and ceaseless prayer, an honoring of and a connection with the Divine in you that awakens your essential self.” -Caroline Oakes
Centering prayer prepares us to commune with God. It is based on the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 6:6. “Enter your inner room” symbolized as the heart or inner self. “Close the door” symbolizing letting go of thoughts during this time. Finally, “pray in secret to the Father” who speaks to you beyond words.
Matthew 6:6
If you want to pray, enter your inner room, close the door and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father in secret will reward you.
Tip #2: “Pausing and being still enough to notice love within and around is a deeply powerful and countercultural act. It challenges the notion that it is better to be busy and occupied. It refuses the call to be constantly distracted and perpetually plugged in.” -Charles Lattimore Howard
Steps of centering prayer:
1. Choose a sacred word or image as a symbol to consent to God’s presence.
2. Sit comfortably with eyes closed. Silently repeat the sacred word.
3. When thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations come to mind let them float by like a cloud in the sky and
return to the sacred word or image.
4. At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a few minutes.
Psalm 42:1-2
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet God?
Tip #3: The fruits of centering prayer are found in daily life. It creates a center of gravity within you, a place where the pendulum of your being naturally comes to rest. It increases your ability to be mindful of God’s presence and at the same time fully present to situations in your life. From this centering you discover that you, God, and the world “out there” are not separate but flow together seamlessly through God’s love and being. It’s not so much a place you pay attention to as a place you pay attention from.
John 4:14
Whoever drinks the water that I shall give will never thirst; the water that I shall give will become in him a spring welling up into eternal life.
Tip #4: “The interior experience of God’s presence activates our capacity to perceive God in everything else – in people, in events, in nature.” -Thomas Keating
The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing writes about Centering Prayer “The first time you practice contemplation, you’ll only experience a cloud of unknowing. You won’t know what this is. You’ll only know that in your will you feel a simple reaching out to God.” Centering prayer can help us experience deep psychological relaxation. We take the Ego offline and rest in our inner self. We cultivate the skill of non-attachment to unnecessary worries and fears. Deep intimacy with God centers us and gives us a solid base to return to as we go through life.
Romans 5:5
And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.