Goodness Weekly 4.08.24
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen
What’s Good
Our Sprouts Schoolers watched the solar eclipse today alongside our staff on campus with awe and delight. Linda, the director of Sprouts School, even made special eclipse t-shirts for their teachers. Though it was cloudy, we did get to see the actual eclipse peek through at one point. What a wonder-filled day!
NYX Wellness Lunchtime Yoga
Have you had the opportunity to reserve a class with NYX Wellness on our campus? Kim offers fitness and yoga throughout the week, including a lunchtime flow Monday through Friday, and weekend classes. View her full schedule here and enjoy some movement with us soon.
A Message from Taylor
Message from Taylor Bates, Deputy Director, Sunset Ridge Collective
Today something magical happened in San Antonio. There was a total solar eclipse, a rare occurrence where the moon lines up perfectly with the sun, gracing the sky with a moment of ethereal darkness. And that wasn’t necessarily the magical part, more so is what it stirred up in people—a desire to experience something out of the ordinary, something that connects us all to the bigger universe around us. It was a few parts science, a few parts mystery, and a whole lot of wonder.
A couple weeks ago in San Antonio another magical thing happened in the sky—you might have seen it, too. After a rainy afternoon, a magnificent full rainbow slowly revealed itself, visible to people across the city. Within my own family and friend group many of us witnessed it from our homes and sent photos in our group text threads.
To me, this was not only a beautiful sight, but a mystical experience.
Nearly six years ago I lost my first baby, Ellis, who was stillborn when I was eight months pregnant. During that late afternoon in May when I was told by the doctor, “I’m sorry, there is no heartbeat” it was thunder storming so intensely that my family had trouble driving to the hospital. My sister-in-law, from her car, saw a rainbow appear over the highway and managed to snap a photo, feeling in that moment that it was somehow a sign.
When she shared the photo with me days later I clung to it as one of the tiniest bits of hope I was beginning to collect while drudging through a thick and unfamiliar realm of grief and despair.
About a month later, when my husband and I went to spread Ellis’ ashes at Enchanted Rock we were astonished to watch a full double rainbow painted on the sky above us after we’d come down from the rock. It was a profoundly spiritual experience. Afterwards I began sharing stories of the rainbows online and, over the next several years, received hundreds of rainbow photos from people who resonated with the hope I was foraging.
The recent rainbow in San Antonio was the first I’ve seen with our two living children, who are now 1 and 3 years old. We managed to get a photo with the four of us and the rainbow, which appeared to wrap its arc around us. It’s moments like this where time seems to melt away and I sense a bit of the Eternal. Where the first rainbow we’ve seen with our two living children seems to somehow create a family portrait of five. Where my heart remembers where it’s been and is so grateful to beat with a vigor of love instead of a quiver of sorrow.
It will never be lost on me that the depth of my greatest suffering is now the well from which my greatest love emerges.
Perhaps you were able to experience a bit of eclipse wonder today. And maybe a little hope, too—that there is an undercurrent of goodness and beauty and creativity that is available to each of us in every given moment. Even when the sun is hidden and the sky is dark, there is a ring of light that peeks through, and somehow the darkness makes the light that much more miraculous.
This Week
Saturday, April 13th, Second Saturday
9AM Donation-based Yoga in the Fellowship Hall
10:15AM Storytime & Craft on the lawn
Interested in more of what’s happening at Sunset Ridge Church? Please consider subscribing to Views from the Ridge.
Inhale:
May I look at the world
Exhale:
with childlike wonder
