Today, on a whim, I went on-line to see if I could find anything about Tom, one of my closest friends from graduate school. I don’t have current contact information for him and I wanted to find out how he is. On-line I found the usual links: “Find Tom Irwin* on LinkedIn,” “6 Tom Irwin’s on Facebook,” “15 Tom Irwin’s [...]
“All it takes is that first step to start your journey.” The smallest action can lead to meaningful change. Take a moment. What are you doing right now? Can you feel your inhalation and exhalation of life giving breath? As you are reading this, your eyes are likely shifting back and forth. Maybe you’re also sipping a warm beverage [...]
Center for Pastoral Counseling of Virginia Sacred Space AUTUMN 2009 In This Issue A Meditation on Lazarus In Memorium: Donald L. Britton Book Review: BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell About the CPC Residents Featured Quote "....the kind of wisdom that somone acquires after a lifetime of learning... BLNK is an attempt to understand this magical mysterious thing called judgement." Malcolm Gladwell Welcome to [...]
Summertime. Say the word out loud a couple of times. Feel your blood pressure drop and the muscles at the back of your neck relax. Summer is a time for slowing down, dropping the pace. School is out, vacation rolls around, church schedules ease, and fireflies put on their evening show while we enjoy a bowl of ice cream. Summer is a time for catching up on all those things we’ve been intending to get to, like cleaning out closets or organizing the photos on our computer or watching DVDs of the movies we missed when they were in the theaters. Summer should also be a time for catching up on sleep. The gentler rhythms of summer ought to provide us a chance to snooze away our accumulated sleep debt. But here Nature makes it difficult for us. Summer features the longest periods of daylight and the hottest temperatures of the year. Neither bright light nor hot, humid air are conducive to sleep. For solid, restful sleep in the dog days of summer, follow these tips. Find your ideal sleep temperature and make your bedroom match it. Since most bedrooms run too hot in summer, install a ceiling fan or a window air conditioner. Put a fan in the window to pull hot air out of upstairs bedrooms. Draw the blinds during the day to keep the bedroom dark and cool. Try sleeping in the basement where it’s cooler. Unless you truly enjoy watching the sun rise, keep your bedroom dark. While you’re keeping the morning sun out, block the intrusion of noise as well. Between neighbors partying on their patio until the wee hours and birds in the oak tree announcing the first light in the sky, the period of quiet can get short some nights. If you can’t keep light and sound out of your bedroom, consider an eye mask and ear plugs. You’ll look like the Lone Ranger, but you’ll sleep like Rip VanWinkle. […]
