Monday Meditation | The Pace of Beginning Again
What is your pace today?
Monday Meditation | The Pace of Beginning Again
Beloved Becoming Ones—
Yesterday, we stood at a convergence:
light and dark, ending and beginning, Advent’s long wait, Hanukkah’s final flame, the Solstice’s deep pause.
Today, Monday invites us to stay with what that convergence asks of us.
This meditation is about pace.
We are living amid the accelerated collapse of a global empire—one that insists on speed, productivity, reaction, outrage, constant motion. The faster things fall apart, the more the system demands that we keep up. But collapse does not ask us to hurry. It asks us to listen. To slow. To reflect. To choose meaning over momentum.
On Mondays, I practice that refusal.
I slow down on purpose.
I write as a form of meditation—lyrical, imperfect, searching—because poetry is one of the few paces left that resists capture.
We need poetry right now.
We need history right now.
We need the long breath of contemplation and meditation right now.
In September, I began meditating regularly—a quiet turning toward myself, toward repair. I did this to help repattern my neural pathways, yes, but also to relearn how to be with silence without panic. I let sound guide me: Zen Buddhist chants, spoken word, mantras that do not rush me toward answers. Some days it is jazz. Some days the spacious brilliance of Max Richter. And often, John Coltrane, whose music feels like enlightenment unfolding in real time—each phrase reaching, breaking, returning.
Sound teaches me pace.
Pace teaches me meaning.
The contemplative pace is not passive. It is a meaning-making pace. A truth-telling tempo. It asks: What is worth my life? What kind of offering do I want to be? I long to live with deep intention—to live a life that is an offering, lived out loud, without spectacle but with sincerity.
The world is palpating right now—for healing, for love, for possibility.
And so am I.
In my studies, and in my stumbling, I keep returning to James Baldwin and his insistence that we must begin again. Not heroically. Not cleanly. But honestly. Beginning again is not a declaration—it is a practice. I stumble my way through it because my life depends on it.
2025 has been an ass-kicking year.
This meditation calls me back to center.
Back to ground.
Back to what is possible.
So today, I invite you to reflect gently on your pace.
Not with judgment.
With curiosity.
Where are you rushing because the world told you to?
Where might slowness be an act of fidelity—to yourself, to others, to truth?
As we endeavor to live in right relationship—with our bodies, our beloveds, our communities—may we continue to tend the Divine Light we have been nurturing quietly within. May we trust that light enough to move with courage. May we find the strange magic that allows us to put our lives into action—not frantic motion, but faithful movement.
Rooted.
Intentional.
Beginning again.
Paz, —RCE+