Dear Ones, this week we start a new school year; a school year like no other. Here we are, embarking on a new way of being together and learning together.

Whether you are in Pre-K, completing an advanced degree, or using a device to connect with family and friends, your learning in this school year will include using electronic devices in new and creative ways.

I invite you to take your tablet, chromebook, or other electronic device and join me in a ritual of blessing to begin the school year.

Let’s take a moment to breathe into all of the adjustments we have made to our lives and our education so that we may stay safe and keep our loved ones safe from Covid-19.

Let’s breathe and release our attachment to the way things used to be as we feel the weight of our electronic device in our hands or on our laps. We can use that weight to ground us and center us making our connection to the earth sturdier.

Let’s breathe and open our hearts to gratitude for all of the creativity, and resources, and human labor that went into making this device functional for us.

Let’s breathe and find a moment of awe and wonder for the ways that we are invisibly almost ethereally connected through electricity and wi-fi and 3G and 4G, Bluetooth.

Let’s breathe and remember that it is not the device that has value; the value is found in the connections which the device allows us to sustain.

Let’s breathe and imagine all of those people with whom we have connected virtually in this time of physical distance and hold their presence in our hearts.

As we close this blessing I invite you to take a moment to clean your device so that you can have a clean start to the new school year.

I also invite you to bring something from nature into the space of your device, a flower, rock, an orange, a blade of grass... something to bring you back to the eternal beauty of the Divine when the online world gets overwhelming.

Blessings for the new school year.