Our Mission

Core Mission:
Everyday Sacred seeks to alleviate suffering in our community by inspiring people to support individuals and families in crisis.

Operational Mission:
  • Everyday Sacred provides an online community space for people to share stories, art and music about healing, grief, gratitude and faith that inspire and illuminate a path for each other.
  • Everyday Sacred is also striving to link individuals and families in crisis to a team of volunteers that can provide scheduled meals, respite care, home management, local referrals and more.

Helping Hands

  • To share a story about healing or trauma or sacredness or overcoming despair, please do click here.
  • To share some time or skills to help a family or person whose life has been touched by trauma or crisis, please click here.
  • If your life has been touched by crisis or trauma, and you could use a hand, please click here.


Lending a Helping Hand

Would you like to serve on an Everyday Sacred Family Support Team?

Dear August is now 9 months old. He is missing genetic material on the tip of chromosome seven. This has had quite an impact on his little body. It's also had quite an impact on his family, who is struggling to take care of him and his 5 year old brother, Porter. Baby August requires a lot of holding and feeding through a tube that attaches to his stomach. He is very sweet and engaging and looks and acts like a normal baby (just seems small and a bit underdeveloped for his age).

If you'd like to help out, please click here and let us know.

Kirtan for Bobby Jo

Hello friends and community!

We wanted to let you know about a Kirtan gathering to support a family we have gotten to know while Felix was at Legacy Emanuel Hospital. Bobby Jo is a teenage mother with an 8 month old baby girl, who was severely injured after her hair got caught in a rotating sprinkler this summer. She sustained grave injuries to her scalp, and underwent close to two dozen surgeries while being in the hospital.

The Kirtan is on Sunday, November 11th, from 6 till 8 pm at the Bhaktishop, Portland.

To read more, please click here.

Namaste.


Meet a Friend

August Miles Funk-Levenson. August was born Feb 8th of this year, and has already spent months in the NICU. August and Janet visited Felix at Emanuel this summer, and it was such a blessing to be with the two young warriors.
August already has a long list of physical challenges filling his days and nights. His parents are loving him and nursing him and supporting August and his brother and after having spent so much time nursing Felix, i know how hard it is. We'd like to help, and one way is to support Janet's brother, Dave Funk, who is raising money for Mile's medical expenses. Please check out August Miles. You can also read about August at their family blog.

We're also putting together some other ways to help August, hopefully starting with a monthly home-cooked meal for the family, delivered to their home. Watch this space for details.

Ongoing Essays

god of the gasps

August 27th, 2008- by: Devon Balwit
in

School starts next week. You probably knew this, but I only “remembered” a few days ago when it suddenly struck me that I had three children about to start in three different places. This willed suppression of the facts meant a mad rush to purchase school supplies and clothing. Oddly enough—or maybe not, perhaps rather the subtle character testing of thirteen years of marriage—my husband also finally decided to remodel our one bathroom. No sweat. We have our reams of paper, packages of pencils, book bags, shoes, and Capris—what’s a few days of peeing in the bushes? My own school term begins along with the new Write Around Portland group I’ll be facilitating. So does my children’s soccer practice. Too, after four months away, I’ve decided to return to my former church, a decision which comes with its own internal adjustments. Another birthday approaches.

Thus, September rushes towards me with all the flurry and bluster of a storm front. I cannot avoid any of these changes, hiding from them like an anchorite in my cell, so instead, I’ve been asking God to help me find a place of peace within them.

I glance into my bathroom and see the welter of drop cloths, spatulas, spackle, brushes, fixtures, hardware, and tools, but then my eyes move to the smooth white walls awaiting paint, and the blankness holds calm. I push my shopping cart up and down the aisles of a department store listening to squabbling families and adding my own irritated voice to the din, but then find myself caught up in the pleasure of the new notebooks and pens, the child’s excitement of the fresh beginning: “This might be the year of the great teacher, the best friend, the burgeoning talent.” After the inevitable rush of Sunday morning, I wait for the communion bread, hands cupped at the rails as I watch the celebrant make her way down the row: “Body of Christ, bread of heaven.” Peace rests in the supplication.

The chaos of my life swirls around the quiet center where God waits. When my eyes snap open at 3:00 a.m, when my heart starts to pound, when I feel overburdened to the point of weeping, all I need to do is remember that still space waiting like a reservoir reflecting passing clouds, that bowl of God’s sustaining presence. God is there, even in the gasps.

Everyday Stories

October 5th, 2007- by: squirrel7

Diagram of a dark day...

I came home from vacation to find death under the hood of my car. The battery watched, helpless, as the life drained from its black and plastic housing. A trunk, cranky and unwilling to close all the way, stole the juice. Welcome back to Portland I said to myself. Hungover from a late night flight and a white pilled promise for airborne sleep, I pressed fingers to the buttons. Three letters at the beginning of the alphabet arrive with a black snake of electricity. It bites down and shocks my car to life. It's hard to bring back the dead. I need stronger voltage. Stomach empty, cells dehydrated, uterus cramping on the 28th day, I drive to the men in white shirts. They run to greet you with names stitched above their hearts. Hand over keys, receive a promise for revival, I join the others in the waiting room. Clock ticks, stomach grumbles, blood sugar drops. My mood? Erratic and skidding towards unreasonable. The progression: irritable, irrational, inconsolable. I stand next to my car 2 hours later, starving, and begin to cry. It works, as it always does. Testicles run from salty water. Charging complete, keys in my hands again, I drive home to eat oatmeal in the rain. Cramps intensify with the fuel. This day is hydroplaning.

Cross the river and find an hour of needled bliss. I am relaxed, briefly. Yoga class is waiting for me on the other side. This salvation - 90 minutes of spring cleaning for my nervous system – is pre-paid. Still, it is a day of dismay. A 15 minute drive expands to 40 in late day traffic. My bladder screams, Release Me! Tears, they prowl my perimeter. Yoga lost. I turn instead to my standby. Clean aisles of potential dressed in green and white. Fruits of other people's labor, bread kneaded on someone else's floured surface. This is my meditation – up and down fingering what might do the trick. First though, I answer my bladder's pleas. It's ruby time, the scarlet stranger is back in town and demanding I change her dressing. Distracted, fingers slip. My jeans turn the color of garnet. Shirt too short to hide the evidence, I unlock the gates and let the tears pour in, over, and through. I'm crying, sobbing, in the stall of a grocery store bathroom. Is this what happens when vacation ends?

Stumbling into the brightness

Then it's morning. I wake early. All of my cells are in one place again. Yoga, the reliable haven, is waiting. These roads are traffic free for my bike and me. Criss-cross apple sauce I sit and open to what has to be better than yesterday. My teacher speaks and I feel the flashlight beam. She says – "You know those days when every last possible irritation happens? When the drama builds and you sit, lungs strapped tight, wondering – why? why? why? One more thing and you feel as though you'll explode into sharp splinters. Then, something happens and you remember the ancient equation: inhale, exhale. You do it again. Then, you think - 'Oh my god, for a second there I thought I was the center of the universe. Can you believe it? I actually thought I was the center of the universe.'" She laughs, condescension free, speaking with lightness and compassion. I think, exactly. What a burden, to be the center of the universe. To feel that you are in charge and responsible for all that goes on. This practice, inhale, exhale, moving my body to that airy rhythm, it's what saves me. On 9.11, I went to yoga. When my relationships with A, M, & S ended, I went to yoga. When I first got hired, I went to yoga. When emotions are swirling and I don't know what else to do with myself, I unroll my mat and do some yoga. It's home base.

I often think how lucky I am to have something so accessible that reliably eases my insides. Yoga doesn't have to be yoga – the process comes in many forms: brush, pen, instrument. The anywhere, anytime, no money, no one else required thing. That piece of life that helps us to expand and say "Yes."

 
October 2nd, 2007- by: riverbirds

My 3-year old son slept late this morning. When it came time to take his sister to school, I sat on the bed and coaxed him to come down for scrambled eggs "to go" -- the same eggs that had cooled 30 minutes before. He looked up at me, one eye still hidden behind the folds of a pillow. I knew something wasn't right. And for a second, I thought of cancelling everything so he could rest. Hmm, I could knit all day. I could watch my daughter dance. I could collect autumn leaves. I could rub my son's back. But a little voice said no, you have a parent meeting, and you promised to show a friend your garden, and you are carpooling with another family, and you scheduled a playdate in the afternoon. So I curled his body into my arms and carried him downstairs, hoping that it was just a fluke, that when he saw the eggs, he would perk up.

We drove to school in a breathless flurry, the untouched bowl of eggs teetering on the seat. After escorting my daughter to class, I stopped by the Parent Lounge, my son draped over my shoulder like a heavy blanket. The voice said, okay okay, you can't really stay, but before you go, be sure to explain to everyone why you're skipping out -- you can't just leave them hanging (but you can leave your son literally hanging). That's when he threw up, all over my wool sweater coat, all over the tile floor. Splash. The driving voice inside me was now silent. I was back to the present moment. I could feel my son's chest, rising and falling with each breath. So why does it take vomit to bring me to this sacred moment? :)

Admittedly, I have a lot of work ahead of me, if I want to live mindfully and be witness to the sacred in everyday moments. I do not want to wait for illness, conflict, crisis, or change to bring me to my senses. That is the lesson my son taught me today. Now, to carry forth what I've learned...

Signed,
A mama in Portland

 
October 1st, 2007- by: Mark A. Lilly

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Blessings to you,
mark