Weekly Letters from the Pastor

When Sticky Notes Become Notes that Stick

I am a sticky-note person. Things to do, follow-ups, ideas to ponder—what doesn’t make the calendar lands on a sticky note. Right now, six are scattered around my desk and three sit in a drawer. As tasks get finished, there’s a victorious wadding and tossing.

Then I found one that simply said:

“Not in a hurry.”

I have no idea when I wrote it or why it’s in quotations. But it reminds me of an exercise I led years ago for over 200 in attendance. Each person received a reading with all spaces and punctuations removed. We did well at first, but then unison reading frayed into a chaos of mumbling, stumbling, and confusion. No one knew where one word ended and another began.

The point was simple: we all need space. Without margins to breathe, reflect, and rest, our lives turn into that same frantic chaos.

I used the exercise a few years ago and it bombed. The audience read the paragraph with very little struggle. It revealed a truth that we have been trained to live without space, without pauses and rest. And yet, we live in a time when we can’t figure out why we are filled with overloaded emotions and weary minds. We wonder why we feel so anxious and exhausted.

So maybe that sticky note is for each of us as a gentle reminder to give ourselves permission to step back, to create room in our day to breathe, grieve, laugh, heal, and wonder.