Greetings. I'm Tara Brock and I'd like to welcome you to these podcasts. While the

talks and meditations are offered freely, we'd very much appreciate your support. To

make a donation or learn more about my schedule, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.

Thank you.

Namaste and welcome. I was moved by an NPR story this week that I wanted to share with you.

It was about some trauma workers, a team at the University of Virginia emergency room and they

described having over time been with so many people that died that there was a kind of numbing

going on. Recently after one of the patients died, one of the nurses just stayed for some

moment. She took a pause and she just offered her prayers. The next time it happened, the whole

team stayed with her and they all paused for a few moments and each one reported feeling

really touched. That allowed them to sense the wholeness of that being. This was not just

an object that was checking off. The list list was like a being and they sensed a kind of

sacredness to the process by taking those few moments to pause. Then after that,

teams through the hospital picked it up and now it's kind of spreading around the country, which

is so wise and beautiful. We can sense it in our bodies that we need to be able to pause when

we encounter whether it's death or birth or stress or beauty or moments with each other in a

certain way that it's in the moments of pausing that we really, the pause actually creates a

space that light comes through, that we actually touch into kind of a natural luminosity,

presence, intelligence, creativity. I've often quoted a Martha Pastaway, the poet who writes that line,

create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and it's what an amazing line. We all can feel it.

So pausing is really a way of reconnecting with what I sometimes call being states, very essence

states. It express who we are. At one point, the well-known pianist Arthur Rubenstein was asked,

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