Senses: Grounded In The Present Moment
Shabrae Jackson is an expressive arts facilitator and educator. She is the founder of Collective Tapestry and co-founder of UMBRAL, leveraging arts-based approaches to foster healing, belonging, and social change. What we admire most about Shabrae is her deep trauma-informed perspective, which reflects her exceptional self-awareness, mindfulness, and care. We are honored to have her on the BLK South Board of Advisors. Learn More
We take in the world through our senses.
Last month, I participated in a weekly gathering for a group of family caregivers who are 60 and older. Almost all the members of this group are African American women. Each week, we gathered for an hour to move, sing, and create to help lower stress. Two weeks ago, we practiced chair dancing to an Aretha Franklin playlist, singing and moving together as a community. At the end, one participant exclaimed, “I haven’t moved like that since I was a young girl!”
The movements, the words to the song, and the rhythm brought memory; they brought resonance—it was life. It became a sensuous experience, activating her story and bringing an aliveness in the present moment—a sensation and feeling she carried with her after the class.
As the group reflected, the women shared how the space had become a source of joy and community in the middle of the week—a moment to let go and take a breath. One shared a story from Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness book, which describes a village where women once washed clothes together by the river. When washing machines replaced this communal activity, an increase in depression was observed—not because of the technology, but because of the loss of community and connection that this daily ritual provided.
Women Washing Clothes in the River, Port Antonio, Jamaica by Adolphe Duperly and Son.
An elder exclaimed that we are losing these types of connections in our community today, and the aliveness that bubbled up in her was calling for something more. We decided that our time together could be one of our “rivers”—a time and space to find our movements again, connect with joy, be seen, and be present.
Just be present.
It can feel so difficult to stay present these days—to stay connected with others and even with ourselves. The barrage of news and reports coming from many places each day is numbing. Sometimes we may just want to turn it all off.
Overstimulation is real.
My inbox is filled with metaphors and symbols speaking of the days and times we are living in. It is clear that many are trying to “make sense” of what is happening around us. It can feel disorienting for some, while for others there is a deep clarity of mind about what is unfolding and what is being called for. It is a time of prophets—and of making sanctuary.
A time to attend to our senses.
Our senses, sensitivities, and sensations shape and expand the world we live in and contribute to our health and well-being. They help us perceive, navigate, and understand our physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational worlds. They are impacted by our daily experiences—both traumatic and transformative.
The classical senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—are familiar. However, some name a sixth classical sense, balance, while extensive research suggests that humans actually have more than thirty distinct senses.
In my work with communities through expressive arts therapies, engaging with the senses is a key practice to help us remain present and grounded in the here and now. There is an old Japanese proverb: "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." One of my teachers and mentors has used this popular saying through a different lens to speak about the senses and trauma. She often says that if you have seen too much that feels scary, you begin to close your eyes; if you hear sounds that are disruptive or violent, you start to cover your ears; and if you have learned that what you say can get you into trouble or put you in danger, you close your mouth and become silent.
Just a few weeks ago, I spoke to community leaders at a local Guatemalan community center who shared that people are being careful not to speak Spanish in public for fear of being targeted. They have become silent in using their own language. Recalling a story from the book, The Border and Its Bodies, a young man shared that “crossing the desert in hope of a new home is not about walking. It is about your emotional capacity to have all your senses totally alert for days on end—to never let your guard down.”
Being in a vigilant stance for days on end can be exhausting. Engaging the senses can help us move out of the frozen sensations in the body—out of freeze, flight, and fight. It gives us the opportunity to take in new sounds and different images and to explore other possibilities—to look for what gives hope, what brings calm, what lights you up and makes you come alive, grounding you in the present moment.
I believe that in this exploration we are also able to mobilize and catalyze our energy toward justice—to speak out and protect others.
We remember these words from theologian Howard Thurman:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
In this season, our invitation is to pay attention to what’s right in front of us—to what we hear, see, smell, taste, and feel. Over the coming months, our weekly reflections will explore this theme as a call to notice God’s presence in the ordinary and to reflect on how this very moment is shaping our collective life and faith. Each writer will bring their own stories and experiences to help us engage our senses. We will begin with the sense of hearing.
Perhaps this will be an invitation to sense in a new way—to slow down, find new ways of being, and move with it. To find our “rivers” that hold memory and help us come alive again and again.
Dr. Tricia Hersey, in her groundbreaking work through The Nap Ministry, created the Rest Is Resistance and Rest as Reparations frameworks—spaces where people can reconnect to their senses through rest. Lately, she has been hosting imagination spaces where people can pause for collective daydreaming.
What would it look like to include daydreaming in our practice?
Together we will step into a season of exploration through the senses—taking in ourselves, each other, and the world—to be grounded in the present moment. I will close with a few quotes and an opening practice focused on the sense of hearing.
Photo and caption from The Nap Ministry on Instagram (October 21, 2025)
“Surrender toward the mystery. And that includes the mystery in ourselves, the mystery in the other, and the mystery of some of these huge, complicated social pains that we don’t fully understand.” — Pastor Donny Bryant
“We are all indigenous to somewhere, and we’re all called in this time to be in inquiry about decolonizing ourselves and our relationships—and that process is multisensory. We can’t just think our way out of the predicament that we’re in. It really requires us to reimagine the way in which we engage with the world from a multitude of senses.” — Rowen White
“We stand at a threshold. The structures of a world built on domination and division are crumbling, but still fighting to hold on. Each day brings news of worsening ecological, political, and social collapse. It can be tempting to disconnect in order to ease the intensity of the pain—to distract or numb ourselves in all the ways we do. The answer, however, is not to disconnect but to connect more deeply—to find strength in something more powerful than the chaos: our belonging to a wholeness that is ancient, infinite, and eternal. We can engage the transformative potentials within the upheaval as a portal into another way of being. We can live with purpose and meaning, not just in spite of the rising tide of calamities around us, but as our response to them. When old worlds are dying, new ones can be born. That is the real opportunity available to us in these times.” — Liza J. Rankow, from her forthcoming book Soul Medicine for a Fractured World
Reflection Practice - Sense: Hear
Description: Go on a walk in your neighborhood without headphones and simply take in the natural soundtrack.
Set aside 15 to 20 minutes for a walk. Leave your AirPods at home and let the natural sounds of the neighborhood be your soundtrack.
As you walk, take note of the noises you hear. First, let your ears tune into the sounds that are close to you—those under your feet, within twenty feet, or inside a block. Next, cast your listening into the distance. Hear the noises down the road, those thousands of feet above your head, or those drifting toward you from miles away.
As you walk, use your eyes to notice what’s around you. If there is a safe place to pause and sit or stand, do so and let the sounds surround you. Close your eyes if that feels right, and let your ears hear.
Once you return home, reflect on the following:
What do you notice?
How is this walk transformed by your own silence?
How is God’s presence evident in the quietness?
Where are you discovering the sounds of the sacred?
R E C O M M E N D E D R E A D I N G
