Discern Part 4

 

One final process that I would like to share with you this week on discernment.  This process is less about words and more about silence, quieting, breathing and being. 

 

Start by focusing on your breath: breathe in for four counts, hold for six counts, and exhale for eight counts.  Do this at your own pace.  I recommend doing these seven to twelve times until you feel your pulse slowing down.

 

Say your question out loud slowly three times.  This may feel a bit awkward, but you are speaking your question so you can hear yourself.  I believe my question sounds different when I hear it with my own ears than when it is closed off in my mind.

 

Say, “Speak, God, for your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10).  Sit in quiet for three to five minutes.  If your mind starts to wander, as mine does, softly and gently say, “Speak, God, for your servant is listening”.  You may have to say that twenty times during the quiet, but you are waking yourself up to the fact that silence is God’s first language.  You are paying attention to the Spirit surfing over the chaos of the questions that crash like waves in your soul. 

 

Slowly breathe in again, hold, and release.

 

Write down how the experience felt and any new insights.  Maybe it felt awkward or frustrating because God didn’t send you a neon sign or text message.  Maybe you felt uneasy with how the question is being spoken.  There is no grade from God; we are simply inviting the sacred to sit with us in the mysterious unfolding of our lives.  May this prayer practice help center you in our Creator who is painting on the canvas of your life right here and now. Amen. 

Discern Part 3

 

Let me offer you another framework for discernment that might be helpful for the questions you are living.  These come from Nicky Gumbel.

 

Counsel of Saints ~ turn toward the wisdom of people who have offered you insight previously.  This could be a friend, a mentor, a coach, authors, pastor, or that voice outside yourself that both sees and values your questions.

Consulting Scripture ~ turn to the Psalms or Proverbs for ways that people of faith of sought to let God have a seat at the committee table discussing the decision to be made.

Use common Sense ~ God made you with a beautiful mind and heart and soul.  As you ponder the opportunities and options, which ones align with your mind, heart, and soul?  This might not be the easiest choice, but the trinity of you trusts God’s still speaking and creating presence.

Open to Compelling Spirit ~ this is the holy nudge of life or the tug of the heart toward a next right step.  There is beauty when these first four steps are in harmony, but you can also feel pushed toward a particular next step that doesn’t make linear, logical sense to your mind but does to your heart and soul.

Seek Coincidental Signs ~ if the compelling Spirit was the swirling within us, this is the work of the holy hummer and hovering around us.  I have heard of moments when a person makes a decision, shows up at a place, and meets someone who helps that person feel safe, seen, and soothed.  I would say that is a coincidence or God wink in your life. 

 

Take a moment to ponder which of the parts of the above process make sense.  Which parts stretch you in uncomfortable directions you’d prefer not to go?  What excites you?  What is missing above?  I hope yesterday and today, you worked through the prayer processes with your question to see what insights or ideas came forth.  Continue to live your questions, trusting that God is within you in the prayerful pondering.  Amen.  

Discern Part 2

 

Yesterday, you held the questions that were living in you.  Today, I want to introduce you to a format and framework for living the questions.  I encourage you to adapt this in ways that make sense for you.  Let the process inform you rather than make you feel like you must follow every single word exactly.  Moreover, you may not need all seven steps.  Feel free to make this your own as you seek to be open to the Spirit in living your questions.

State Question: This is a process of gradually uncovering what is at the heart of your questions.  Start by writing down the question, then ask if that fully captures what you are wrestling with ~ why or why not?  Walk away from the question and come back ~ how is that question read now?  Continue to play with the question, try not to get too tense or tied up in getting it “right”, trusting that every re-phrasing of the words inches you closer. 

Gather Information: List all the options and opportunities; all the ways you could respond.  Be as creative as possible, be wildly outrageous in possibilities, too.  What is the safest answer? What is the riskiest?  Identify potential obstacles, concerns, and needs.  What excites you most, and what fears awaken within you?

Pray: Reflect on the options and opportunities through prayer, inviting the Holy Spirit to open your mind and heart. Imagine yourself at the end of one year, how might you feel?  Hold each opportunity quietly before God and listen for God’s still singing voice/wisdom.

Decide with peace: Choose the option that brings the most peace.  Trust that you can postpone the decision if you don’t sense peace.  Note that peace can still hold space for nervousness; we will never be 100% confident, but hopefully feel the “Blessed Assurance” of God’s grace and love. 

Accept the beautiful messiness: Fully embrace your choice, asking the Holy Spirit to give courage when you want to backtrack or run away. 

Action with openness: Implement your decision, potentially giving up something you are attached to, and ask for strength to move forward. 

Seek signs: Look for good fruit from your decision; where are you sensing grace or goodness or God’s love?

 

If you have questions or want to talk more about this, let me know.  Try this out in your life, test it, dance, and play with the process.  You can use this for small choices (where to go for dinner with a friend or what to get your pastor for Christmas) before trying it out on a major decision.  Prayers you find a way to live your questions in the days to come.

Discern Part 1

 

For the last few weeks, we have been exploring the spaces within us, around us, and between us.  We have prayerfully sought to pay attention to what is happening in our own skin, asking the question, What is it like to be you?  We can also ask, how do other people experience you?  That last question can be difficult to ask and even more difficult to hear the answer to!  This week, we will turn to how do we know what to do?  What is the next right step?  The fancy theological term for this is discernment.  Discernment is different than making a decision.  Our culture teaches and tells us that when we make a decision, we weigh the pros and cons, if the balance of the scale tips/tilts toward pros, do it!  Of course, sometimes our linear logic fails us, and we can end up doing something because it feels good or because we want to…and no one is the boss of us!  Emotions can present themselves as reasons and rationale that make complete sense to us.  How do you discern what to do, when to do it, and how to do it?  First and foremost, we start with a question. 

 

What is a question that you’ve been living with for a while now?  The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote:

 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

 

The succinct summary of this quote is to “live the questions”.  We reside in a results-oriented culture.  What did you accomplish and achieve, and cross off your to-do list?  Sometimes we hide behind busyness because our questions are restless and even unanswerable!  Today, write down the questions that have been living in your soul, patiently waiting for you to turn on the single lightbulb that hangs by a string in your soul, illuminating all the cobwebs and clutter we can keep there. 

 

What are the questions that are lingering in your soul?  Write those down…add to them later today when you are in the car going somewhere, and suddenly a question comes to you that you didn’t realize was in the luggage of your life!  You can continue to add to your list throughout the week, months, and days to come.  May you sense the sacred as you go down the steps slowly into your soul this week.  Amen.  

Friday Prayer

 

God of relationships that are dynamic and divine; there are endless possibilities of relationships that impact me each week, help open me to all that is within me, between me, around me and beyond me.  Help me continue to pay attention to You, how You are authoring my life and the edits You, O God, are making in my heart and soul in how/where/when/why I show up.  Help me hold loosely the holy connection and community with others, both one-on-one and in groups.  I hear Jesus saying that where two or three gather, You have promised to already be in the room before the door is unlocked and the a/c is turned on.  Trinitarian God who is in collaboration and conspiring with Christ and the Spirit, help me see that all life is connection.  May the truth of Your presence continue to be the wisdom I need this day and every day.  Amen.

Between Week 2

 

One last time, here are the four spaces:

 

1. The space inside you ~ this is the space in your head, heart, body, and soul.

2. The space inside another person ~ this is the space in the head, heart, body, and soul of the person to whom you are interacting.

3. The space between you and another person ~ this is the “third space” ~ the energy generated in the meeting.  Think of a Venn diagram ~ where you are one circle and the other person is a separate circle ~ but when you come together, your circles at least touch or intersect.  This is creates a new energy that is more than just the sum of the parts of you and the other.

4. The space between others in a group ~ this is when the Venn diagrams of a group all intersect ~ sometimes beautifully (think of our choir singing) or chaotically (think of that meeting where anxiety and anger hovered/hummed in the air ~ and got into your lungs!)

 

How you show up in groups can affect and infect the whole room.  Pastor Steve Cuss talks about how anxiety and anger can be the loudest voices in the room.  These voices can be contagious and shape how you show up in that space.  I know I can shrink in the face of bullies sometimes.  When others are shouting and spit flying from their lips, I am not my healthiest, God created self.  Other times, my anger gets the better of me and I bully the bully right back.  I will tell you, sarcastically, when I become the bully that always goes oh so well.  Do you shrink or get bigger in groups?  Do you fade into a wallflower or need the spotlight on you?  The answer for most is both.  The deeper question is, where/when do I get bigger, and when do I shrink?  And secondly, why do I do that in those particular settings?  Why do I get angry at that meeting but joke my way through the other?  Why do I let one person throw me off in this situation, but in another gathering, that person doesn’t have the same effect?  Humans are fascinating (and frustrating), but a source of endless exploration in the laboratory of life.  Today, when you are in a group of featherless bipeds hanging out, notice the energy between people and in the room.  Is the vibe healthy and holy or broken and afraid?  Notice this, hold this, be curious, and pray for God (who is already there in every room and every gathering every everywhere) to guide you and help you up as the beautiful beloved person God crafts you to be.  Amen.

Between Week 2

 

So far this week, we have explored the space in you on Monday.  Then, yesterday, the unknowable and frustratingly uncontrollable space in the other person.  Any new insights you’ve had?  These spaces are inexhaustible.  You will never finish knowing yourself and people are an endless mystery.  When the sphere of your life intersects and interacts with the sphere of another, your two circles overlap, creating a third space ~ the Venn diagram of our lives.   In this third space exists a past, present, and future.  You have history with family members and friends ~ which contains the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Maybe that thing your uncle said at Thanksgiving four years ago still sticks with you and visits you every time you are preparing to see him.  Maybe you have friends with whom you have been on great adventures, and that helps define your relationship.  The third space is tended by you and the other.  Relationships and human interactions are a collaborative group project.  One other cool tool to hold as we consider third space is that there is a continuum of ways people show up/tend from enmeshment to detachment.  Enmeshed people tend to over-function in relationships, thinking it is all up to them.  That they can only be happy when everyone else is happy.  Their mood depends on the other person.  We all have experiences and examples of enmeshment, when it felt like someone was smothering us with unwanted attention and presence.  Detachment is the other end, when the person is distant or disconnected.  This can be someone who is aloof and acts like s/he/they have no responsibility for the relationship.  An example is people whose faces never change from neutral when you are telling them about something important.  You might be thinking of an encounter you didn’t feel seen, safe, or soothed by another person ~ or even threatened.  Because the third space is co-owned and managed by both, it is very difficult to change that space.  If you have always been the helper, the one others lean on, the one who cooks and cleans, trying to get the other to live/function differently is like climbing a mountain.  All of this is an oversimplification of the complex dynamics of relationships.  If you’d like to talk more, please let me know. I welcome the chance to explore what it is like to be you and how relationships impact and influence how you show up and the story you live from.  Continue to hold the four spaces in your heart as you move about your day.

Between Week 2

 

Did you discover or uncover anything new about the story and space inside you?  Did you overhear yourself talking about how clearly your doctor has it out for you, or how that obnoxious person at the meeting you can’t stand clearly wants to make you look bad?  There is a story in you, and that impacts not only the story we tell about ourselves, but how we see others.  Remember the four spaces:

 

1. The space inside you ~ this is the space in your head, heart, body, and soul.

2. The space inside another person ~ this is the space in the head, heart, body, and soul of the person to whom you are interacting.

3. The space between you and another person ~ this is the “third space” ~ the energy generated in the meeting.  Think of a Venn diagram ~ where you are one circle and the other person is a separate circle ~ but when you come together, your circles at least touch or intersect.  This is creates a new energy that is more than just the sum of the parts of you and the other.

4. The space between others in a group ~ this is when the Venn diagrams of a group all intersect ~ sometimes beautifully (think of our choir singing) or chaotically (think of that meeting where anxiety and anger hovered/hummed in the air ~ and got into your lungs!)

 

The second space is what is stirring/swirling inside another.   Upfront, I need to say this is a space you cannot control or ever comprehend.  If I were made king for the day, I would outlaw the phrase, “I know exactly how you feel.”  You don’t.  I would suggest lovingly, you don’t even know how you feel sometimes!  Yet, how much time and energy ~ anger and attention ~ effort and hours in a day do we spend defining, describing, and trying to influence the space of what is in another?  We used to think that if we just gave someone enough information s/he/they would clearly be convinced by our brilliance.  We used to think that if we just gave someone a pamphlet, book, brought them to a seminar, or exposed them to the “truth”, all would be well.  Only, that isn’t how the world works.  There are people I have known and talked to for years who still have opinions that are opposed to mine.  The space inside another is not yours to fix or save.  This is gut-wrenching because others can hurt us, and we want to salvage the relationship.  This is where anger, anxiety, stress, and strain start to swirl within us.  When have you tried to educate someone and your words fell flatter than a cake without baking soda?  When have you tried to fix someone, only to have them resist your words?  This is what we heard in Jeremiah on Sunday.  Remember, you are in good company; most of Israel wasn’t convinced or convicted by the prophet's words!  Notice this space as you tend the one holy space in you where you and God collaborate and cooperate and can co-author the stories you tell yourself/others about who you are.  Amen.  

Between Week Two

 

Last week, we explored and examined the space between your head, heart, and soul.  The space between moments when you absorb the words and actions of another and when you respond and react to what you’ve encountered.  There are four spaces that Pastor Steve Cuss identifies where energy or emotions exist and emerge from ~

 

1. The space inside you ~ this is the space in your head, heart, body, and soul.

2. The space inside another person ~ this is the space in the head, heart, body, and soul of the person to whom you are interacting.

3. The space between you and another person ~ this is the “third space” ~ the energy generated in the meeting.  Think of a Venn diagram ~ where you are one circle and the other person is a separate circle ~ but when you come together, your circles at least touch or intersect.  This creates a new energy that is more than just the sum of the parts of you and the other.

4. The space between others in a group ~ this is when the Venn diagrams of a group all intersect ~ sometimes beautifully (think of our choir singing) or chaotically (think of that meeting where anxiety and anger hovered/hummed in the air ~ and got into your lungs!)

 

Over the last several weeks, I shared with you the September slowdown.  Those meditations were an invitation to explore and experience the space inside you.  I wanted you to find ways to listen to your life.  My prayer is for God to be the editor of my story, I tell myself.  But others have red ink pens, making comments on what they think I should be doing.  Hearing my own voice and God’s voice is difficult.  Plus, my brain already has a narrative about who I am ~ which is not always positive.  I tend to hold onto my mistakes way too long.  To listen for God and God’s words written on my heart is to rewire the pathways of my brain.  While this is possible, it takes a lot of intention and energy.  The space inside you is cluttered, and cleaning out the cobwebbed corners will take more than a month of slowing down; it takes a lifetime.  Many prayer practices are about checking in with yourself.  Remember back to the beginning of Jeremiah.  He said, “I am only/just a child”.  The multiple ways we see ourselves impact and influence how we show up.  Most mystics believe that you have a public self (the one you post online), a private self (that maybe you share with family or friends), and a secret/shadow self (that you don’t let see the light of day to anyone, even yourself).  Think about the stories you tell about yourself.  Maybe your meta-story is of having nothing and being successful.  Maybe you share stories about having everything and losing it all.  Maybe it is a story about everyone being against you.  Maybe your stories reinforce that there is nothing special about you, just an average life.  If you are curious about the story you are telling, listen the next time you are sharing an experience with a family member or friend.  Are you the hero or the zero?  Are you often the one being criticized or dehumanized by others?  How would God write that story?  If you are even braver, you may want to ask a close friend, “How do you experience me?”  That is a tough question to ask, to be asked, and to listen to a response!  Today, explore the space in you.  The thoughts, emotions, questions, and unresolved clutter that sit in the corner.  List what swirls in your soul and let the love of God hold all you are, remembering that you are more than “just” or “only”.  You are known by God before you know anything, even right here and now.  Amen.

Stretched Thin

 

For when you feel stretched too thin by Kate Bowler

I am stretched so thin that every task looms large.

At first, I thought I was still falling but no, I’ve hit bottom.
I have no more to give, yet so much more to do.

My resolve has dwindled and my hope is chased away
by every anxious thought: Will this ever let up? Will I ever get a break? Will there ever be enough?

Oh God, show me again how this works— how you bring dry bones to life.

God, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Spirit, have mercy.

Blessed are we, the weary and weak and sore, with only the merest ember left burning but who still whisper, with all the voice we can muster:

Breathe on me, oh God, breathe life into my tired body, my heavy limbs,
bring light to the dark corners of my mind, breathe comfort into my sad heart.

Enkindle my awareness of who I was made to be and of what is mine to do.

Blessed are we who turn our gaze to seek the One whose eyes meet ours, the One who knows us, the One whose nail-pierced hands formed ours.
Like newborns whose bleary sight focuses to find adoring eyes beaming down, delighting and filling, mirroring and multiplying.

Blessed are we who discover we are loved and held in Holy arms that are strong enough to hold that which we cannot.

Between ~ Live Your Values

 

One pro tip, as you are working through the space between the stimulus and response, is that you want to be aware, awake, and in tune with your values.  As people of faith, our values sit at the heart of our lives.  The clearer we are, the more they can help us.  There are countless lists of values out there.  These come from Brené Brown.  Go through the list once, circling as many values as you’d like.  Then, try to whittle your list down to 5-10, and to prioritize your top three.

 

Accountability
Achievement
Adaptability
Adventure
Altruism
Ambition
Authenticity
Balance
Beauty
Being the best
Belonging
Career
Caring
Collaboration
Commitment
Community
Compassion
Competence
Confidence
Connection
Contentment
Contribution
Cooperation
Courage
Creativity
Curiosity
Dignity
Diversity
Environment
Efficiency
Equality
Ethics
Excellence
Fairness
Faith
Family
Financial stability
Forgiveness
Freedom
Friendship

Fun
Future generations
Generosity
Giving back
Grace
Gratitude
Growth
Harmony
Health
Home
Honesty
Hope
Humility
Humor
Inclusion
Independence
Initiative
Integrity
Intuition
Job security
Joy
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Legacy
Leisure
Love
Loyalty
Making a difference
Nature
Openness
Optimism
Order
Parenting
Patience
Patriotism
Peace
Perseverance

Personal fulfillment
Power
Pride
Recognition
Reliability
Resourcefulness
Respect
Responsibility
Risk-taking
Safety
Security
Self-discipline
Self-expression
Self-respect
Serenity
Service
Simplicity
Spirituality
Sportsmanship
Stewardship
Success
Teamwork
Thrift
Time
Tradition
Travel
Trust
Truth
Understanding
Uniqueness
Usefulness
Vision
Vulnerability
Wealth
Well-being
Wholeheartedness
Wisdom
Write your own:

Between ~ Part 3

 

How is your experimenting with SNAP (Stop, Notice, Ask, and Pivot) and RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Inquire, and Nurture) going this week? 

 

One note: you are not aiming for a homerun every single moment and every reaction you offer this world.  Remember, in baseball, if you get a hit 30 percent of the time, you are a candidate for the Hall of Fame.  I would say that if we can be less reactive in our lives 20 percent of the time, the reverberation would be felt in the world today. 

 

If you haven’t liked the previous two, let me offer one more: ADD, which stands for:

 

Acknowledge ~ what is in you and around you.

Discern ~ why are the emotions or reactions there?

Decide ~ how you’d like to respond rather than feeling pushed or pulled in a direction

 

Like anything, the more you practice this, the more your mind, heart, and soul form pathways to let this process become more natural and normal.  I know the best time for me to start this is not some town hall meeting with a topic I am passionate about or at Thanksgiving with a relative whose views are offensive.  The best time to start this is in a place and space where you are safe, secure, and can feel soothed.  The best time to start this is in a gathering where you are open about what you are doing.  I find that if I start the day by journaling my ideas, it can help guide me.  If I start the day acknowledging that your feet hurt and you're tired because you stayed up too late reading.  If you discern that you are on edge and that the caffeine you are gulping down right now is contributing to your jitters.  Then, you can decide before you let loose your pain on some unexpected person. 

 

Take time today to review which of the three processes you find most helpful and how/where you might let these words shape the world within you and around you.

Between Part 2

 

Yesterday we practiced SNAP (Stop, Notice, Ask, and Pivot).  How did that go?  Did you test and try it out when you were in the grocery store?  Did you even venture to try it at a meeting? Today I will give you another slightly different practice known as: RAIN

Recognize ~ what is in you and between you and the other person ~ could be energy, the past, or the present moment.

Allow ~ your emotions; they are data points, and your thoughts are reactions ~ see the above wheel.

Inquire ~ why are these emotions and thoughts stirring within you?  Sometimes it is because the person said something offensive that you never expected.  Other times, there is a long history where even the other person breathing will flummox you.

Nurture ~ yourself to live from the space of belovedness rather than scoring points on an imaginary scoreboard of life.

 

You may be wondering, is this practical or possible?  Or you will correctly discern that this will take time to work through these for steps.  You may worry that the conversation may pass by, and you will never get to add your two cents.  Yes, you may miss the moment occasionally.  However, who says you cannot offer a comment to the dialogue once you have worked through the process above? 

 

The power of this process can also be in practice before the meeting or encounter.  Before you go into an emotionally volatile or difficult conversation, recognize and allow your emotions.  Sit with them, inquiring about how you want to show up in that space?

 

You can practice this by noticing your response to the meditation this morning.  Or try out the RAIN process with one news article (I would not select the most emotionally triggering or traumatizing).  Or find a friend with whom you can practice this together.  When we, as people of faith, show up and speak up in other ways, God can work through us to share a peace and presence that is needed in the world today.

Between Part 1

 

Between stimulus and response there is space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor Frankl

 

In a world of immediate and instant communication, where we must respond right now, where our adrenaline surges and swirls constantly within us, it is good to breathe.  During September, I encouraged you to slow down.  To enter the sacred space of rest, renewal, and reconnecting with the One who calls Sabbath and slowing down holy.  To embody the practice of Jesus, who got away from crowds and demands, being needed and necessary.  We heard in August how Habakkuk went from lament (crying out to God) to listening for God in the tower.  Finding a space and place in our calendars for “tower time” is important.  To find moments we open our ears, hearts, and whole lives to God is vital emotionally, spiritually, and physically.  While I would love to stay in “tower time” always, the truth is there is laundry to be done, errands to be run, and doctor’s appointments.  I believe with all my heart that God shows up in our everyday, ordinary lives – when we are out and about ~ remember Jeremiah from yesterday going to a Potter’s shop/shed ~ a place of business.  Even as we go, we can take the practice of slowing down with us.  When we re-engage and re-enter the world, we have that holy pause between the stimulus and response. 

 

The holy pause to breathe.

 

The holy pause to listen first for God before we let words fall from our lips or let loose our fingers to dance across the keys of our computing device.

 

The holy pause to remember you are a beloved of God…and so is the person to whom you are responding.

 

This week, I want to introduce you to three mind/heart/soul practices to engage when you are interacting with other featherless bipeds.  The first is SNAP, which stands for

 

Stop ~ before you run and race into your response, breathe deeply.

Notice ~ what emotions are swirling inside you – see the Wheel of Emotions above.

Ask ~ why are those emotions there?  What are they trying to tell you?

Pivot ~ toward your values for a response.

 

You can practice this right now!  Take a breath.  What is your response to this acronym?  It could be that you are thinking, “This is amazing!!”  Or you might think, “This sounds impossible!!”  You could be saying to yourself, That will never work with so-and-so, who seems to have the nuclear code to my emotions.  Ask why that person has the editorial pen on your life?  Why does that person get to write over the belovedness and values you seek to live from?  Now, how might you pivot toward your values?  In the safety and security of where you are reading this, you can let loose your sacred imagination in how this might work and where the potential pitfalls and potholes might be.  Take time today to ponder situations where SNAP might help you stay grounded in your values and guided by God’s love in these days.

Prayer

 

Amid the storms that sometimes block our practice of rest; amid the chaos that can interrupt our calmness and centering on the Creator pray this prayer with written by Orin Crain:

To be prayed slowly, savoring each syllable, playing with each word, and listening to each line:

Slow me down, Lord!                                                      
Ease the pounding of my heart
By the quieting of my mind.
Steady my harried pace
With a vision of the eternal reach of time.
Amidst the confusions of my day,
Grant me the calmness of the everlasting hills.
Break the tensions of my nerves
With the soothing music of the singing streams
That lives in my memory.
Help me to know
The magical power of sleep,
Teach me the art of taking minute vacations 
Of slowing down to look at a flower;
To chat with an old friend pr make a new one;
To pet a dog;
To watch a spider build a web;
To smile at a child;
Or to read a few lines from a good book.
Remind me each day
That the race is not always won by the swift;
That there is more to life than increasing its speed.
Let me look upward
Into the branches of the towering oak
And know that it grew great and strong
Because it grew slowly and well.
Slow me down, Lord,
And inspire me to send my roots deep
Into the soil of life's enduring values
That I may grow toward the stars
Of our greater destiny.  Amen.

Sleep? At a time like this?

 

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is Jesus asleep in the back of the boat in the middle of the storm, see Mark 4:38-40.  How did Jesus do that?  I am asking both for the logistics of how Jesus quieted his monkey mind and to learn to stay calm when the world is in chaos.  I am asking because I long to find ways to practice both Sabbath and showing up in places where people are hurting and the vulnerable are exploited.  I am asking because in the boat of my life right now, it can feel like there are lots of people racing and running around demanding that we do something, or that to rest is a luxury for the privileged.  How do we find the back of the boat moments amid the stormy season of our world?  Do we feel called to do that, or is this story something we say will have to wait for another time?  I can be good at procrastinating rest.  I tell myself that after this project, class, writing a sermon, or meeting, I will find the back of the boat.  After this busy season, my mind convinces me, I will find a quiet place to center my soul.  But the busyness, like the waves crashing into that boat where Jesus slept, just keeps on coming.  To follow Jesus is not just an intellectual exercise or study, but to be like Jesus, doing what he did.  Where and when was the last time you metaphorically got in the back of the boat?  Is the back of the boat practice primarily on vacations or weekend getaways?  Or have back-of-the-boat moments been built into the weekly liturgy of your life?  May these four stories of Jesus compel and convince us that rest isn’t being lazy or against God’s call, but central to how God works in our lives every day.  Amen.

In the Crowded Aloneness

 

This week, we are holding space in our hearts for three references to Jesus resting in Mark’s gospel.  The last one has an edge to it.  Jesus healed a beloved of God, but the neighbors now protest Jesus’ presence.  Jesus hangs out on the edges, the fringe of town, because the people have blocked or barricaded him from entering.  While people still come to Jesus, Mark says that Jesus stayed in a “lonely place” (Mark 1:45).  Surrounded by people but lonely; connected to a worldwide web of human beings but feeling isolated.  This paradoxical problem of being together and alone is true not only for Jesus but for all of us, too.  We live in a culture where loneliness is an epidemic.  Some research says that not connecting to others is as dangerous to our health as smoking!  Oftentimes, Sabbath can become an individual activity, but resting need not mean isolating.  How can we practice rest with others?  Rest can have a communal dimension.  This might involve praying or singing together, talking to a friend for longer than a few texts back and forth, or being in silence together.  How might your Sabbath rest practice expand from a solo activity to a holy communal moment that your life is calling for right now?  May God bless both the thinking and living out of this question in/through you.  Amen.