I've been taking a sabbath from this writing. It wasn't intentional, nor was I particularly feeling the need of a rest, but Sabbath happened. Somewhere in my mind and my spirit, I moved inward over the last few months. Writing here is such an external process, a giving over and turning inside-out process. To set things into prose and offer them to others to read, digest, comment, evaluate is an extroverted thing, and it requires the right frame of mind, even for an extrovert's extrovert, as I am.
My first year at my no-longer-new appointment to this congregation and community is over. The first year is both exhilarating and exhausting, and this one has exhausted me more than that first year in most of my previous appointments; perhaps my age is a factor, or maybe my experience in ministry has taken its toll, or maybe it's that I've invested more deeply this time around. Whatever the case, the first year has passed. As we have learned to work with each other to find out the ministry we are called to develop together, we're learning that we don't have to use party manners all the time any more. We aren't so shy around one another. We now know what to do with our hands, and when to speak and when to keep silent, and what the outlines of our boundaries look like, and what our capabilities are. It's been exciting and wonderful and sometimes fraught with the arranged-marriage glitches in the get-to-know you process. My writing effort has been for the preaching in this place. Perhaps I just needed to rest from that.
I've been working on that dream I mentioned, as well. That's been some complicated emotional and logistical work, and I'm not quite ready to talk about that. Maybe that's why I needed a rest.
Sabbath isn't always intentional, but it is always necessary. It will take us, if we don't take it. Moses tells his people in the giving of the commandments that if they do not observe Sabbath, they will die. It's a simple, yet powerful statement. It may mean to Moses and his people, and the author of the story, of course, that God will smite them if they do not honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. But what if it has another meaning: might it just mean that when we do not take time--rest time, sabbath-time, breathing time--we will die, because we cannot sustain the pace most persons try to keep; we cannot keep not breathing, not resting, not stopping.
I'm finding my lungs again. I'm learning to re-pace again. I don't credit that to my own power. I have felt called to breathe and to rest, and that did not come from me alone. In that rest, I have realized that I have lost sight of the light, in some ways. In that rest, I have observed that God is trying to lead me to still waters and is trying mightily to restore my soul. In that rest, I have seen my center shift, and the ways God is trying to shift it back. I am grateful. My Sabbath came, ready or not.
My first year at my no-longer-new appointment to this congregation and community is over. The first year is both exhilarating and exhausting, and this one has exhausted me more than that first year in most of my previous appointments; perhaps my age is a factor, or maybe my experience in ministry has taken its toll, or maybe it's that I've invested more deeply this time around. Whatever the case, the first year has passed. As we have learned to work with each other to find out the ministry we are called to develop together, we're learning that we don't have to use party manners all the time any more. We aren't so shy around one another. We now know what to do with our hands, and when to speak and when to keep silent, and what the outlines of our boundaries look like, and what our capabilities are. It's been exciting and wonderful and sometimes fraught with the arranged-marriage glitches in the get-to-know you process. My writing effort has been for the preaching in this place. Perhaps I just needed to rest from that.
I've been working on that dream I mentioned, as well. That's been some complicated emotional and logistical work, and I'm not quite ready to talk about that. Maybe that's why I needed a rest.
Sabbath isn't always intentional, but it is always necessary. It will take us, if we don't take it. Moses tells his people in the giving of the commandments that if they do not observe Sabbath, they will die. It's a simple, yet powerful statement. It may mean to Moses and his people, and the author of the story, of course, that God will smite them if they do not honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. But what if it has another meaning: might it just mean that when we do not take time--rest time, sabbath-time, breathing time--we will die, because we cannot sustain the pace most persons try to keep; we cannot keep not breathing, not resting, not stopping.
I'm finding my lungs again. I'm learning to re-pace again. I don't credit that to my own power. I have felt called to breathe and to rest, and that did not come from me alone. In that rest, I have realized that I have lost sight of the light, in some ways. In that rest, I have observed that God is trying to lead me to still waters and is trying mightily to restore my soul. In that rest, I have seen my center shift, and the ways God is trying to shift it back. I am grateful. My Sabbath came, ready or not.
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