For the past week, I've been on vacation - catching up on sleep, reading, and beautiful time with family. As in previous years, one of the items on my reading list has been The Hawk & The Dove Series by Penelope Wilcock - a series of nine books set in a Benedictine monastery that weave together periods of time by the way we live our faith. 
While reading The Long Fall in the series, the following quote caught my attention - "You're a monk. You're supposed to be humble and put your trust in God and go to ned at night and eat up your dinner." 
Ouch! How often do I try to drag out the length of my days in order to squeeze out one more email or one more project - and is my hesitancy to rest truly a sign that I don't trust God?
The reality is that we live in a time that tries to squeeze each morsel of time out of every day. But that isn't the life Benedict called people to. Instead, he brought together prayer, work, and rest in balance. A lesson that is just as needed today as it was all those many years ago. 
Let us be people who trust God with each day. 

​

I am someone with short legs. Standing under 5 feet tall, I have compensated most of my life by walking fast in order to catch up with other people who have a longer stride to their step. 
This week that almost got me in trouble. 
I was in Michaels, piking up some supplies for a crafting project, when I almost ran smack into their exit doors. Doors that automatically open - but do so s-l-o-w-l-y. 
As I was leaving the store, avoiding the near incident, I realized that there may be an invitation, to slow down my hurried life, all because of those doors. While I have trained my body over the years to move quickly in order to compensate for what I had perceived to be something wrong, the reality is that I should be able to move at a pace that is contemplative more than quick. 
What invitations have you received to slow down and have you honored them?

I am a bit wary of people who call themselves “holy”.
Wearing the word like a badge of honor
Or a shield. 

​But I fully embrace when others can see the holiness within us
Giving us the name
In a way that peers past all of our wounds into our souls. 

It takes special eyes to see past the muck of the world
To the true God image within.
It’s not a task for the faint of heart. 

But when you can see it
And call forth the holy within it changes a person forever
In the way that a badge or shield never can. 

I recently had to travel for work. This is something I did all the time pre-pandemic, but I've cut back a lot post-pandemic. Maybe I'm just out of practice, but I have found that I'm not as good of a traveler as I age. Or maybe it's better to say that I'm not as good of an airplane traveler as I age. 

The hurry-up and wait nature of traveling on planes can be daunting, but it also allowed me time to write and think and read, especially after experiencing three delays on the way to my destination and one delay on the way back home. 

​The reality is that life rarely goes as planned - there are bumps, hiccups, and delays along the way - the question is what do we do with that time? Do we allow it to grate against our soul, or do we take it as a gift as it comes?

I have never been accused of being too quiet. While I am small in stature, I have a loud voice and an even louder voice. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes my laughter cuts through the silence at inconvenient times. One of my professors, who had a wife the same height as me, commented that short people get all the emotion of taller people but in smaller packages, so it comes out in significant expressions. That has certainly been true of me. 

And yet. 

And yet, I am often more reserved about speaking my truth. Especially in the community.  It doesn’t feel safe. Because of the times when I have said what is accurate and of value to me, it has been debated with the rigor of examining intellectual concepts instead of noticing that it isn’t an idea being discussed, but me—my very self.
Hence, there is a need for more spaces where we encourage people to speak their truth in a way that respects other people’s truth. It sounds like “love your neighbors as yourself,” but we aren’t always good about that. We want to demand that others respect us while failing to respect them. 
We honor that we are created differently. We think differently. Express ourselves differently. Process information differently. And so, we respect ourselves in speaking our truth and respect others by making room for them to do the same. 

​How could such respect, modeled and lived into and help change the tenor of conversations, one at a time?

I have decided to give up on telling people how busy I am. I know that seems like an odd statement, but three different circumstances have made me re-consider my stance on busyness the last few weeks. 


First, everyone is busy. I have yet to run across a person who tells me that they are feeling relaxed or that they need to have more things to fit into their schedule each and every day. That rages from young parents to my parents, who are both now retired, but often comment that they are busier now in retirement then when they worked. We live in a world where busy seems to be the norm and I want to play even a small part in breaking through that pattern. 


Second, I have given up on proving to the congregation that I serve that I am busy. Those that understand already get it - they know how I fill my days. And those who think that I am twiddling my thumbs, just waiting for Sunday to come - if they don’t know the job of a pastor by now, me stating that I am busy is not going to change their way of thinking. 


Third, and perhaps most jarring for me, was talking with a classmate recently and he kept leaning into the narrative of how busy he is and how he didn’t really have time for this program. The reality is, this is not a mandatory degree program by any stretch, we are simply here to learn for the love of learning and the sake of those whom we serve. And, we are all busy. Hearing the words “I’m busy” as a response to the question “how are you?” Coming out of someone else’s mouth made me consider how they sounded coming out of mine.


So this leads to the question - now what? How do I answer the question “how are you?” If not with “busy” or “tired”, which if I’m honest is half rooted in truth and half rooted in wanting to prove my worth. If I sat all that aside, how am I. Or maybe more aptly, who I am. 


Well, that is still a question in process, but one that is worth considering. 


What would it look like for you to give up on busy?

​

Jesus, 
The world around us is filled with so many words.
Words
Coming 
At 
Us
All
The
Time.
I feel like so much of ministry is being spoken at and speaking to others, that I crave the moments of silence. The moments of holding hand of a person who is struggling in a place deeper than words can reach. Or sitting in silence, simply watching a child soak up joy like the rays of the sun, as they twirl around and giggle with glee.
Spirit, help me be thoughtful with my words. Not rushing to fill the silent spaces simply because others want me to or expect me to. Rather give me the words to say at the right moments and remind me of the holiness of staying silent when standing on sacred ground. 
Lead me to listen more than I speak. And in the listening may I be ministered to by you as I am sent out to minister to others. Bless, yes, my words, but bless the silence, equally so, I pray. Amen.

“I wonder what the Trinity may be saying to you through that noticing,” my spiritual director recently asked me after a particular difficult month. It seemed like everything around me was slowly imploding and I found myself unable to hear what the Divine may be saying to me through each struggle. Instead of joining me in my mental and verbal self-flagellation, my spiritual director turned to wonder and in doing so invited me to join her. 

​Often when faced with difficult circumstances, we jump into fight or flight as the individual experiencing the trying circumstances. I either want to attack it head on and get out of it as quickly as possible, or I want to flee from the trying circumstances in any way possible. And if someone is looking into my pain and heartache from the outside, the most common response is to give advice - to try to fix things for me.

​I wonder where the posture of wonder shows up in your everyday life and how it transforms you? And I wonder where wonder is calling you to a different posture? Let us be people of wonder,  allowing it to spill out from the circle into our everyday lives.

I was recently in a Scripture Circle, where we begin by saying our name, where our feet are planted, and what we have been contemplating with God. Suddenly, the words coming out of my mouth were about taking up my space fully. 

​It may be hard to take up my space fully because of all the cultural messages handed down to women about leadership and how we are to show up in the world. Perhaps it is the internalization of the message that Christians should be “nice” and that we should put others before ourselves. Whatever combination of these beliefs may be, it prevented me from living fully. 

When I diminish who I am or try to hide behind others, I am not living into my much-ness. When I sit on my hands and keep silent, when I feel the Spirit prompting me to lead, I am not loving God with my much-ness. When I allow the culture of the Church and society to define who I am more than God, I am not living out of my much-ness, which was created and blessed by God. 

What would it look like if we all took up our space - not the space of others - but our own space? What could happen if we live out of who we are created to be fully? What might the Spirit be doing in and through us, people of God?