Listen to the Promptings of the Spirit

I am a strong believer in the connectedness of life.  We are all connected invisibly in a web of relationships. Sometimes we are more attuned to those connections and other times, we chose to ignore the reverberations of that web.

Here is an illustration:

Amy and I 

 I just have returned home from spending a couple of hours with one of my college roommates.  Amy was headed with her family to Florida and stayed in a hotel here last night.

Yesterday, I got up and thought, "I should really check my 'charter.net' email."  It is an email address that is overrun by spam so I never give it out any more and rarely check it. At one time, it was my primary email address, but the last time I checked it was over two months ago and before that, it had been six months.  But, something prompted me yesterday to check it.  

There in my inbox was an email from Amy from her work email that she wrote 2 weeks ago about how they were coming through here.  I immediately replied hoping that it was not too late. She hadn't given me a time frame for when they would be here.

Last night, she read that email in a hotel room here and called me at the number I had sent to her.  I got to spend two hours with her, meeting her daughter for the first time and catching up.  We hadn't seen each other face to face in over 12 years!

If I hadn't check my email and she hadn't checked hers, we would have missed each other!

Many times in my life, I have heard that little voice, that "prompting" that says, 
"call that person" or "visit that person"  or "wait here a little longer" or "leave now"

I'm not saying there is an actual voice, but a sense, a feeling--a prompting.
When I listen, I usually find a blessing.

Now, because I am a religious person, I would call it the Holy Spirit.
But, for those who are not, perhaps you might call it the connectedness of all life.
The fact that we seem to be connected on a spiritual plane that cannot be seen, but that we often feel in our bones. Some of people seem to be more attuned to those connections.  My goal is to become a better listener--to tune my inner ear to the Spirit.

I'm just so very glad I listened this time and checked my email !

Sanctification of Work

"'If minsters perceive that they must choose between their own health and the health of their congregations, they will nearly always choose the latter,' observed Proeschold-Bell. In part this is because of a phenomenon she calls (citing the research of Kenneth Pargament and Annette Mahoney) the 'sanctification of work.' Clergy see their work not only as important but as divinely ordained. Whenever they act on behalf of their congregations, they are living in faithfulness to their vocations. When they leave work to go to the gym, they may see themselves as departing not just from a building but from doing God’s work. This is not an easy problem to overcome. Health behaviors don’t always have a ready-made theological justification. And the sanctification of work means that work will nearly always take priority."



The quote above comes from an article in a recent edition of The Christian Century.  Amy Frykholm writes about clergy health and the Duke Clergy Health Initiative in  Fit for Ministry.

"Health behaviors don't always have a ready-made theological justification."  That one sentence jumped out at me.  Why is there not a theological justification?  Why does there need to be?

Why is it that we as clergy even need to "justify" taking care of ourselves physically?

What will it take for clergy to understand that part of our response to our calling as leaders in congregations is to model healthy living?  Isn't this about more than a healthy spiritual life, but a balanced life that includes all of our lives-- our physical selves as well as our spiritual selves?

But, what about this need for a theology to underpin the goal of physical health.  Is this an internal need for us?  How do we develop a way for clergy to think "it's ok for me to leave the office at 3 p.m. so I can get to the gym before that Bible Study that I have to teach at 6:30 p.m."  

For me, I think it has to do with the fact that the work is never 'finished.'  There is ALWAYS one more thing that I could do: another sermon to start working on, a parishioner who could use a phone call or visit, a bible study that needs planned.

What I had never thought about was the idea that somehow doing my job was "sanctification": making me holier or more Christ-like.

What if I begin to think about my exercise and nutrition choices as "sanctification"?  
When I chose to exercise I am making myself holier.
When I eat mindfully and make healthier food choices, I am sanctifying myself.

If sanctification is the process of growing in grace and becoming more like Christ, than certainly taking care of my physical self is a part of that process.

But, the biggest "justification" for taking care of my physical health in terms of my vocation has to do with knowing that I CAN do my job better when I am exercising and eating better.  Here is a classic example:  One Wednesday night, our church had a dinner which included a rather "heavy" pasta and immediately after that, I was teaching a study group.  After that meal, I had that typical "brain fog" that comes with a carb heavy meal.  Therefore, my mental agility in guiding a discussion was less than stellar.  Much harder to keep a group on track when your own mind is feeling sluggish!

If my deepest desire is to be more Christ-like, then shouldn't that sanctification include all of my life?

Child of My Labor

This is a poem that I wrote several years ago when my daughter was very little. I've posted this before, but wanted to share again because she will turn 21 this week.

Child of My Labor

You are not the child of my flesh
But you are the daughter of my labor.

The pains have come from
Contractions of my heart
Squeezed by your tiny hands

The pain of your loss
Cannot be understood
No mother’s milk for you
To soothe, to settle
To still your stomach and soul.

No sweet mother’s voice
To hush and lullaby your fears

But now, you are born to me
On the wings of angels
And our labor begins

And I shall nurse you
With my mother’s heart
I shall soothe, settle, and still your soul
With my lullaby

Hushaby Baby, you are the child of my labor.

Les Mis

  

  My introduction to Les Miserables was through a cassette tape (yes, really, it was that long ago!).  My husband had purchased it and wanted to play it on one of our long car rides.  I was completely lost.  I had never read Victor Hugo's book and had no clue what the storyline was. I read all of the liner notes and lyrics so that I could keep up. I grew to love the music, but it was several years before I saw a live production of it.   I have only grown to love the story and music more over the years, so I was eager to see the movie when it opened.

    Because of the difference in production, the movie raised thoughts and questions regarding the story in a different way for me. Below are just some of my thoughts......

There are so many themes and story lines.... 

What is good and what is bad?  What is good is not always obvious. what is bad is not always clear either.

The story of redemption became much clearer to me. Jean Valjean always  chooses to care for a person above a strict following of the law and this is what the Bishop does for him as well. Rather than enforce the law, he has compassion and spares Valjean from having to return to the forced labor of prison. (Colm Wilkinson is amazing as the Bishop!)  

One of the powerful story lines is unrequited love. We see Epipone's love for Marias most clearly, but there is also Fontaine who has had a lover who abandons her. 

Yet, the stories that involve women are not central. They are just part of the story of  the men, but it is not really "their" story. The women in this tale are 'secondary' in many ways.  They just move the plot along, but are not so central.

We can't always be certain of what will happen with our lives.

God's grace comes in many forms and these are often unexpected.

Taking the Time to Go Deeper

"God is in the depth, and we lose touch with God when we focus only on surface things. God is in the silence which we neglect and fear, and we close ourselves to the whisperings of the Spirit when we constantly surround ourselves with artificial sounds.  God is in the questions that arise when we break free of the distractions and we cut God off when we avoid contemplations of purpose, value, and priority. God is in the mystery, and we turn God away when we live as if the only things that matter are those we can see, touch, explain, or possess.  God is in the love of others, and we drive God out when we neglect the deepening of relationships.  God is in the feeling of being still, and we overlook attempts by God to reach us when we run constantly from one activity another.  God is in the discovery and exploration of the interior life, and we say NO to God when we deny there is a spiritual side to our own lives.  There are elements to existence that we only discover when we open ourselves to God."   Bishop Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Living, p. 28

    Following this paragraph, Bishop Schnase goes on to write about the way in which our "work" has changed in the last hundred or so years.  The fact that our grandparents and great grandparents often performed repetitive tasks in the course of their days.  These took little conscious thought, and therefore, "most had hours to think, remember, mull over, rehearse, and reflect on the happenings of their lives."

    These words came to me as I participated in a discussion of Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, Norman Wirzba's book about how our faith intersects the world of our eating. We were discussing the fact that it takes so much time to really prepare a healthy meal. Cooking food which has been responsibly grown either by ourselves or other local growers in a manner that preserves the health benefits of the food can be a time-consuming task.

  I thought of myself in the kitchen-often with either the TV or radio on-- or even sometimes with the laptop open to Facebook while I cook....
  How different would my experience be if I treated cooking as a Spiritual Exercise.
       What if I begin to invite God's Spirit into my cooking?
       How might that begin to change how I look on this chore?
      What if I begin to pray for all the hands that touched the food before it reached my pan?
      what if I were more consciously grateful for all the sacrifices that were made by others so that I could enjoy this meal?

Maybe the practice that I need as much as mindful eating is mindful cooking....