Ready

I go on sabbatical at the end of this week.
This is my second sabbatical, and this time mine overlaps with Andy's, so our family will be spending two months in Europe.
We'll start in Berlin, (where Andy will teach a class on Bonhoeffer, in the Bonhoeffer Haus, which is pretty awesome). Then we'll settle down in Paris for the duration, with short trips to London, Switzerland, Taize, Venice and Florence, and whatever day trips in France occur to us.
(When we come home, I'll have one more month left, which includes a week-long silent retreat at a monastery in Kentucky).

My goal this sabbatical is "uni-tasking," which is to say, I want to do one thing at a time.  I want to live in the moment, to be in the here and now. I want to exist in the world with five changes of clothes and no social media.  I want to struggle through learning a language, let my kids teach me things, and read novels set in the place I am visiting. I want to journal in a cafe and walk till my body hurts.  I want to see art, and taste food, and be surprised by what a day might bring, and what I can get by without.
I want to learn from the French joie de vivre, which, I suspect, involves slowing down a lot and practicing patience and presence. And I am fascinated anyway by the idea of living with "exuberant enjoyment of life."  I wrote about accepting the gift of this sabbatical, and the strange phenomenon of avoiding joy instead of embracing it.  I have let go of guilt and self-judgment (which is an ongoing practice.  Even in the writing of this I have had to do it again).  That seems essential to receiving grace and joy.  I've also let go of Facebook.  Both of these experiences are preparing me for what's ahead.

I am scaling waaay back, leaving my computer at home (gulp), and going back to pen and paper.  My work email is set to automatically delete everything that comes in. Next I have to figure out how not to get news updates on my phone every time our president says something shocking.  But we're planning on turning off our phones for much of the time too.
I want to remember how to breathe. Deeply and fully.
And then I want to do it a lot.

I have purchased three different travel purses and road-tested them. This is unusual for me, considering I have used the same purse every day for at least seven years, and the same wallet since I was 18.  I dug out some old purses to see if any of them might work. This is evidently not unusual for me. In one I found a ticket stub to the Table Mountain Cable Car in Capetown, and in another a subway card from NYC. After much indecision and extensive advice from Maisy, I think I finally arrived on the one I'll be taking.  Now I am on the hunt for the perfect walking-all-over-creation shoes.  These obsessions are helping me break down this big trip into manageable, bite-sized anxieties.

We are almost ready to go.
We've changed the burnt-out lightbulbs and washed the windows, and Saturday I'll scrub the fridge.  All the things that need doing that I don't do for myself, I will do for someone else.
The dogsitter will have a lovely clean fridge and bright rooms.

I looked up my family tree, and it turns out that I have lots of roots in some of the places we'll be, so that's exciting.  Maisy has some city scavenger hunt books, Owen is already planning family excursions to nearby towns, and Andy is reading French philosophers. The Roots are exploring.

Both kids are bringing ukuleles so we have some musical evenings ahead.  Art supplies made the cut too, but the stuffed animal limit has been set at a strict four.
The kids are heartbroken about leaving the dog for two whole months, and we're working through those tears. There will be many more, I am sure.  And I am not naive about how our strong-willed collection of introverts will handle jet lag, homesickness, competing agendas and limited alone time.  But I am hoping to glean some joie even from that vivreing.
Or at least grow in patience and presence.
And breathing.

We are leaving in the thick of summer and returning to Fall. Owen leaves 13 and returns 14.  My church will change while I am gone.  But, as I have repeatedly assured the kids, the dog will not forget us.
Two months is a very short time in the scheme of things.
But each one of the next 60 days is a gift, ready to be received.
I am ready to receive them.

checking out to be all in

I have been easing off of social media the past few months, like a detox.  Sometimes I dip back in and it feels like a relapse - I don't like what it does to me. I feel sluggish and anxious and fired up about things that I don't need to take on.  It no longer feeds me; right now it mostly drains me.  I will be going off of it completely for the next three months as I go on sabbatical.  

I have been a zealous Facebook user since 2009. Every year I print a book of the photos and things I shared about my kids (and more and more, things I didn't share - just posted to myself so that they would make it into the book).  So I find myself grieving that record-keeping and wondering what will take its place.

But I also know I need to do this. 

I wrote the following post on Facebook after returning from a spring break trip with my family to Mexico, and just before Holy Week:

March 25, 2018

So... 10 days away from Facebook/social media and here are some things I noticed:

1- I didn't miss it.  
I didn't miss the drama (DRAMA!!). The arguing and factions. The urgency and insistency. The labels and categories. The for or against, good or bad, right or wrong. The way it takes otherwise decent people and gives their worst instincts a megaphone. It's a whole conversation I don't have to be in. For real. Choice. Freedom. (#sabbathwisdom)

2 - I did miss it, in a bad way. 
I was shocked how little interest my phone held for me when I wasn't responding to the little red circle on the corner of the Facebook icon. And how often in my day I do - like multiple times an hour. Like every time I pick up my phone. With the app deleted, and staying away from social media completely, I was FAR more present with my kids, husband, self, surroundings, thoughts, emotions, sensations. It turns out Facebook use is compulsive for me. The immediate feedback. Instant gratification. It's an addiction. It affects my relationships. I keep one foot in not-real world and only one in the real. I am no longer comfortable with my use of it.

3- I did miss it, in a good way.
Facebook keeps me connected to people I love who live far away. We share stories and photos. Glimpsing people's lives and thoughts can make me inspired, reminded, grateful. I see stories that remind me where God is and encourage me to keep looking. I share things I know are inspiring to others. I missed this. And if I consider going off completely, I would miss this.

4- I missed less.
I read far more full articles in the newspapers I subscribe to. Instead of scrolling past titles and thumb-responding, or feeling bombarded with people's opinions or agendas and getting swept up, I read the morning paper, like the old days (except on the screen). I felt both better informed and healthier.

5- I missed more. 
I didn’t ride the waves of frenzy surrounding new stories or whatever else people got up in arms about. Whatever else people said about my friend that tore her apart or made her a symbol for their cause, missed it. Whatever finger-pointing and hand-wringing and mouth frothing went on about any and everything, missed it. Whatever funny dog videos or hysterical gifs or stupid, brain-draining articles about this health fad or that shocking behavior I would have spent precious time watching or reading, missed it. 

I feel like part of me has been an open wound I keep picking and irritating with social media. I didn't know it was affecting me like it was. Left alone for 10 days, it's beginning to heal. 

At this point, I feel very hesitant about returning, or in what form I should.
I need to sort out what I am wanting and needing, so I'm taking the next week off of social media too. 

#KeepHolyWeekHoly

Peace.

Avoiding Joy / Refusing Grace - (Grace Encountered Part 3)

John 15:9-15 (from The Message)

"I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love. “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love.

Matthew 11:28-30 (adapted from The Message)

"Are you tired? Worn out? Overwhelmed by the heaviness of it all? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I will show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I wont lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn how to live freely and lightly. 

The final week of elementary school my daughter's whole 5^th grade went to a camp together. She had heard about this trip since kindergarten, and was looking forward to every part of it, most especially the night walk with the science teacher, the slugs and snails class, "stream studies" and the ropes course. The bus would pull away from the school at 6:50 am on Monday morning and she couldn’t wait to be on it. All her stuff was packed and by the door and the excitement was so great that it was hard to fall asleep the night before. 

But in the middle of the night, Maisy awoke with terrible ear pain, which turned out to be a full-blown ear infection. When Monday morning came there was no way she could go on the trip; she’d be seeing the doctor instead. 

I drove to the school to let her teacher know, and spent the next two days with a devastated daughter, feverish and heartbroken.  But by the second night, the antibiotics had kicked in and she was almost back to 100%. I told her we would wake up early and I would drive her up to camp to finish the week with her class.  

On Wednesday at 4:30 am I gently shook her out of bed, and by 5:00 we were backing out of the driveway, preparing for our 4 ½ hour drive, which I would repeat in reverse after dropping her off.

Around 5:30 or so, Maisy, who up to this point could hardly keep the smile off her face and the wiggles out of her legs, got quiet and still.  

After a few minutes she said, “Mom, I feel really bad that you have to drive me all the way up there.”

“You do?” I said. “Well, Maisy, I wonder if you can let that bad feeling turn into gratitude instead. Listen to me carefully: I am so excited to drive you up to camp. I know how much it means to you, and it makes me so happy to be able to do this for you.”

Her eyebrows shot up and she looked at me in wonder. “Really?” she asked.

“Really.” I answered, unable to keep the tears from my eyes or the grin off my face.

Her whole demeanor lit up, and gratitude oozed from her until she was practically bursting. 

“Mommy! Thank you so much!” she exclaimed.  

I marveled at the sudden shift in her, from feeling bad that I was doing something for her, to pure gratitude; the difference was dramatic.

These are both ways to greet a gift.  But one kept her (and me) captive to a system of judging, measuring, unworthiness and transactions.  The other set her free to receive not just the gift of a ride up to camp, but the whole rest of the week. 

Every moment ahead of her, this child was ready to absorb with delight, far more, I suspect, than she would have if she’d boarded the bus alongside everyone else. 

This experience was precious.  It mattered so deeply to her, so it mattered deeply to me. I was willing to sacrifice a whole day driving for her to be there, and when she received that as a gift, she received her own life, all that was before her and within her, as an utter gift.  

The joy that we both felt right in that moment could have powered the car.

I’ve been thinking about that moment as this sabbatical approaches. 

What happens when someone asks, What would make your heart sing? If you can think up your wildest dream that would make you feel fully alive and free, what would it be?

And then you do the fun thing of thinking that thing up; you dream it and embellish it and throw in fun details like, a family cooking class in Italy! What about a hike in Switzerland between a town that makes cheese and a town that makes chocolate? 

You say how you want to try living in a place where you don’t speak the language, trusting each day to bring a new adventure and working only to be open to what comes.  And you want to do this with your whole family, together, say, in Paris. So you write all this down.  And it’s hypothetical, and electric with dreaminess and fantasy.  You send it off and then you work to let it all go.  Aaah, it was fun to dream.

And then they say, “OK. You can have that.”

And at first it’s thrilling and unreal. 

You book an apartment and renew your passport and look up the hiking route and buy guidebooks.  And then suddenly it’s real. 

And you start to think about how you’d better come back super spiritually recharged so that it will be worth the significant investment. Or how you need to write something meaningful and important that will last so the time pays off.  

Or what if it isn’t all you dreamed it would be and your family fights a ton and you freak out about not really knowing the language, and you waste the gift, and it goes too fast, and you don’t milk every second of goodness from the experience? 

What if the wish granters made a mistake and should’ve granted someone else’s wish instead? Someone more worthy, or more deserving because they’ve suffered more than you have, or they don’t already have as much joy in their lives as you do?

And you find yourself grasping for expectations to meet, and ways to measure your progress or prove your worthiness.  And then, as your wishes and dreams are coming true, you feel bad that someone is driving you all the way there, and your heart isn’t breathing, let alone singing. 

Here’s the flat out truth of it: after nine years of talking about Sabbath and the vital need to stop it all and simply be, after all I’ve said about stepping out of the way of fear and into ive-giving connection with God and each other, after everything I’ve preached and practiced and written about remembering whose and who you are, when faced with this enormous, extravagant gift of a Sabbatical, this crazy chance to put everything down and go adventuring in the world I love with the people I love most with nothing else to do but that, 

I am actually terrified to receive it.  

I am finding all kinds of ways to resist it.

As it turns out, it feels so much more vulnerable to me to receive joy, than it does to embrace suffering. 

That has come as a complete surprise to me. 

I’m scared of that much grace! I am that intimidated by this amount of generosity and joy! That kind of heart-singing feels too good to be true so I’m apparently trying to make it not true so I won’t be disappointed or a disappointment.  

Instead of teetering on the precipice of freedom and joy, I’m watching myself cling to anxiety, and grasp for the solid ground of self-judgment in the familiar territory of earning and obligation. 

To complicate matters, we are in a time when it is treated like a violation to be joyous.  

If you have too much contentment, you must not be paying attention.  

There is so much to be worried or angry about, so much suffering, we could spend all day every day only dwelling on that, and many of us do.

So perhaps joy feels gaudy, naive, or thoughtless.  

Perhaps we think it’s more polite, or woke, to hide our joy, or temper it with caveats, so it doesn’t make others feel bad. 

We treat joy like a weapon that can wound those who are already suffering, or a limited commodity- there is only so much to go around, and if one person has too much joy they are hogging it from others, and should feel guilty, or at least have enough shame or dignity to hide it from the rest of us.

But joy is the word we use to describe the energy of being fully alive, fully connected to God, knowing who we are and whose we are. 

Joy is heart-song.  

And heart song it isn’t just one high, cheerful note. It’s the whole tune, with all its complexity.  The low, groaning moaning parts from the depths of our lonesome souls, the laughter-tinged merriment of high notes, the goosebumpy harmonies and steady favorite melodies, and the rhythm that keeps the beat of it all.  

Joy is the breathing open, fully singing heart with all its parts.

Joy is the car ride after you’ve lost the chance to go and it’s is handed back to you. Joy is not adversary to suffering, it’s partner and friend. Because grace meets us in suffering, and grace brings joy; both remind us that life is a precious and beautiful gift, both point us back to grace and invite us to receive.

Jesus said all he said so that we have his joy – joy that comes from being fully alive, fully connected to the Father, fully at home in love.   When we are fully at home in love, that feels like joy.  When you feel the depth of being loved, when you love others from your depths, when you receive God’s presence as love - your own life, a gift, not earned, not deserved, not only for the worthy, but for you, this life, all its beauty and all its pain, unique and unequalled anywhere else on the planet, your one gift of a heart-singing life held in love - you taste joy.

But even that I want to turn into something I can measure.  

Am I receiving the gift fully enough? 

No. I never could.  It’s impossible.  We could never fully receive the abundant and limitless measure of God's grace and love for us.

So I will stop trying.  

I will hear the words of my heavenly parent who says from the driver’s seat, “It means so much to me to be able to do this for you.  My heart sings when your heart sings.”  

And I will hear, really let myself hear, the invitation Jesus gives: 

Are you tired? Worn out? Overwhelmed? 

Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.

I want to learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

That’s what these next three months are for. For me and for you.

We get to learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

While I am away doing this, you will be here doing it too.  You get to, you’re supposed to! play, and heart sing, and use money you didn’t earn to do things together that feel frivolous or over the top. You get to step outside the ordinary patterns and try out things you wouldn’t normally do.  This is the time set aside specifically for this: to learn to live freely and lightly, as Jesus says. To make ourselves at home in God’s love. 

While I am away from you, practicing receiving grace with and from my family, you get to practice receiving from one another. 

Not saying, “Oh no, I feel so bad…” but “Thank you.” 

Practice listening to your heart song and letting it out.  

Listening to each other’s heart song and letting it shape you.  

Practice feeling joy whenever and wherever it meets you, and not hiding from it or pushing it away, but sharing it, because joy is meant to be shared and not hidden, claimed by all and not divvied up to individuals. Joy is powerful and contagious and resilient and it multiplies. Joy in one heart strikes a chord in the next and the music grows.

I am listening to French language cds to try to catch up to my kids who’ve spent the week at French immersion camp.  The cds are unlike any language class I’ve ever taken. Instead of asking us to memorize vocabulary and conjugate verbs, he jumps right in to whole sentences and asks us to trust him. To show up and experience it, without trying to master it or get it right.  Learning, he insists, happens through forgetting and remembering.  You don’t memorize the backstory of your favorite characters on your favorite shows, you just get reminded and you forget and you’re reminded again, and gradually it sinks in and you know it.  Learning is forgetting and remembering, over and over until it’s just there, part of you.  

“But how can I remind you,” he asks gently, “if you haven’t forgotten?”

Grace cannot be grasped or mastered. It can’t be memorized.  The unforced rhythms of grace are learned through forgetting and remembering. 

So for me, every time now that I feel the resistance rise up, I am going to try to greet it with tenderness. 

Oh, hello resistance! Look at you wanting to earn this gift! That shows you know it is a good gift.  It shows you deeply appreciate it. I wonder if, in this moment, you might be willing to let the gift in, and let yourself feel how grateful you really are?

Over and over, I’ll forget and remember, until grace becomes part of me. 

I with God, and Jesus with me, making my home in love.

What if, every time you feel resistance to grace, you too greet that resistance with tenderness and hear the invitation to let the gift in?  

Because there is absolutely nothing else God would rather be doing than watching your heart sing. Your one precious heart that God made and treasures.  And the harmony of all these hearts singing at once is the greatest music God could ever conceive of.

Howard Thurman famously said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because the world needs people who have come alive.”

What makes you come alive, Butch? What about you, Georgia? What makes you come alive, Linda? Lisa? Svea? Norm?  What makes each person in this room come alive? What kind of glorious, soul-opening, spine-tingling symphony would emerge from this room full of fully-alive singing hearts?

In a world of dire news, exhausting commentary, unrelenting evil and a breakneck pace, what radical and powerful antidote is a community of joy-filled and joy-oozing people?  What defiant and reorienting force is a even a single person fully at home in love?  When we make our home in love, when we live in the joy of being connected to God and each other, it affects others.  If you need proof, go see Wont you be My Neighbor. What a gentle, powerful witness Mr. Rogers is to the deep and transformative impact of loving others the way Jesus loves us. When we make our home in love it changes the narrative, frees us from the way of fear and draws us back into the real reality, the Kingdom of God.

Get away with me and you’ll recover your life, Jesus said. 

I am RSVPing Yes to that invitation.

And you can too. 

RSVP Yes to it with each other. 

Remind each other when you forget.  Receive the gift.  

For goodness sake, spend the money.  Hire each other babysitters and go see Mr. Rogers together!  Buy flowers and music and indulge in beauty.  Let yourselves play, go on outings, deepen your friendships.  Share your stories and write new ones.  Hear each other’s heart song.  

This congregation has had lots of practice receiving grace in shared suffering.  This time is for practicing receiving grace in shared joy. It’s all part of the hearts’ music and God can’t wait to meet you in all of it. 

Let’s commit to being all in on this heart-singing thing, shall we?  

While we’re apart, together we will be learning the unforced rhythm of grace that keeps the beat of it all. 

Amen.

This is Part 3 of a series, "Grace Encountered. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

Sabbatical Reflections: The Questions and the Bread

Philippians 4:4-9

John 6:25-35

Two weeks ago, I got to hear some of what sabbatical was for you. Today I want to share with you some of what sabbatical was for me.

Sabbath and sabbatical, is time stepping outside of working for the “food that perishes,” and instead deliberately seeking the “food that endures for eternal life.” - which is tricky since this food you can’t work for; this food can only be received.  

Receiving this eternal food, this life-giving, thirst-quenching, hunger-satisfying food is not something we can work at; it’s not something we can do.  The most we can do is pay attention.  And maybe stop long enough to notice that the God who came down from heaven and gives life to the world is right here in life alongside us.  

I am the bread of life, Jesus said. 

How can we receive you, Jesus?

You all lived in questions this season.  Questions that guided your reflection and gave you a lens to watch your life for signs of God’s presence.

As it so happens, two questions turned out to be significant for me over this sabbatical.  They had been important for my children, first. 

Last year, when Maisy started kindergarten she was understandably nervous and afraid.  I told her before she went to school the first day that God would have a surprise for her, and she needed to watch for it.  At the end of the day I would ask her what that surprise was.  And then I prayed, Please God, give her a surprise today.  (Don’t leave me hanging here!)

That first day she came home with a paper frog on her head and a huge smile on her face and she said, Mommy you were right! I did have a surprise! And she proceeded to regale me with tales of some new friend, a special art project, a moment of bravery, an unexpected treat. 

Each day after that, as she came home with an answer to the question, How did God surprise you today? I began to grow more confident asking the question, and she never doubted she’d have an answer. 

God really would meet her each day. 

Could she and I practice noticing it? 

The question became a staple for Maisy, and she began bringing it up unprompted, so that by the middle of the schoolyear it was her practice to bounce up to me after school with her backpack on and say, Mommy, guess what my surprise was today?

So this year, when school started a third of the way into my sabbatical, we revived the question for both kids.

And it was not always easy. Some days we’d really have to search for the surprise, hearing events of the day laid out in excruciating detail before one of us would eventually say, Aha! There it is!, Other days there were so many moments of unexpected grace it was not possible to name just one or two.

After a few days, adjusting to new classrooms, missing friends, remembering times when we saw someone lonely or teased, feeling lonely or worried ourselves, another question joined the first, and it was, “Who did God bring across your path that needed kindness today?” 

And so every school day ended with, How did God surprise you today? And who did God show you needed kindness today?

Asking these two questions assumes that God is living and active in our lives already, and our job is to pay attention.   It also assumes that God is inviting us to be part of what God is doing in the world, and our job is to pay attention. 

This second question, we found, is a little harder to answer.  Who today needed kindness and love?  This kind of paying attention means looking beyond yourself, and it’s sometimes uncomfortable.

Sometimes we’d look back and we did in fact show kindness – we recognized the person in the moment and we responded – listened to God’s prompting and in courage, reached out somehow beyond ourselves to meet them right then. 

Other times, more often, perhaps, we’d see them after the fact and realize we didn’t notice them at the time, or didn’t let it sink in, or held back from responding for whatever reason. 

Sometimes we’d realize later that someone we had already shared a conversation with, laughed with, sat with, or walked home next to may have been that person, and without even trying to, we had shared kindness or love and been part of what God was doing. 

And once or twice, we saw ways that one of us was that person and someone saw us and shared our place, and showed us kindness and love.

I was sharing these experiences with my spiritual director- whom I saw every other week throughout my sabbatical.  I told her how meaningful it was to help my kids think through their days, to watch them pay attention. To see them see Jesus.

I had also just spent a half hour joyfully sharing experiences of spontaneous conversations, moments of giving, how available I felt to people and how open I felt to my life’s bumping up against others. 

She smiled at me and said, “I wonder what it would be like for you if you asked yourself the same questions you ask your children each day?”

When she said that my mind was flooded with images of how those two questions had lived in me over the past several weeks, and nearly every day – even without deliberately asking them – I had standout experiences of being surprised by God in little ways, and coming face to face with people to whom I could show kindness and love, (which were often the same moments).

Rejoice, again I say rejoice!

The Lord is near.

You are the bread of life, Jesus.

You are there, feeding us in all times and places. 

Do we notice?

Here’s the thing about Sabbath and sabbatical – it’s not a long term plan, a permanent state.  It’s a step outside the regular pattern on purpose.  What I mean is, we don’t live in Sabbath time in order to always live in Sabbath time.  We live in Sabbath time so that we might notice.  So that we have had some practice tasting, hearing, seeing, noticing, undistracted by work and all the things we do that give us value and make us feel good about ourselves and fill our minutes with stuff and our space with busyness and our minds with worry.

We try it out in stripped-down mode, a low tech, acoustic version of life for a short time so that we can get familiar with the tune, familiar enough that in the long haul we can pick it up and hear it still, underneath the layers of relentless noise and constant feedback. 

Sabbath and sabbatical remind us that God is with us.  They remind us that life is a gift.  By saying a great big strong NO to lots of things for one day, or three months, or two intentional hours, we begin to see that we can say no to more things and still be ok, maybe be more ok. 

Sabbath and sabbatical teach us to rejoice because they help us recognize how much there is to rejoice about when we’re not rushing past it all.  They teach us to bring everything, in both pleading and gratitude, to God, because they show us that God is already there in it with us.  The bread of life, giving life to the world.

How did God surprise you today?  Who today needs kindness and love?

So here are some of my answers.  On my sabbatical, here are just a few of the times I felt God surprise me – which is to say, times I noticed:

• -       Sitting across from third graders, one at a time, once a week, on a short chair with my knees in the air, in the school library, listening to them tell me in their own words all about a book they’d just finished reading. 

• -       Walking home from dropping my kids off at school and chatting with a mom I know a little bit, in a conversation that turned real and bumped up against grief and loss, and being able to say, Do you want to get a cup of coffee? and spending the next two hours listening and sharing and crying and talking without anywhere else to be but completely and fully there.

• -       Moving clay beneath my hands silently, my body focused and mind relaxed, listening to others talk around me like water washing over me, feeling hidden and incognito and lost in the rhythm of the work with no agenda for mastery or completion.

• -       Inviting some tired and busy moms over for lunch, setting a beautiful table in the sunshine with nice dishes and a tea and cookie pairing for dessert, and watching them settle in and laugh till their sides ached and stay two and a half hours longer than they had meant to.

• -       Walking out on sand flats where the tide receded from the rocky shores of an island in the Puget sound, hunting for shells with a plastic bucket in one hand and my daughter’s hand in the other, sprayed by clams and smelling saltwater and eventually being nudged back to shore by the returning water creeping up around us and filling in our footprints

• -       coming home from a day of site seeing to a night of good food and good wine with friends who normally live a continent away but for this one week are right here under our own roof

• -       holding my baby nephew and watching his eyes droop closed and his body relax as he falls asleep in my arms

• -       Starting a time warp of a day wandering the house with a cup of coffee and pulling out our old, falling apart wedding album from its box onto the floor next to the replacement album never filled, and hours later standing, stiff and achy, and throwing on a sweatshirt and hat for a joy-filled dog walk that came upon the children leaving school, and ended with all of us strolling home together to sit down and see the story of mom and dad’s wedding day  – maybe for the first time – all without ever really officially changing out of my pajamas 

• -       Creeping up on a napping buffalo on a hillside in Yellowstone Park 

• -       Peering down from a snowy mountain peak off the Beartooth highway at a shimmering winding river far below, 

• -       Looking over at my husband’s face as he sings along with the radio and we’ve got nothing but road ahead and road behind and vast emptiness all around. 

• -       reading with my son

• -       drawing with my daughter

• -       crying with my sister

• -       laughing with my mother

• -       Listening to music – on purpose, not just in the background. 

• -       Falling asleep with a soft, snoring puppy nuzzled against me.

It’s not that these things are out of the ordinary, though I suppose in one way many of them become out of the ordinary for many of us, because these kinds of things require surrendering to time, instead of fighting with it.  They are sabbatical/Sabbath gifts – received when we’re willing to slow down and accept them.

But it’s not that the surprises from God in my sabbatical days were anything extraordinary.  It’s simply that I noticed them.  

I looked at them and gratitude caught in my throat.  I felt the grace of them.

One of my favorite things Frederick Buechner ever said is, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.  In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." 

(From Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation)

He’s talking about filling up on the bread of life. 

Sitting down to the banquet of it all and unabashedly eating, unselfconscious and unconcerned with whether you belong there, or where else you need to be at the moment, or if it’s ok to ask for seconds.  Just enjoying.  Tasting each bite.  Feeling the thank you well up in your eyes.  Bumping shoulders with the person next to you and sensing yourself a part of it all.

Thank you for my sabbatical. 

Thank you for the chance to practice living in the questions. 

Thank you for the extended time to tune back in to the grace so I can better listen for it every day. 

Thank you for sharing Sabbath and sabbatical with each other, so that together we can continue to ask,

When this week did you taste the bread of life? 

Where did you see Jesus?

How will God surprise you today?

And who today needs kindness and love?

May we pay attention. May we notice and receive.

Amen.

Sabbatical Ending: Lingering Gifts

My sabbatical co-workers

October 27 2013

My sabbatical is over in five days. 

I have sensed the boat coming closer for a week or so now, can make out the shapes of people in it, and feel the growing excitement and nervousness of impending reunion. Last week I had a spectacular dream of returning that contained a lot of fanciful impossibilities but a very real sense of love and pride for my people, and I’ve felt the glow of that dream cling to me ever sense. 

I miss them.

I am looking forward to being with them again.

I am eager to begin catching up, to seeing what has happened in them and discovering what has happened in me. 

I am trying very hard not to jump the gun, begin sermon planning, arrange meetings for the first week, reinstate my email or make a few preliminary calls.  

Friday is my first day. 

I will turn up at my office on Friday and I will begin again.  

Between now and then, I will enjoy each moment and take each day as the gift that it is.

Two weeks into this thing a wise person told me that I would figure out my sabbatical just as it was ending. He couldn’t have been more right. In the last few days I have noticed that I feel settled, connected, rested and invigorated, and crystal clear about some things I value highly (more on this later).  I feel awake in a deep sense, present in my own skin, observant and not just reactionary. 

I suspect I have months of unpacking and reflecting to begin understanding what this sabbatical is teaching me and doing in me.  But from this vantage I can already see three big movements.

The first month was a kind of frenetic energy, jigsaw puzzles and crazy dreams, spinning thoughts and constant movement, purging release and crashing fatigue. 

The second month I hunkered down and hid, finding myself suddenly aggressively resting and actively withdrawing in an unexpected mental shutdown, a vacuum of energy, both diminished capacity and deep calm.  It felt hard to string together sentences.

This last month has been defined by spontaneity, generosity, presence, and imagination.  I have felt both light and playful, and connected and settled. Calmer. Focused. Present.  I have been able to think about my thinking, have feelings about my emotions, witness my own being as I act.  I've reacted simultaneously with detached perspective and a profound sense of participation in my own life.
I have been gentler with myself than I have been in years.
Less pressure, more space. Less criticism, more grace.
I have had room to meet people where they are, to respond in the moment to what comes up.
I’ve planned less and participated more.

I've made better friends with Time. Instead of tugging and manipulating it, fighting it and resenting it, I've eased alongside it, submitting to its flow. I've practiced doing less. Far less. And I feel less defensive and more curious, less rushed and more available to delight in each day, not one of which has turned out like I thought it would when I awoke that morning.
I feel grateful.

For three months I have had almost no contact at all with my congregation, and stepped out of my presbytery role completely.  I haven’t seen emails or heard announcements, haven’t been privy to gossip or pulled in to prayer needs.  

I have truly been away.  Being held by God as I have trusted God is holding them.  

I’ve read and rested, tried my hand at pottery and mosaic, traveled and adventured, hung out with my kids and husband in fascinating places and nowhere at all, played with my new puppy and walked with my old dog.  

I’ve had amazing conversations, made new friends, and been absolutely alone.  

I've faced uncomfortable self-awareness, and the comfortable kind too.  

I've listened to cds all the way through and drunk whole, uninterupped pots of coffee.

My children commandeered my laptop (for Minecraft and Club Penguin) and I’ve hardly touched it for three solid months.  Before sabbatical I don’t think I'd ever gone more than three hours.

Return will be a bit of a shock for all of us.
But I want to reenter ordinary time with vulnerable strength, open to whatever comes up, knowing God will meet me there as God has met me here.

At the end of Sabbath time, in the Jewish tradition, a bowl of spices is passed from person to person, the fragrance inhaled deeply and the question reflected upon, What do I wish to take with me from this Sabbath rest into the rest of my week?  What gifts of Sabbath will sustain me as I step out of this sacred time into ordinary time?

This week I will breathe in deeply.  And I will meditate on the gifts of this sabbatical.

Space.

Gentleness.

Hospitality.

Groundedness.

Curiousity.

Compassion.

Roominess and Boundaries. 

Imagination.

Mindfulness.

Clarity.

Grace.

These are some gifts I take with me; these are some blessings that sustain me.

O Lord, my God, thank you, thank you, thank you. For all, all, all. 

Sabbatical Middle: reflections on a life on Shuffle

September 10, 2013

My friend Jodi gave me a couple of cd’s a few months ago.  She is what I think of as “a real music person,” and her husband is an actual musician.  Recently, in my presence, she played a song I liked, and when I commented on it, she protested that it should have been familiar, because it was on the cd she had given me a few months ago.  I responded, “Oh! I just downloaded them into my iTunes and I play everything on shuffle.  I guess I haven’t gotten to that song yet. “ 

She threw her body back as though she’d been slapped, and shook her head vehemently.  “NO, NO, NO Kara! That is NOT how cds are supposed to be listened to!  It’s a whole experience!  You have to listen to the whole thing!”

My coffee pot has a pause setting, that means if you are not patient enough to wait for the whole pot to brew, you can just remove it midstream and fill your cup, letting it resume after you’re sipping away.  “NO!” my coffee-trained, brewing guru brother-in-law says. “It’s a whole batch! You have to let it finish brewing before you drink it!”

I’ve always taken secret pride in my incredible multi-tasking abilities.  I can juggle, baby. If there was a juggling contest, and instead of balls or pins it was things like appointments, emails, projects, relationships, menus and errands, I would be a true contender.  I get props for this too; it’s an ego stroke when people whistle with admiration and say things like, “Wow! You sure juggle A LOT!”

Only, now that I am pausing, now that I have far less to juggle, I’m dropping things.  I’m stumbling a little.  And it’s dawning on me that a part of me has atrophied.  That part that sits still.  Turns out, I have almost no patience.  

When you have 800 songs on shuffle, your odds of hearing any one song decrease considerably, and the chance of hearing something you’ve never heard before – that is slim indeed.  Not to mention the relationship between songs that you miss when you throw everything into the same big pot and hit the shuffle button.  

When I play music on shuffle it seems like I am hearing everything, but maybe I’m really not listening to very much at all.

  

And then the thought occurs to me, maybe I juggle everything so well because I am not so good at balance.  It’s easier to stay in perpetual motion than to stop and listen to a whole entire cd from beginning to end, or wait for the coffee pot to finish before pouring a cup.  

Maybe I’ve gotten good at appearing balanced, and really I’m just flailing around.  Perhaps I can “balance” lots of things in the air at once if I keep moving, but take one or two things out of rotation and suddenly I drop things and stumble a little.

So I wonder, what happens if I am empty-handed? What happens if I hold still?   

I am flexible, baby. I like to think I’m good at yoga, but I’m really kind of terrible at yoga. I can get into some pretty great sitting poses that put my arms or legs into surprising places, but I can do almost nothing that requires balance. 

 Can I raise my leg into tree pose and close my eyes and hold it?  

No.  I really can’t.  Not even with my eyes open. 

What good is flexibility, ultimately, if standing still is hard?   

What good is juggling lots of things if you can’t hold onto a few?

I want to hear new things.  

And I want to notice the relationship between things.  

I want to stop and be present to the music.  

To breathe into the stillness and hold it.  

I want to stick with one thing for a spell instead of wildly juggling to stay upright, bouncing impatiently around genres, taking whatever comes next on a shuffle kind of life.  

I’m craving balance.

But balance takes patience, and patience takes time, and time is something I like to act like is in short supply.  

Except it’s not.  

It’s what holds us always, it’s how I move through my day whether that day happens to be packed and breathless or empty and open.  

And what do you know, right now, Time is staring me in the face with questioning eyes.  

Hello sabbatical.

I’m naturally flexible, I didn’t work to become that.  

What does not come naturally is balance.  

Maybe this is my time to practice.  

This is my time to stop shuffling and juggling and learn to balance while holding still.  To exercise patience.  This is my chance to greet time differently.

I think I’ll start with those cds.

And that cup of perfectly prepared coffee.