Luke 1:39 - 45
At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
Most of us get totally out of rhythm during the season leading up to Christmas. We live at a pace that is almost unmanageable, then talk as if we don't have a choice in the matter. "I have to go here . . ." and "I need to do this . . ." and "They'll be expecting me. . . ." Our language becomes full of obligation and expectation, the "shoulds" and "musts" of a life that is out of control.
So every year I hear people talk about the need to slow down, to be simpler, to savor the sights and sounds of Christmas throughout Advent. I hear a lot of talk, but see very little of it. We get caught by the pace of the season, almost as if in a river's current that we cannot resist.
We have some options. First, we can curse the busy-ness. We can talk about it as a blight upon the season. We can talk about "putting Christ back in Christmas" and all those sorts of things. But that doesn't necessarily change how we step through Advent toward Christmas. It is entirely possible -- and perhaps probable -- that even in our resistance of the busy-ness, we'll find ourselves scattered, frayed, and pulled apart in hundreds of different directions. We'll still lament how short the time is, how difficult it is to meet all the demands and obligations that we carry like heavy sacks of duty.
Second, we can try to create some rhythm through Advent that prepare us for Christmas. I find this option more fruitful than the first. It means that we intentionally create some space so that we live with more balance through Advent and Christmas. If we take this option, we may find ourselves still cursing the busyness; however, we counter the busy-ness with spaciousness.
We take a day for retreat.
We spend a few more minutes in the morning in prayer.
We spend a few moments at the end of the day reflecting on our experience of the day . . . what has given me life and what has drained life from me.
We settle into regular worship and enjoy the pauses as sacred interludes in which silence is savored.
The third option I'll mention is perhaps the most difficult of all, yet may be the most helpful for us in the end. It entails taking a different stance into the busy-ness. It invites us to have different eyes in the settings to which we scurry in haste. It involves seeing Christ embodied in the real-life settings in which I find myself.
In short, it doesn't lament the pace of the season, nor does it try to reform everyone else's pace. It does not try to withdraw from the artificial Christmas world in order to seek a more spotless and pure experience of Christmas. Rather, it attends to the pace at which I live, the places I go, and seeks to bring the light of Christ even into the often-frantic Advent season.
Actually, this is the major challenge of spirituality. How do I live a spiritual life in the world in which I live? How do I live a life that is energized and empowered by a core life-connection to God in the specific context of my life? . . . my family, relationships, work, leisure, church, and so on?
Yes, I probably need to stop lamenting the artificial expectations of the season. And yes, I need to live more fully into a rhythm that helps me stay focused. But most of all, I need to be fully present in those places in which I live, move and having my being. I need to be in those places in transforming ways . . . not grudgingly and grumbling.
Last year it became clear to me -- for reasons I won't go into now -- that part of the gift I have to offer people during Advent and Christmas is my time and energy. The time and energy I offer is poured into planning services for worship and prayer, leading classes for listening to God's stirring, providing quiet space in retreats, and more . . . counseling, speaking, listening, writing, meeting and delivering.
For me, I suppose it has been like this for 30 years, but I resisted for a long time, lamenting the busy-ness. It has become clear to me that I need to find a rhythm for Advent and let God use that rhythm to carry me through the season. Further, I need not lament the pace, but lean into it in a different way, with eyes to see what is really around me . . . the people, the voices, the sights. I need to do what I do, but to do so in a redeeming and transforming way, if that makes any sense.
So that's what I have on my mind for these last few days of Advent.
Showing posts with label simplicity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label simplicity. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
The Second Wednesday of Advent -- December 8, 2010
Matthew 11:28 - 30
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
When I first started fasting years ago as a spiritual practice, I found it strange that I so often became irritable when I went without food for a period of time. I was at a beginning place in my own spiritual awareness, and assumed that a spiritual discipline would yield results that looked pious. I thought fasting would give me a holy aura, that the road to such holiness would be filled with bliss.
What I found instead was that being hungry for long periods of time really ticked me off. Junk hidden deep within me would rise to the surface. Little things would set me off.
I soon noticed that not only did my disposition and behavior change when I was hungry, but the same dispositions and behaviors rose up within me when I was overly angry, and when I was lonely, and when I was tired. In the early 1990's I was telling a friend about this self-discovery, about what I'd seen in my growing self-awareness. He had been involved in a 12-step program for a few years, and immediately said, "Yeah, that's H.A.L.T.: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Those are the times when you're most vulnerable."
I know now that addicts -- all of us, in other words -- are most vulnerable in those four states of being.
As I get older, it seems like I experience "Tired" more than the other three. In my younger years, I found sleep to be a waste of time, a bad use of the short span of time we have to live on the planet. Now that I'm older, naps are precious, and days given to sleeping a little later in the morning are absolute gifts from God!
I experience "Tired" in different ways. There are times when my body is worn out from being physical taxed. When possible, those times call for a nap, or for a late morning of sleep.
There are times when I'm emotionally and physically weary from medical procedures and treatments. I rest when I can and try to come into some equilibrium.
In some life-situations I simply run out of energy. There are times when I've dealt with some situation all I can, when I've given a person, a relationship or a task all the energy I can muster. I simply get tired underneath it.
The most consistently wearying times for me, though, come when I'm running so fast or at such a pace, that I have nothing left in my tank. The hours and days when I lunge from event to event, when I'm in a mode of constantly preparing for the "next big thing," I feel like I have little inner reservoir from which to draw. My resources are low. When I'm spiritually, emotionally and physically depleted, I'm vulnerable.
The rest Jesus promised is "rest for your souls." It may or may not include physical rest (most often it does . . . we are whole persons, not fragmented into various pieces).
This rest comes from being rooted in the Source of all life. Rest also comes when we live into different life-patterns or rhythms. Weariness comes when we get jerked around by the oughts and shoulds that find us in the external world. We lose our center. We capitulate to expectation and demand without a sense of who we truly are and why God created us.
Personally, I believe a lot of our running about in madness is the result of our not knowing our true name, the name that most deeply connects us to God and gives us our truest identity.
But different rhythms mean that we move easily between silence, solitude and engagement. It means that we simplify our lives. It means that we are clear with ourselves about the difference between what we need and what we want. We find both the inner freedom to say, "Yes," and the inner freedom to say, "No."
During Advent, both John the Baptist and the Prophet Isaiah have encouraged us to level valleys and mountains, to make curved paths straight. In other words, they've encouraged us to balance, to the middle, to the path that is steady and reliable.
It is the path that we walk when we live from the inside-out. The person consistently on the move, running from task to obligation, will have little sense of Jesus' words.
"Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
When I first started fasting years ago as a spiritual practice, I found it strange that I so often became irritable when I went without food for a period of time. I was at a beginning place in my own spiritual awareness, and assumed that a spiritual discipline would yield results that looked pious. I thought fasting would give me a holy aura, that the road to such holiness would be filled with bliss.
What I found instead was that being hungry for long periods of time really ticked me off. Junk hidden deep within me would rise to the surface. Little things would set me off.
I soon noticed that not only did my disposition and behavior change when I was hungry, but the same dispositions and behaviors rose up within me when I was overly angry, and when I was lonely, and when I was tired. In the early 1990's I was telling a friend about this self-discovery, about what I'd seen in my growing self-awareness. He had been involved in a 12-step program for a few years, and immediately said, "Yeah, that's H.A.L.T.: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Those are the times when you're most vulnerable."
I know now that addicts -- all of us, in other words -- are most vulnerable in those four states of being.
As I get older, it seems like I experience "Tired" more than the other three. In my younger years, I found sleep to be a waste of time, a bad use of the short span of time we have to live on the planet. Now that I'm older, naps are precious, and days given to sleeping a little later in the morning are absolute gifts from God!
I experience "Tired" in different ways. There are times when my body is worn out from being physical taxed. When possible, those times call for a nap, or for a late morning of sleep.
There are times when I'm emotionally and physically weary from medical procedures and treatments. I rest when I can and try to come into some equilibrium.
In some life-situations I simply run out of energy. There are times when I've dealt with some situation all I can, when I've given a person, a relationship or a task all the energy I can muster. I simply get tired underneath it.
The most consistently wearying times for me, though, come when I'm running so fast or at such a pace, that I have nothing left in my tank. The hours and days when I lunge from event to event, when I'm in a mode of constantly preparing for the "next big thing," I feel like I have little inner reservoir from which to draw. My resources are low. When I'm spiritually, emotionally and physically depleted, I'm vulnerable.
The rest Jesus promised is "rest for your souls." It may or may not include physical rest (most often it does . . . we are whole persons, not fragmented into various pieces).
This rest comes from being rooted in the Source of all life. Rest also comes when we live into different life-patterns or rhythms. Weariness comes when we get jerked around by the oughts and shoulds that find us in the external world. We lose our center. We capitulate to expectation and demand without a sense of who we truly are and why God created us.
Personally, I believe a lot of our running about in madness is the result of our not knowing our true name, the name that most deeply connects us to God and gives us our truest identity.
But different rhythms mean that we move easily between silence, solitude and engagement. It means that we simplify our lives. It means that we are clear with ourselves about the difference between what we need and what we want. We find both the inner freedom to say, "Yes," and the inner freedom to say, "No."
During Advent, both John the Baptist and the Prophet Isaiah have encouraged us to level valleys and mountains, to make curved paths straight. In other words, they've encouraged us to balance, to the middle, to the path that is steady and reliable.
It is the path that we walk when we live from the inside-out. The person consistently on the move, running from task to obligation, will have little sense of Jesus' words.
"Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
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