Rest, My Friends

We are looking forward to seeing you at our next events:

• Neighbors’ Hot Dog and S’mores Picnic Today from 12-3pm. 
• Next Death Cafe on Saturday July 27th at 4pm.
• INC Pot Luck Picnic on July 28th at 1pm.
• Village Fair and UnFair 5K on August 17th (please register and order t-shirts by July 17th).

May you find in this week the Gentle Blessing of Rest.

You may watch the Recording HERE.

On the 7th day, God rested and was refreshed. One translation of the word used here is “exhale”.  God exhaled…

Sunday is sacred time to reset one’s attention on what matters most.  To turn one’s heart to the soul matters.  To brings one’s mind to rest on the Spiritual matters.  It is a time to gather and celebrate love with and for one another. It is a time to rest our souls and refresh our spirits.  

It is a time to delight in the closing out of one week and to honor the gifts and beauties of the life we have live.  It is a time center ourselves to begin a new week full of potential and possibility.  

It is a time to…rest and be refreshed.  It is a time for us to exhale…

When we set aside time to be nourished, we are more present to witness as creation renews itself, surprises us, and awes us.  We are ready to pay attention and notice the gifts of living and life.  We might truly see the blessings of our lives.  

Sunday is a time for refuge in quiet and peace.

A friend of mine sent me a song many years ago called Little Hercules by Trisha Yearwood.  There was one line in particular that has always stuck with me: You’ve made a life where no one ever tells you what to do, now the only tyrant that you’re working for is you.  PAUSE

Why is there this pull to be busy and competitive?  Why are we so fearful and neglectful of rest?  We have all these tools and devices designed to cultivate more time for ourselves.  Washing machines…Yay!!  Dryers…amazing.  The dishwasher…wonderful.  The vacuum cleaner.  Our cars. The internet….there’s everything at our fingertips.  We have saved so much TIME with all these wonderful things.  

How do we use it?  It seems we use this extra time to work more.  

I have a teacher who always tells the Story of the Sabbath Commandment (Dr. Allen Hilton).  I’ll share it with you here, paraphrased. Remember that Moses has just come home with his exiled people.  They’ve been slaves for the last 400 years!!  They haven’t had a day off in 400 years.  No vacation. No sick time.  They’ve been working, slaving, every single day.  

They come home and wait in anticipation for Moses to come down with the new laws for this new life.  Finally, he does.  One to three, no other God by One.  That makes sense.  They’ve just spent the last twenty years in a polytheistic culture.  Number five makes sense after years of slavery and separation.  Go hang out with your family, honor and love your mother and father.  Six through ten are the expected rules around how to behave in society.  

But FOUR.  Four is the one that is surprising and incredibly special. On the 7th day you are to rest.  Not just you, but everyone.  Servants.  Guests.  Even the animals.  Rest.  This is your day.  Savor it.  Enjoy it.  Be refreshed.  Be nourished.  Exhale….

What an incredible Gift from Grace.  Required rest.  Required time with one another, in community, loving one another, and praising God.  Required time to be refreshed and renewed.  A required pause to celebrate the closing of one week and the opening of the next.  

What a beautiful and precious Gift.  PAUSE

Thousands of years later, the only tyrant that we’re working for is ourselves.  

And this is not necessarily an individual thing.  It’s a societal problem.  We have created a society where it is very hard to take a day of rest.  One of our first conversation pieces is how many hours we worked and how hard we worked last week. It’s a badge of honor and we’d be ashamed to say we only worked twenty hours last week, it was a delightfully light week of blissful rest.  We’d feel…guilty.  

And yet, perhaps with all that extra time of rest, we’d feel so much more connected with one another, better engaged with the world, and really ready to do what needs to be done for this new week.  We’d be calmer. We’d be more connected. We’d function better. We’d actually work and love and be…better!

But…no.  Instead, we worked the hardest and we were the busiest.  When we weren’t working we worked.  

We’ve also created a society where people are forced to work too hard and too much to make ends meet.  Some of us do this over-working out of a fear of scarcity, that there won’t be enough and if we just work a little bit harder for a little bit more time, then we’ll be secure.  Some of us work extra hard because there’s this fear of the empty space and what might fill us in the quiet and the stillness. PAUSE

Some of us truly have no choice but to work every day.  It might be a wise self reflection to discern whether we really need to work this hard or do we only think we need to work this hard.  PAUSE  

If we conclude that we are choosing to work that hard, but probably don’t need to in order to survive, we might take a moment to honor and acknowledge those in our world who truly have no choice.  PAUSE  We might take a moment to be grateful that we choose to work that hard and that we don’t have to.  PAUSE We might also accept the gift of Rest that we have been given and honor it.  PAUSE

Rest is not to be lazy.  It’s not to slouch around and eat bonbons and watch TV (although that might be okay too). Rest is taking the time needed to be refreshed and restored so that we are better able to do the work that we do. It is to strengthen us to do that work that we are Called to do.  Our greater work of begin the hands of God/Jesus/Love in this world.  That, too, takes rest and refreshment and nourishment.  

We get so busy that our minds become so full and clogged and foggy.  Rest clears the mind and helps us to be more well and also more efficient in what we do choose to do.  That still, small voice we might fear will arrive in the quiet is really important and deeply healing. PAUSE

So Breathe…

Exhale…

This is your Sabbath Moment.  

Maybe all you are able to commit to a Sabbath Time is this Sunday morning together. Just one, single hour to fully and peacefully close out one wild and chaotic and quite violent and windy week and open ourselves to the wonderful possibilities that a new week brings.  

Let last week go.  Exhale…

Savor God’s Gifts to us all around us.  

Bring on a new week..  Breathe it all in.  Everything…

Sabbath, my friends.  We are supposed to rest.  God knows that it is in rest that we notice the wonderful things. It is in rest that we are filled with gratitude. It is in rest that we restore our souls and find the clarity around what matters most to us.  We see what we are meant to work towards…and when we are in a state of rest, we are more fully present with and for one another.  We are more fully present with and for…Grace.