Rest is an Essential

• We are currently collecting for Fuel Assistance to help four local families with 100 gallons of oil each.
• Lenten Fridays with INC continue this Friday at the Boiler Banquet Hall with Soup and Song to support North Quabbin Citizens Advocacy at 5:30pm. $10pp.
• Lenten Home Contemplative Practices with Owen and myself can be found on our website with a new one posting each week until Easter.
• Easter Sunrise Service at 6am. Regular Easter Service at 9am.
• Discussion Group & Confirmation Studies on March 23rd and 30th after Church.
• Watch the recording HERE

We are still walking into the wilderness.  This journey is a long journey from Ash Wednesday, when we remember where we come from and where we return, to Easter Sunday.  Forty Seven Days.  Forty days in the wilderness.  

We can never fully prepare for the wilderness—it’s the unknown.  The unexpected will always arrive and challenges us, which is the point of the journey.  

In some ways, the lenten journey is about starting from a place of not knowing to come to the other side to know.  We take a leap, and (ideally) we grow and learn.  The place of the leap into the not knowing, is full of challenges and struggles and trials. The between one thing and the next is full of frustration!!  Just when we think we have it figured out, things change.  Just when we think we “have it”, we “lose it”.  Just when we think “we’re there”, there’s another thirty five days to go.  

Think about classes we take (took) in school.  We didn’t come to Math 101 knowing math.  We started not knowing.  Then, there was (is) the frustrating journey of learning math.  The tests.  The quizzes. The pop quizzes. The homework. The study.  The  midterm.  The final.  The grade.  

Along the way, there might be thrown books, temper tantrums, and tears.  There are days where it comes easy.  There are the a-ha moments.  There is also a lot of frustration.  And on the other side, we finally come to knowing out of not knowing.  We have learned and we grew in strength.  

Then, we take a break for the summer.  Then, we came back for Math 102.  The cycle begins anew.  We come from a new place of not knowing, into the wilderness (the frustration), to a new knowing.  We might think of this as a “normal” to a “new normal”. 

This is the journey of Lent. This is the journey of the desert, the wilderness.  It’s the journey of life.  We begin in not knowing and go into a place of growth and challenge and stretching and testing to Know.  To know and experience something.  To learn more.  If we’re too “certain” and “right” and “set in our ways”, we might be deliberately staying out of the wilderness, even when we think we’re “doing it”.  What is asked of us is to step into into the trials and to keep going, to move through, to continually become.…to Know.  

We don’t like to not know, even on the smallest level.  PAUSE.  Somehow, we want to get to knowing…without the stuff in between.  We want to grow and learn and become…without the frustrating parts.  Sometimes, we’d rather skip the frustrating parts so much, we’re happy to stay in the not knowing. We feel safer not growing rather than admit what we don’t know.  Rather than step into the vulnerability that is essential to growth.  

Even the “giving up of chocolate”, whatever your “chocolate” is, is an echo of hard and frustrating.  There’s often a little bit of a sugar habit or an addiction.  There’s a testing. There are mistakes.  There are temptations…maybe just one bite might be okay…those sneaksy little voices in our heads.  

Perhaps, if we’re not frustrated and challenged, or tempted, we’re avoiding the frustrating part of the middle.  We’re trying to go around or under or over what we must go through.  

Last week, we explored A Willingness to Change Direction as something that might be an essential to the journey.  If it is too easy or too much, it might be a time to pause, reflect, and reassess.  It might be a time to change direction.  PAUSE.  It might be appropriate to “push through” the challenges and frustrations. PAUSE.   

Which brings us to a second Essential: Rest days.  They are literally built into the Lenten journey, because we need to be gentle with ourselves and one another, especially when we are going through challenges and trials and struggles.  

There are forty-seven days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, but wilderness is forty days.  That’s because Sundays are always a day of Rest, Peace, and Tenderness.  They are “Feast Days”, days of Celebration of the Blessings, even in the middle of the desert.  

We are not meant to be in the desert, the wilderness, the unknown…the frustrating…for that long—hence: summer break.  We need to rest and tend to our weary souls so that we might see clearly what is true and what is necessary.  To ask ourselves if our journey is to keep pushing through or is it time to change direction?  To keep going through the dark, scary cave or return home when the angry lion comes out of the trees?  

One of my favorite “caution tales” is from the movie (or the book) Chocolat.  The mayor of the town chooses an intense fast for Lent.  At the same time, a woman moves into the village and opens a chocolate shop.  One can imagine this is not going to go well.  PAUSE.  As he continues on his journey with no rest, no respite, and no grace, he becomes more and more angry and rigid.  He becomes more short sighted and short tempered.  He get care-less and becomes mean and judgmental.  PAUSE.  

He begins to cause harm to everyone around him, including himself.  In the end…it is “too much” and instead of being strengthened, he is broken and weakened.  It is gentleness and kindness (and a bit of chocolate) that saves him.  

We are not meant to be in the desert forever. PAUSE.  It is not a competition (not even with ourselves).  It is a journey toward growth and strength in faith.  PAUSE.  We are already tired. It’s easy to think if a three day fast is good, then ten is better.  It depends.  If a cold plunge is good, then every day is even better.  It depends.  If climbing a mountain is good for us, a bigger one is better.  If a run is good, a longer one is better.  It depends.  

It’s easy to overdo and these challenges and deserts help us to know our strengths (and our weaknesses).  But especially when we are challenging ourselves, it is the rest and recovery that truly nourishes our bodies and souls.  It is in soaking up the lessons we have learned along the way that we are strengthened—not rushing to the next big thing.  Real strength is not just for the next mountain or the next race, or the next thing to “win”.  Real strength is for the long haul of having the resiliency in the trials we chose and the trials that will inevitably arrive uninvited. And if we forget to slow down, we miss the Lenten Roses growing in the shadows.  

A rest day will not mean we have “gone astray” or “failed”. Wo won’t “get behind” or “lose”.  A rest day will not deter us from our path.  A rest day is a day of noticing blessings, a time of noticing how we are on the journey and what steps to take next.  A pause reminds us of what we are seeking on this journey.  We are reminded that it is not just for ourselves, but for all beings.  It might be a personal journey, but nothing, nothing, is done in isolation or only for ourselves.  

A day of rest gives us the quiet space to be sure that our journey is one of faith, and not inadvertently a journey only about the self and self will.  It is a time of stillness that orients, and reorients,  us toward Grace.  Rest give us the space to remember that we are loved, regardless of how we feel the journey through our wilderness is going.  

Sunday, we get to Love and Celebrate together.  Sunday, we remember.  We remember that we are Loved and Beloved.  This is my Beloved Son.  We too are beloveds.  

Rest and restore your scattered and weary soul.