One of the biggest changes has been not speaking every weekend. I realized that over the last seven years I have said a lot of things on a weekly basis. It was wonderful having a rest from that responsibility. Wonderful, I think for at least a couple of reasons. 1. I could absorb new things from God without thinking about how I could teach them to others and 2. I could rest in the fact that I am who I am regardless of if I am "performing" or not. Both good things.
I feel a bit self absorbed sitting down to blog about this but then I remember that it is like "gleaning" from the field of my sabbatical. It seems like part of the work that I agreed to do when I was given this time. If you are reading this you need to know that you owe anything that is helpful to the Quest and the time they allowed me to be dormant. You also need to know that I am sharing my discoveries like the 4 lepers in 2 Kings 7:3-14...read the story and you will see what I mean.
Dormancy is a remarkable idea. We expect most things to go dormant. In a sense we give them permission to be dormant. Think about a fruit tree or even the deciduous trees in your yard. We know that there will be fruit and once it is picked we don't expect another crop from that tree until the following season. God has built us the very same way. Fruitfulness takes a lot out of any living thing. The beauty of the fall leaves should remind us of this rhythm of life.
If you are a woman who has given birth you understand this completely. If you are a man, ask your wife or another woman whom you know well how much she needed rest after those nine difficult months. We have to recover, we have to celebrate, we have to learn how to Sabbath. One of my favorite passages of Scripture is the translation of Matthew 11:28-30 in the Message:
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll 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 won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."
This translation is the result of an amazing life of disciplined study and reflection by Eugene Peterson. It comes with the beauty of science and art mixed in such a way as it brings both the power of the words of Jesus and the poetry with which he spoke them. Thank you brother Eugene.
I thought that I knew what these words meant, I preached on them and read them time after time. I think that I understood them as well as I could have at the time. I have come to understand that Truth is layered, the Spirit of God allows you to see what you can see where and when you see it. As we uncover more and more of who we really are we are able to see them in greater depth and beauty. In a sense we become more enlightened regarding the very words of God. It is as if we move into a new room and as we clear it we see that there are others rooms that go deeper into the house itself.
Jesus' posture in this passage is remarkable to me. He simply wants for us to "recover our lives." He wants it so much that he incarnated and "moved into the neighborhood" (another Peterson translation, see John 1:14 in the message) Some how Jesus wants to show us how to really rest, by watching how he lived we can begin to feel the "unforced rhythms of grace." This is perhaps one of the most beautiful concepts that I have had the chance to live with. We will talk about this idea of recovering our lives in the days to come, it is the core of a life with God and most everything else flows out of it.
We can tell that we are keeping company with Jesus if we sense that we are beginning to live "freely and lightly." That has not been the overwhelming character of my life. I often feel that my relationship with God fits me like clothes that are several sizes too large, the fabric is rough and they are heavy. Some days it seems that the only way I can really breath deeply is by slipping out of them. Often slipping out of them means going back to old sinful patterns that I have adopted long ago. Something is wrong. Matthew records Jesus saying that, "I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you." I wonder what I have been wearing?
My trip was really an attempt at "getting away with Jesus." I wanted to make my self available to him in ways that I hadn't before. I wanted to hear him and "watch how he did it." I realized that the clothes that I was wearing, and some days asking others to put on, were not the clothes that he had tailored for me. Isn't that an interesting idea? Jesus as tailor, knowing your measurements better than you do, waiting with a suit of clothes that fit so well that you could be yourself in them?
As I have been coming to understand it the clothes that I have been wearing may have been tailored for someone else...I think that I actually made them myself and thought that I had to wear them. I'm learning how to leave them behind. It reminds me of Paul's letter to the Ephesians where he talks about taking off and putting on. It seems that if we don't know who we are we really can't dress ourselves very well. We often put on clothes that we should never wear. God knows what you need to wear and if we allow it, he will dress us each day.
I was talking about dormancy. That first Sunday that I was gone was not an easy one for me. There was a lot riding on it...at least in my mind. How would I get a sense of value if people were complimenting me on my sermon? What if the person who was speaking at the Quest didn't "do a good job." I'm laughing at myself now, but I sent texts back to my friends in Novato trying to find out if everything was ruined...not that I didn't have confidence in the speaker, I did, but, you have to understand, he wasn't ME! What an arrogant SOB, wow.
As one Sunday turned to two and then to four and now to eight I realized that this was a very healthy thing for both me and for the Quest in Novato. They loved the people who came to talk and I loved not talking. It was part of my following Jesus to where he wanted to take me, part of my "getting away with him." As each Sunday came I became less obsessed about knowing how it went and trusted more and more that this was a good thing for everyone.
I was dormant. It is remarkable what being dormant can do for your heart. You can actually begin to recover yourself. If God actually wants to give ourselves back to us part of it is this rhythm of life that allows for rest and recovery. How many illustrations can we take from nature? The tides, the trees, the day and the night, the trees and the animals. In the Eastern mind this is the ying and the yang. The up and down, the in and the out, the high and the low, the inhale and the exhale. How had I missed this for so long? I have to say that just realizing it doesn't "fix" it...it is a process too.
I know that I am getting ahead of my story but when I arrived home I found the nectarine tree that I had planted so full of fruit that it was nearly on the ground. I thinned the fruit, I propped up the tree. When I was trying to prop the tree up I heard a deep snapping sound from near the ground. I thought that I had broken the tree. It hit me that this tree was me right before my time of rest, I was trying to be so fruitful that I was about to break off at the ground. We picked the fruit and the tree is recovering. It lives in rhythm that way. Most things do, people don't.
Somehow we have forgotten this idea. The word, Sabbatical, comes from the Hebrew concept of Sabbath. I am learning what this means. I have been so programmed to work hard, it is a value of mine, that I feel guilty when I am resting. This is changing. I am beginning to see what it means to live in these unforced rhythms. Beginning to shed those old heavy ill fitting clothes, but they are not easily removed.
Back to the Harley. When it was repaired in NY the mechanic didn't replace some seals that should have been replaced and so it was really leaking oil. I took it to a mechanic in PA and asked him to fix it in a hurry because my youngest son was flying in and we were leaving in two days. Again, I was in a hurry and again it impacted everyone around me. Although I had a lot of time I was still moving as though I didn't. Rather than slow down and follow Christ into each day I was still leading at a speed that was not sustainable.
The motorcycle was repaired but the speed of the repair would cost me dearly several hundred miles later. So, it was the first week of July and I was to meet my brother and his friends in western PA for a trip to the Mid Ohio Vintage Motorcycle Days, an event that I had been attending with my father and brothers for almost 15 years. Noah flew in and I rushed to pick him up at the airport and then on a Thursday morning we set off to find my older brother and the small group that would travel into Ohio. We decided to take only two lane roads so that we could "slow down." Not a good idea.
I need to say that I was given one instruction from my spiritual director when I left California. Order some CD's from a monastary in northern California and listen to them as many times as I could while I was away. The set of CD's were instruction that was designed to help me to move from my head into my heard, the journey of descent that the church fathers often speak of. I did as I was instructed and the CD's arrived in PA just before I did, perfect. It all went downhill from there but I will save that story for next time.
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