Tag Archives: rhythm

You Know You Need a Sabbath When…

You know you need a Sabbath when: The only time you are alone is in the bathroom. It takes you over thirty minutes to fall asleep because your mind is racing about things you forgot to do. You think rest is standing still in traffic. You go to check your e-mail for a moment and are still there an hour later. You cannot remember anything you ate the last 3 days. You drove upstate for an hour and had so much on your mind that when you arrived, you are not sure how you got there. You don’t know what day it is. You find yourself jealous and angry when someone else is enjoying life. When you can’t remember the last time you sat down to eat breakfast When you tweet during movie, text during dinner, read e mail during meetings and classes, and learn about your spouse’s day from Facebook. Sabbath is as. Read more.

Midday Staff Prayer — Julian of Norwich

NLF Staff Midday Prayer Sept. 26, 2012 Stillness and Silence – 2 minutes to be still First Reading: Ps. 146 1 Praise the Lord.Praise the Lord, my soul. 2 I will praise the Lord all my life;I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.3 Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. 4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. 5 Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God 6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them—he remains faithful forever…The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down… The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord. Second Reading – Lamentations 3: 21-27 21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They. Read more.

Sabbath-Keeping: A Long, Slow Road

Lauren Winner, herself an author of a book on Sabbath, says that in spite of a bumper crop of books on Sabbath observances in the last ten years or so, “it’s unclear . . . that many people are implementing them.” A Jewish young-adult organization called Reboot launched a “Sabbath manifesto” offers us the following ten recommendations that I appreciate: 1. Avoid technology. 2. Connect with loved ones. 3. Nurture your health. 4. Get outside. 5. Avoid commerce. 6. Light candles. 7. Drink wine. 8. Eat bread. 9. Find silence. 10. Give back. I think Abraham Heschel had it right: He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to. Read more.

Reflections on a Weekend with the Trappists

This was my fifth retreat with the 70+ monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts. Maybe since it was the end of my 6 weeks away from the responsibility of leading New Life, but I entered into a deep calm, silence and rhythm with their life almost immediately. One of the highlights of the weekend was a conversation with Father Kizito Kwame, a West Indian who has been with them for 49 years. He joined at the age of 17 when the monastery was at its height (1958-1960) of 200 monks. He recently returned from 10 years of serving among the 25 Trappist monasteries in Africa. A part of me so longed to remain on the mountaintop with God and not leave return to checkbooks, house, problems, needs, noise and traffic of NYC, that I complained to him for a while, shared with him this inner compulsion I often feel to be a monk, etc.. Read more.

Finding Rhythms in an Interrupted Life

I am convinced living rhythmically is one of our gifts to our 24/7 world and a key to walking with God. Yet my life, like most, is full of interruptions. I love and affirm Wayne Mueller’s words in his book on Sabbath and our need for rhythms: To surrender to the rhythms of seasons and flowerings and dormancies is to savor the secret of life itself. Many scientists believe we are “hard-wired” like this, to live in rhythmic awareness, to be in and then step out, to be engrossed and then detached, to work and then to rest. It follows then that the commandment to remember the Sabbath is not a burdensome requirement from some law-giving deity — but rather a remembrance of a law that is firmly embedded in the fabric of nature. It is a reminder of how things really are, the rhythmic dance to which we unavoidably belong. Yet last week I experienced a classic challenge of having. Read more.

Grounded

The theme for what God is seeking to do in me can be summed up around the work grounded. I am so easily pulled away, seduced into what is easy and popular — like speaking, new projects, getting overextended, doing the easy (be active) rather than think and do the best. Today I am headed for 24 hours alone with God (something now in our Rule of Life as pastoral staff at NLF that we are all to do 1x a month) at a nearby retreat center. They have a hermitage that is both simple and lovely. I have taken it very slow this week, working minimally to compensate for the heavy previous week with the EHS conference. I am feeling refreshed physically and emotionally. Yet I can feel the weight of demands pressing around me — sermon on Eph. 6:10ff for Sunday to prepare, staff issues, running NLF, and the numbers of people. Read more.

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