Trouble with Grace

Today my husband, Daniel, is guest-posting about some of his experiences this summer, and some of his reflections on our reading of Wendell Berry. This summer would have been much less rich without him, and I am grateful for his companionship and his intentionality about reflecting on our experience together.

I have not formally asked any one to guest post before, but I would love for others to contribute to this blog! If you have something to say about sabbath, farms, food, travel, life, chickens...you get the idea, please let me know! I'd love to continue this even though we've almost made it back home.

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I’ve always had trouble with grace. As a child, I sang about it often in hymns like ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Grace Greater Than Our Sin’, but it wasn’t preached or talked about nearly enough for me to truly understand the feeling of grace. When I was baptized as a teenager, no great sensation swept over me, as I had hoped it might. Throughout my life, I have believed in and known God’s love and even God’s forgiveness in various ways. But grace has always been a little bit more elusive.

In a way, I’ve always felt that I’m somehow missing out on something that a lot of other people seem to experience with a degree of ease. I’d love to have one of those dramatic ‘see the light’ or ‘come to Jesus’ moments that certain Christian people have had. And growing up in a church where folks talked about salvation and piety a lot more than grace only intensified my disappointment that I never found myself in the middle of such an experience. Alas, I’ve had to ‘settle’ for subtle moments of beauty, truth, and clarity instead.

You might wonder what any of this has to do with our farm work and sabbath journeys this summer. Well as I look back over the past few months, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve been looking for the wrong kind of grace. My work and time on farms this summer was filled with blessings. The simplicity of the lifestyle, the connection to the land, meals that were healthy and fresh from the garden, and being able to spend all day outside in the sun – all of these things filled me with a subtle but deep feeling of gladness and contentment. I’ve hoped to encounter God’s grace as an all-consuming redemption and perhaps as a mystical relationship with the Divine. Ultimately, I’ve wanted grace to be something overwhelming, something of which I’m clearly conscious. But I suspect that through our work and sabbath time I have experienced grace at a very unconscious level.

In The Art of the Commonplace Wendell Berry writes, “The distinction between the physical and the spiritual is, I believe, false. A much more valid distinction, and one that we need urgently to make, is that between the organic and the mechanical” (p. 147). He’s talking about the tendency in Christian theology of drawing a sharp boundary between flesh and spirit, between body and mind. It is this division that fuels the expectation of an entirely conscious experience of grace. I believe that Berry is suggesting that the subtle pleasures, simultaneously spiritual and physical, of living and working within the flow of creation’s rhythms are as true an experience of God’s grace as any dramatic altar call.

I’m learning how to embrace and enjoy this grace. As our summer ends and we return to a more normal routine, I wonder how we might maintain an ability to dwell in those graceful rhythms.

~ Daniel 

Maya Angelou on Sabbath

This short Angelou piece is from her book Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now.

"A Day Away"

We often think that our affairs, great or small, must be tended continuously and in detail, or our world will disintegrate, and we will lose our places in the universe. That is not true, or if it is true, then our situations were so temporary that they would have collapsed anyway.

Once a year or so I give myself a day away. On the eve of my day of absence, I begin to unwrap the bonds which hold me in harness. I inform housemates, my family and close friends that I will not be reachable for 24 hours; then I disengage the telephone. I turn the radio dial to an all-music station, preferably one which plays the soothing golden oldies. I sit for at least an hour in a very hot tub; then I lay out my clothes in preparation for my morning escape, and knowing that nothing will disturb me, I sleep the sleep of the just.

On the morning I wake naturally, for I will have set no clock, nor informed my body time piece when it should alarm. I dress in comfortable shoes and casual clothes and leave my house going no place. If I am living in a city, I wander streets, window-shop, or gaze at buildings. I enter and leave public parks, libraries, the lobbies of skyscrapers, and movie houses. I stay in no place for very long.

On the getaway day I try for amnesia. I do not want to know my name, where I live, or how many dire responsibilities rest on my shoulders. I detest encountering even the closest friend, for then I am reminded for who I am. And the circumstances of my life, which I want to forget for awhile.

Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, lovers, family, employers and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. We need hours of aimless wandering or spates of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the canopy of treetops.

If we step away for a time, we are not, as many may think and some will accuse, being irresponsible, but rather we are preparing ourselves to more ably perform our duties and discharge our obligations.

When I return home, I am always surprised to find some questions I sought to evade had been answered and some entanglements I had hoped to flee had become unraveled in my absence.

A day away acts as a spring tonic. It can dispel rancor, transform indecision, and renew the spirit.

(Re)Creating Sabbath

Someone recently passed this article on to me from the New York Times written by Judith Shulevitz. It wasn't until I finished the article that I realized the author was the same woman whose book I just finished on sabbath: The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.


The book did a good job of talking about histories of Sabbath in both the Jewish and Christian traditions as well as lesser known groups such as the Hutterites or Sabbatarians; she also draws from Abraham Heschel who I've mentioned in previous posts. Her mix of history and personal writing was a little scattered for me, she never really seemed to say anything at the end of the day. She claims Sabbath is a completely dead practice, and I would also challenge her on this point. I liked her article better. 


She begins by asking the reader how you would recreate the Sabbath, and then describes a few fellow New Yorkers who do so. 


I like the intentional taking of time set aside and time with family that the therapist from Brooklyn Heights is careful about. I like that she is not threatened as a confident capable professional woman who also affirms the masculinity of her husband through a traditional family blessing. Since when have you seen someone so comfortable in the particularity of gender roles?


I have a harder time separating my theology from Sabbath as does the Israeli novelist. Why call it Sabbath then? Why not just have personal time that you take to set aside each week. Perhaps it is his Jewish heritage that provides meaning for him, but even that heritage was a focus on time rather than a practice as he claims. He doesn't like the rules, but the rules come from defining Sabbath as practice rather than as time.


Finally, the professor asks my favorite question. Most people who are trying to reclaim Sabbath, do so alone, often during moments during their week when they can fit it in. Sabbath is about time first, not just "time when you can fit it in." And she asks about how we can move away from the individual spirituality of Sabbath back into a communal framework. 


Check it out:  
Creating Sabbath Peace Amid the Noise
...and let me know how you would/do (re)claim Sabbath today.

Note: Why is an article on Sabbath in the "Fashion & Style" section, and then listed under "cultural studies"? Is this perhaps another cultural critique on our anxiety about taking time out? Will we go out of style? Be in bad fashion?

A Sabbath Sermon

I am currently in the company of some good seminary friends in Boise, ID, and Marci graciously invited me to preach at her church, Southminster Presbyterian, this morning. I couldn't seem to help but preach, of course, about Sabbath. So here it is.
Gen 2:1-4

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all heir multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested form all the work that he had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into that hands of robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

 ***

Who is my neighbor? That is often the question we hinge on from this familiar gospel story. We’ve each probably heard a half a dozen sermons about the Good Samaritan, many no doubt asking us important questions about how we treat those around us, and who we consider to be neighbors, or maybe even why we should show people kindness. But I’d like to take us in a different direction this morning.

Some of you may have heard about a study conducted in 1973 by a couple of psychologists who used the story of The Good Samaritan as their template. Their intention was to look at personality factors that affected whether or not people would stop to help another person in distress. Interestingly, they recruited seminary students (of the Presbyterian variety, from Princeton) as their participants, and instructed each of them to travel from one building to another where they would give a talk. They had a few variables, half the students were asked to talk about job prospects in that talk, the other half were asking to preach a sermon on the Good Samaritan. Then each of those two groups were broken into thirds, one third was told to hurry over to the next building, they were going to be late! The second was told they were on time, but not to dilly dally, the final group was told the program was running late and but they could go ahead and make their way over. Every student passed an actor playing a homeless man who was in health distress on their way to the second building to talk.

The researchers were hoping to find that these benevolent seminary students would differ in their responses mostly based on personality, but what they found was that the biggest factor in whether someone stopped to help was whether or not they were in a hurry. Those who stopped the most, were those who had been told the program was running late and had extra time to spare.

When was the last time you were in a hurry? Maybe Friday afternoon, rushing to get out of the office and beat weekend rush hour traffic? Perhaps it was yesterday as you made your way to a meeting or the kids practice. Or was it this morning as you left the house in a flurry to make it to church on time?

Being busy is a status symbol in our culture today. It is a compliment of sorts to hear, “Wow, you must really be busy” and reply with a non-chalant, “nah, not really.” Being too busy is the number one reason why people say they can’t vote; half of people who don’t attend church say it’s because they’re too busy. We have twitter because we’re too busy to read an entire letter or e-mail about how our friends are doing, we’ve got blackberries because we’re too busy to remember what comes in the next hour, we’ve got 8-minute ab workouts because we’re too busy to find time to be active outdoors doing something we actually enjoy that is good for our bodies.

Thomas Merton talks about this business as a kind of violence; he says:

“To allow oneself to be carried away by the multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace, [because] it destroys our own inner capacity for peace.”

And indeed, when we look at the story of The Good Samaritan and the priest and Levite who both passed by, or the study in which even budding do-gooder pastors walk by the homeless man, we begin to see how this busy life might in fact deliver violence in our world.

So how do we respond to this life? How to we resist the status of a full calendar, and find time to rest, to nurture ourselves, those around us, and our relationship with God?

I had the opportunity to think more deeply about this in seminary. I found myself at the end of two full years of studying and interning, and realized I didn’t have it in me to do another summer of work; Clinical Pastoral Education was next on the docket. So I went to one of my professors to talk it over with him, and said I just needed to take a break, I was overwhelmed and so emotionally dry that I couldn’t begin to imagine serving as a chaplain for the summer. He supported my decision to postpone CPE, but corrected my description of it, telling me that I was not merely “taking a break”, but instead practicing Sabbath.

I think this ancient faith practice, one that we only vaguely recognize as Christians today, is one way we can respond to our hurried culture. When you hear the word Sabbath, many of you might first think about Judaism, or even Seventh Day Adventists, and indeed they are two traditions that prioritize the Sabbath.

Jews have several texts that inform their practice of Sabbath, but there are two that seem particularly foundational, and Christians also hold these passages in high esteem. One of these texts was our first scripture reading from this morning in Genesis, in which God creates the seventh day, rested, and hallowed it. But this alone, might seem like not enough of a reason that we should deserve a weekly rest, creating the world must have been harder work than anything we could have ever possibly participated in. So look then to the Decalogue, the ten commandments. We generally attempt to follow these basic laws right? We’re all familiar with thou shall not steal, murder, or covet your neighbor. You shall honor your father and mother, and not make false idols.

But we often forget the fourth commandment; can you name what it is?

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work.”

You may be wondering what is the Sabbath, or how do we practice it? Certainly we go to church on Sundays, and you may have heard about other traditions like Judaism in which they refrain from labor and work, but also cooking, or use of light or transportation, and eat traditional meals with family. It may even conjure up memories of the old blue laws which prohibit the sale of liquor, gambling, bingo, labor, or recreational sports on Sundays depending on which state you are in.

But Sabbath is not about restrictions or rules, nor is it about idle rest. It is an active cessation of work, a rest in motion. Sabbath is not a time intended for us to make it as far as we get until we collapse into a desperate repose in which we can do nothing for our exhaustion.  Instead it is an intentional time to regularly tend to God, to community and self, to celebrate life. In fact it is less a particular practice and more an observance of a particular time.

Let’s turn to the Genesis passage again. Throughout the entire story, God has created each portion of creation, declaring each good at the end of the day. But what happens on the seventh day is unique. God creates another day, another portion of time, and then God rests and blesses that time. The Hebrew is qadosh, which means holy, or to make holy. It is the first appearance of that word in the Bible, and notice it is not used for creation, not on the Earth, the waters, the animals, nor even us. God makes time, a particular time, holy. And then God dwells in that time, and later invites us to do so too.

Abraham Heschel was a rabbi born in Germany, but came to the US just before WWII. He was adjusting to his new life here with fellow Jews who were trying to figure out what it meant to be American. His book, The Sabbath, was written largely in response to what he saw happening to the Jewish Sabbath. I quote his daughter’s introduction of the book, “The Sabbath appeared at a time when American Jews were assimilating radically and when many were embarrassed by public expressions of Jewishness…For them, the Sabbath interfered with jobs, socializing, shopping, and simply being American.”

Heschel talks about how we have lost the distinction of time. Time has become a commodity, a thing that can be traded and measured. He contrasts time to space, arguing that space is the real commodity we’re after, and we use time to gain more space (more property, more things, more power, more cubic feet). Hence the phrase, time is money.

But try as we might, we really cannot conquer or dominate time, it does seem to march on incessantly no matter how hard we try to contain it. And whether we like it or not, time is not as uniform as we may think. We do not consider being five minutes late to a dinner party the same as being five minutes late to work. Nor do we consider a 10 minute traffic delay the same as a ten minute delay spent catching up with friends. Or consider the nine long months of pregnancy compared to the first nine months of your child’s life. There is work time, vacation time, chore time. In our faith we have Ordinary Time, Lenten Time, Advent Time, and Christmas and Easter time. Sabbath is another particular time, one that happens weekly. And it is time that has been made holy by God first.

When I began to think about Sabbath more intentionally, I realized that part of the purpose of Sabbath was to participate in sanctification (or the making holy) of myself and of the world. And I thought that if I could just get the right practices down, and spend time dedicated to those practices, I would be on the right track. But then I realized it is the time itself that is holy, not the practice. And it isn’t until I submit to that time, not until I dwell in it, revel in it, celebrate that time, that I too experience the holy.

The Sabbath is a sanctuary from the world as we know it, from the time we battle during the week, from the labor and work we are required to do, from the reality of this world. It is a day for praise, a day for the celebration of life. It is a day where we stop thinking about space, and think about time in a new way. It is a day to stop thinking about what we need to do, or what needs to get done, and rest in a time meant for God, for community, and for self.

What is on your to do list for this afternoon? Mow the lawn? Do the budget? Read those documents from work you didn’t get to on Friday afternoon? What would happen if you didn’t get to that list?

I mentioned that Sabbath is more an observance of time than it is a practice, but that doesn’t mean that certain practices can’t help you transition into that time. Certainly coming to worship with your faith community is a good place to start. Simply being with others who are attempting to enter into that time collectively can help any one individual resist the temptations to succumb to another six or seven day work week. Worship can set the tone for the joyous celebration of the day of resurrection that we observe as Christians on the Lord’s Day. It can be a time where the community swells with life. But what happens after church? What will help you find that different mode of time, and let go of the anxieties and to do lists? What will help you create a sanctuary in time?

Maybe you turn your cell phone off for the day, or refrain from using the internet. Perhaps you do house chores on Saturday and spend the day enjoying your garden or lawn by playing games or sitting and reading in it. Maybe you extend your time with community by sharing a meal. Perhaps you journal, run, sit in silence, sing loud, or dance. Maybe each week you do something new, or you might develop a regular practice. Whatever it is, it should take you away from those spatial comforts Heschel talks about, and draw you nearer to the people you love, nearer to God, and nearer to self. It should not just be a distraction from you work, but a delight in life and rest. It should feel like a different time, so that when step out of it, you feel somehow lighter, you feel fed, more alive.

The poem on your bulletin this morning I think summarizes how Sabbath should feel quite well. Wendell Berry is a writer, and lives on his farm in Kentucky. Part of his Sunday Sabbath is to walk through his property, often in silence, and sometimes he writes (he writes poetry though, which is intentionally different from his day job). This poem is one of his Sabbath poems, and I’m just going to read you the end of it:

The mind that comes to rest is tended

In ways that it cannot intend:

Is borne, preserved, and comprehended

By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by

Your will, not ours. And it is fit

Our only choice should be to die

Into that rest, or out of it.

May we walk away from this sanctuary, but remain in a sanctuary of time where our mind and our hearts are tended, where community is nurtured, and out of that rest is born life. Our own lives, the life of our community, and life that extends beyond us; life that reminds us to be the Samaritan who will stop, and maybe even take a step out of our daily time, even on a Tuesday.

Amen. 

Michael Jackson on Sabbath

I just learned yesterday that Michael Jackson was a Seventh Day Adventist growing up, and then I stumbled across this article as I was googling all things Sabbath.

It portrays an interesting side of Michael we didn't see much in the media (until of course, the end, when he starts talking about children). Have a look - tell me what you think!

Time & Space

“We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things.” Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, pg. 6.

I’ve been reading The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the leading Jewish theologians of the 20^th century. He opens his book with the bold claim that “technical civilization is man’s conquest of space.” In other words, the more we build, own, and even create and collect things the more we have controlled the space around us. We need space to survive, he allows for this, but he criticizes the lengths we go to to own and control more space than we need.

There is a security in space, we especially like our spacious homes and privacy, and look for other things to fill that vacuous space to ensure we’ve claimed it as our own. Space is power and borders are guarded heavily; space is comfort when it has been tailored to fit wo/men placed in the center.

Daniel and I have experienced the discomfort of not having a space to call our own home, to leave behind many of our things that fill space, and live in a space that in unknown to us and governed by another family’s customs. Though they are a family that in many ways lives simply in comparison to many Americans (heat with wood in MN winter, limit their water use, limit their appliance and electricity use, and reuse every piece of plastic, glass and tin available) they too seem just as bound by things as any other family. And indeed, Heschel talks about how many people are liberated from many things, but few are liberated from the lure of owning space.

You may notice I’ve been talking about things as space, a delineation Heschel uses in his definition. He does not go so far to say that all things unnecessary for life should be omitted from life, but rather we should be independent of such luxuries. Simply put, “to have them and to be able to do without them” (p. 28). This is one goal, I think, of the Sabbath, to practice time rather than space.  To use the historical practices as examples, to stop use of transportation, light, stoves, etc., and to dwell in a kind of time that is different and less dependent on things in space. This is one aspect of Sabbath and Daniel and I are modestly attempting to practice.

As I continued to read I thought about how I also treat time as a thing, a commody to be bargained and gained or lost. But Heschel has a much clearer understanding that time is in fact one thing we cannot conquer or possess. Furthermore, it is not as monolithic as we mistake it to be. Time is not just one minute, or hour, or day that marches steadily on. There is a diversity to time, one that Heschel claims the Jewish faith is built around. The festival days are markers of events in time rather than signifying a triumph or space or number. The Sabbath is the ultimate example of a differentiated time, it is holy time, time that will be holy with or without us, but time in which we may choose to dwell.

***

As I’ve entered into my Sabbath time, I have thought a lot about sanctification and how I participate in my own and in the world’s through my practices. But Heschel redirected me by returning to the Genesis text. God hallowed the day in Gen 2:3, creation (space) was declared good after the first six days, but on the seventh, God created and blessed time, a particular time.

And so perhaps it is that simply by being in that time, within the Sabbath rather than achieving Sabbath, I too become sanctified. In my active cessation I have enjoyed the bliss of creation, the wonders of life, and have glimpsed the eternity Heschel describes as the climax of living in the holiness of Sabbath.

Heschel’s daughter wrote the introduction to the book saying, “The Sabbath appeared at a time when American Jews were assimilating radically and when many were embarrassed by public expressions of Jewishness…For them, the Sabbath interfered with jobs, socializing, shopping and simply being American” (p. xii) I’m afraid much hasn’t changed for many Americans, Jew, Christian or otherwise.

When do we stop and submit to time set apart for matters of the spirit? When do we stop and submit to time at all? When do we leave our spatial conquest to dwell in time that reflects a world where space is no longer an expression of greed and pride, but an expression of the beauty of creation and a God who loves us regardless of space acquired.

Even as I take three months of intentional time, time I know will end, time for which I have been hungry, I can feel my grip on space, on things, on security and comfort grow stubborn. I must remember that the Sabbath is not idle rest for the weary, not a day that depends upon me to exist, but a holy time blessed by God for the sake of life and the celebration of it.

A Summer Sabbath

This summer, I am again invoking an ancient practice that I have only done so intentionally once before: Sabbath. It is a practice still vaguely familiar to many people of faith, and related to a perhaps more familiar practice in our culture (at least in academia), the sabbatical. However, both the professor’s sabbatical and most people’s typical weekly day of Sabbath lack many of the qualities, or at least the intentionality, of Sabbath’s origins.

The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew (“Shabbat”), meaning rest or cessation. The weekly practice of Sabbath is tied to Genesis 2:2 where this verb is found describing God’s rest on the seventh day of creation. God’s rest was not a lazy one, however, but an active cessation in which God sanctified creation. Thus, our Sabbath is indeed a cessation from work, a rest from daily activities, but it is also a time for the active engagement in spiritual matters. A time for blessing, cleansing, perfecting, making holy all that is overlooked in our otherwise hurried lives.

For Jews, this meant/means (depending on the brand of Jew), a set of rules that allowed demanded, one cease work and celebrate life, God and family. Examples of these rules include: no plowing of the earth, no cooking/baking, no washing, no use of lamps or artificial light, no use of technology, not travel or use of automobiles. It also meant saying prayers, breaking bread, time with family, playing games, napping, even celebrating “marital relations” (one of the few healthy religious practices that recognizes and celebrates sexuality). 

While the professor’s Sabbatical is an example of resting from the daily exhaustion of teaching and in theory having more time with family, it has lost a very pure understanding of rest, particularly the rest from one’s normal work. It is expected that our scholars produce during their time of rest; produce new studies, a set of lectures, and always more books. Some have even begun to trade their sabbatical from teaching for a time abroad in a professor’s exchange between universities.

Our Sabbath days as people of faith have also been eclipsed by our need to be busy and “perfected” (sanctified) in the eyes of anything but God. We may rest from our salaried position or hourly pay, but we rush home from services of workshop and prayer to mow the lawn, clean the house, finish an application for the next big phase of life, finish a book only so it’s done for book club next Tuesday, and generally “get things done.” How often do we set aside an entire day to tend to our souls, our relationships, and the creation that surrounds us?

*  *  *

It wasn’t until I became completely overwhelmed with life that I began to understand the importance of this practice. Summer of 2007 I was lined up to do my Clinical Pastoral Education after my second year of seminary. It was promised to be a grueling emotional summer that would also change my life – one that I couldn’t be a successful pastor without (according to most Presbyteries).

But I was tired. Not just your average end of the year – finals week – eventually crash and get sick tired, but I was bone tired. Heart-tired. Mind-tired. And I couldn’t even attempt to come up with energy to dig deep and do the emotional and spiritual work that CPE requires.

So I stepped off the yellow-brick road to ministry, and got a summer job slicing meat at a sandwich shop in town. I rested from theology (the study of it anyway), from writing formally, even from reading. I gardened, exercised my body, cultivated new relationships in the community through a new job, and prayed.

I have again come to a wall. A wall where I face exhaustion, but also an emptiness spiritually, emotionally, vocationally, and even intellectually. It is time, again, for active cessation. Time for tending to God, to Daniel, to family, and to self.