God of all times and all ages, God of all of our moments, we praise your attention to every small
detail.
You make time for us. You make sense of our time. Help us to hear you in our daily moments and to
remember the gift of rest from the hard work we do. Amen.
So when I was a teacher, I had this annual
tradition. It's probably more than annual. Whenever we would get to the first extended break of the
school year, so that's usually around Thanksgiving is like the first like short one. Or if I
survive that one, then it's usually around like the winter break. I would get sick almost every
break. It's like my body was just like waiting, waiting, waiting. And then as soon as I got some
sort of rest, I would get sick. I know that during COVID, I learned a slightly different rhythm to
life. I think we were all forced to develop different rhythms. So I didn't get sick on any of those
breaks because I think I was just like always kind of tired, but like half doing things. So like
teaching online was not fun, to say the least.
And you would think that I would have learned these different rhythms because of how COVID forced
me to slow down. Like that's the first year that I noticed the oak tree in my backyard and its
rhythms of how it's developed its leaves and how the leaves would grow.
But I didn't. Instead, when I was first
coming here, so in 2024, in May of 2024, I was slated to graduate for my master's.
I was finishing up teaching full-time, and I had the part-time pastor job down at Mount Vernon
Place. And that is when I earned my first kidney stone.
Because I was working too hard. I was not taking care of myself. I wasn't doing the things that I
needed to do. And so as you can guess, the most ironic time, or I guess inconvenient time that
definitely had to happen, was the night before my graduations for my master's.
So like I'm in Lancaster at a campground because that's where my brother was staying with his
camper. And I'm just like laid out on a bench. Because I hadn't learned how to rest,
so my body was forcing me to figure it out.
This past week, I shared a quick reel of pictures and videos of our dog just passed out because
he's very good at doing that. And it's very hard to convince our dog to go outside.
But I think the reality is I invited everyone to share pictures of their pets resting because...
And I also said, or... share how you find rest.
Everyone that commented shared pictures of their pets. No one shared how we find rest.
That wasn't the intention of like a social experiment. I literally had an idea, ran downstairs,
threw it together, and then posted it and then came back upstairs. I think it was a total of five
minutes of thought that went through my head when I posted that. But the reality is our pets are so
much better at resting than even we are.
Ephesians remind us that there are times for everything. A time for rest,
a time for work, a time for weeping, a time for rejoicing.
And I'm reminded of the fact that even the animals at the zoo get days off from being seen.
The animals at the zoo frequently get more rest than we give ourselves.
There's also times in institutional life, For rhythms to change or to switch up how we do things.
We're now in the month of June. And what typically would have happened around Darnolia in May?
Flea market. It used to be huge and fruitful. And it got to the point where it was straining the
remnants. Those that were still here were burning themselves out trying to do it. And to make the
thoughtful decision to at least put it on pause.
And change how we were doing things. And instead, see if we could pull off opening the thrift store
one Saturday a month. Because the last time we tried that, it wasn't really fruitful.
And so let's try it again and see if this fits our current rhythm of life.
And yesterday, we had the library and a representative from St.
Joe's Hospital here. And a whole bunch of people saying that they were so grateful that we were,
I guess it was three, three people that said that four, four people that said they were grateful
that we were open on a Saturday.
Because of our realization that we were pushing ourselves too hard, we changed the rhythm of how we
did things. And we're already starting to see the fruit of connections that are happening in our
community because we decided to slow down. The pace of the flea market days are so chaotic that
relational connections couldn't happen, that now we're able to thrive because of that thoughtful
decision to take a breath.
So Ephesians is reminding us that we can learn so much about rhythms of rest from nature.
We see in the trees, and this is, I love... some things that Augustine said.
Augustine, being one of the earliest Christian theologians, he said that there were two books of
God,
nature and the Bible.
So good Catholic teaching is that if for something to be true in one book, it must be true in the
other book because the two of them can't contradict each other. And so we see in the rhythm of the
trees, how they take the time to let go of their leaves, or at least most of them.
and slow down, use less nutrients, and hold on to things for later in order to make sure that they
can build up the stamina to do fresh growth when the environment is ready to provide the right
amount of sunlight.
In The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Catherine May reminds us that the wintering
process of slowing down includes rest, And dormancy,
which our society says are bad, but the reality is without those rhythms,
there is no regrowth possible.
I'm also reminded of how I think I've shared at least once before the idea of refugia,
R-E-F-U-G-I-A, that when there are cataclysmic events,
there's these little pockets of nature. that hold on to the seeds of life,
usually thanks to the mushrooms, because the mycelial network is kind of like the thing that makes
the whole world work. And so they preserve life in the midst of destruction.
so that when the environment gets better, they're able to expand and have these opportunities of
regrowth. So what looks like retreat is actually preservation in order to endure hard times.
In the text, Ecclesiastes has a narrator whose name is Quoheleth,
which is quite the name, as if Ecclesiastes wasn't already a long enough name.
Quoheleth is believed to have been... at least crafted to be a character within a time where the
entire empire was beating down on people, that most of the work was removed from the people,
the profit and the actual fruit of the labor was removed and sent up to the top in order for the
wealthy to get wealthier and preserve their institutions.
That sounds oddly familiar because I am... It is not lost on me that this week we had our first
trillionaire, while still thousands of children die of hunger every day.
So Quahelis' context... of this system that feels so big and bearing down and impossible to
persevere through, is what he is writing all of this about. This is why the opening to Ecclesiastes
is meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless, because he feels like anything he does
doesn't bring fruit into the world. It's so hard to do anything good.
This is why he asks, like, All the time, he's like, I just want workers to be able to live in the
fruit of their labor, but they're so busy working that they can't enjoy the goodness of life.
And so after this entire book of reflection, and I'm really grateful for the fact that we get this
mental process of the character over time, this evolution of their thinking,
because over time, after he's lamented over and over again about the injustices of the world and
our inability to take care of one another, He discovers and talks about how everything in the world
follows a cycle, a rhythm. Empires only last so long.
All authoritarians will eventually no longer have power. All of this is a part of his reflection,
and he realizes everything is cyclical except for God.
God is the only thing in all of existence. That isn't cyclical because God is with us in the pits
of things and in the joys of things.
And so he's really talking about what does it mean to develop an attentiveness to God's presence.
So even when injustice runs rampant, God remains.
And God invites us to find rest regardless of the situation. To take turns doing the work.
And a lot of different... social cause groups that are not even attached to a religious
institution, they share what they call the parable of the choir. That one person on their own
singing a note can only do it for so long. But once you have a choir, you can hold a note for
eternity as everyone takes turns taking their breath.
And so when we see something that feels so insurmountable, Ecclesiastes reminds us that Everyone
gets the opportunity to find rest so that we can continue to take care of one another,
creating these spaces of refugia where we can tend to the keys and ingredients to abundant life and
help others survive through all of what feels unjust so that one day when the conditions change,
we can allow the fruits to grow and experience the regrowth after a period of dormancy.
And so each of us are in different seasons. We might be in seasons of joy.
We have different rhythms. A lot of people are on vacation this week. Connor finished eighth grade.
And so we've got different joys. Wait, did you guys also? Are you all done for the year too?
You got a week? Are you all done for the year? And you all just, you're going to high school next
year too? Yeah. So like there's these joys in these moments of moving from one I keep forgetting
that the two of y'all are the same age as Connor. They're very different heights. So regardless of
what season you're in, I want you to take the time this week to reflect, how is God present with
you in this season? Is there a particular way that you can honor the variety of life,
noticing God present in grief or in joys and all of the in-between?
Because all of this requires us to develop this attentiveness, but not in a way that's extra
judgmental. We're trying to hold ourselves gracefully and not rush into things too hard.
We can't do everything. You can't jump from I don't rest to I'm going to do an hour of silent
prayer every morning. Because what that ends up looking like is you wake up for an hour.
Well, you wake up every morning early, sit down and take an hour nap, right? which is also still
rest, but we can't rush in and try to do everything all at one time. It's about finding the next
good way to find rest in this season. How can you carve out a little bit more space when things
feel demanding?
And so we also, just like how we reflected as a community in our transition away from the flea
market, at least for this season, we can be thinking about what type of season are we in as a
community? Are we finding rest?
Or are we tending to the seeds of life, waiting and knowing that new energy may come one day so
that we can better reflect our presence, reflect on our current presence,
and embody God's love in our neighborhoods in the next season in renewed ways?
And I think the other thing, in the same way that as you're noticing God's presence in your
individual weeks, I invite you to share with one another different ways that we're noticing God's
presence in the community, in the ways that we do life together. And not just Arnolia as a
congregation, but also in the community that surrounds us. How are we noticing God's presence
there? Are there any ways that we can be more attentive to God's movements?
in our lives. Because the reality is if we take time to breathe and slow down, we might notice some
things that have been there the whole time.
And so really, this is the thing that I'm actually asking us to do is to start just taking maybe 10
minutes a week to journal. What do we notice God is doing this week?
And if we keep doing this rhythm, as we take this series on rest and the next series on Old
Testament wisdom and poetry, if we just keep reflecting for the next two months, when we get to our
series on love boldly, we can be thinking about, now that we've seen what God is up to, how are we
going to then love boldly in the year to come?
And so,
that's all I got for us. And let's pray.
God, you are the God of rest.
You're the one thing that perseveres, that exists beyond all of these things in our life that are
cyclical.
Far too often we are reminded that we live in a world where everything we love will eventually no
longer exist.
And so we are in these rhythms of loving things and grieving things as we transform our love in so
many ways.
So help us to breathe.
Help us to notice.
May your spirit guide us and lead us so that after we rest,
we may find new and renewed ways to love boldly,
serve joyfully, and lead courageously.
Amen.