Making Time to Play

“It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.”

Brene Brown

Before spending a few minutes blogging I zoomed with a young woman who is terribly certain of who she is and what she wants out of life. She is driven and ambitious. She is hitting her “targets” and taking no prisoners. She is checking off the boxes and I can only guess that her family must be very proud and probably a bit intimidated by her. She is living the American dream. And she is miserable.

Almost a year into the pandemic, she is beginning to question herself. This is new and quite scary for her. I suggested she take some accrued vacation time and find sanctuary. We talked about what that might look like, and she could barely stand the idea long enough to hold up her end of the conversation.

Finally, she said - “What if everything I thought I wanted in life was someone else’s idea?”

Great question.

So, in solidarity with my melting down friend, I’d suggest we all take some time to consider whose dream we are living. This will need to include rest and play more than another self-help book or redoubled efforts at the current favorite spiritual practice blowing over the religious landscape.

Yesterday Pete and I went walking in the snow. Baby, it was cold outside. But the snow crunched under our boots and our skin tingled with the fresh air. My heart soaked in the silence that only a snowfall can bring to our suburb. Afterwards, I spent several hours working on a puzzle of tea cups. It’s 1,000 little pieces consisting of shards of various bright colors sneakily repeated through the picture and devilishly creative shapes were challenging. I focused hard and then upped my game. I worked in silence in front of a warm cozy fire. I talked to no one and replied to zero texts.

Finally, my eyes worn out and squinting, I went to bed.

In the middle of the night I was startled awake by a solution to a problem that I had been noodling over for 6 weeks. I grabbed a pen and wrote it down in a notebook that I keep in my bedside drawer for situations like this. This morning the solution seems as plausible and well-formed as it did in the darkest part of the night.

Listen, I do not think our obsession with success is going anywhere in this country. We can rail about what we’re missing with this singular focus or we can work with it. Want to succeed? Then rest. Want to feel like your life was worth living? Play. Maybe as we rest and play we will find new ways of being in a world that values what we do sometimes to the exclusion of what our actions cause us to become.

A Cord That is Unbreakable

Friendship isn’t about who you’ve known the longest. It’s about who walked into your life, said, ‘I’m here for you,’ and proved it.

In designing our new website, my son decided we needed headshots in a pandemic no less! So he set up a “studio” and got to work. In an effort to get me to smile (I’m not a fan of having my picture taken) he said, “Think about Ruby Street.” And there it was - I smiled. Whichever one of the hundreds of shots he took, I hope this one turns out to be the picture he uses on the website.

My son has never been to Ruby Street, it was before his time. But he and everyone else I love knows that this modest little street in Durham, NC was a place of sanctuary for me that always makes me smile. My grandparents welcomed me with open arms and ice cream. The neighborhood children allowed me to join them in summer games. I found a second home and siblings-from-another-mother in the family next door - the Harwards.

Times are tough right now, and during my growing up years, the Jones kids and the Harward kids all saw seasons of trouble. But I can tell you this - when you have friends who prove, over and over again that they are there for you? You can not only survive, you can thrive.

I believe this to be true. For whatever reason, we saw, we see, the best in each other. Spread up and down the east coast, with one out west, and one deceased, we do not hang out often. Mostly we gather at the funerals of our parents - sadly, a recent new ritual. But there is facebook and an inevitable connection that comes when you commit, sometimes at an early age, to being here for one another.

If you do not have a relationship or two or three like this, start today. Be there for someone. It will not be the grand gestures that make it true, it will be the small things, the absolutely precious moments in the here-and-now that can build a bond, or as the scriptures say, a cord, that is unbreakable - even in a pandemic.

Creating Sanctuary in Your Everyday Life

“Sanctuary is finding a place to regain our bearings, reclaim our soul, heal our wounds and return to the world as a wounded healer. It’s not merely about finding shelter from the story - it’s about spiritual survival and the capacity to carry on.”

Parker Palmer

When Pete and I head to the lake at summer’s end for a break in our action-packed life, we are seeking shelter. We shelter from our routine and our tendency to work more than we play. I start thinking about returning to our shelter as we pack up to leave the lake. After loading the kayaks and floats, the workout equipment and leftover food, we back the car out of the garage and begin the steep climb up the driveway towards home. I do not look back. I look ahead. I think about the next time we will return to this wonderful place of leisure, quiet, wildlife, a comfortable dock to perch on and launch ourselves into the glassy lake.

This is not a sanctuary - it’s shelter.

If I waited until I was on our lake vacation to experience sanctuary, I would be in big trouble mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Sanctuary is finding a place moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour, day-by-day...on and on marching across the timeline of our lives.

This is new information for me. I consider our vacations the ideal time to experience sanctuary, and it is true enough that we do find that during those weeks of solitude, stillness and silence. But we bring it with us. It isn’t the environment, it is the essence of our lives that allow or resist finding sanctuary.

One way I find sanctuary is using the practice of The Welcoming Prayer. I go slow with it. I talk back to it. There are more formal, codified ways to practice the welcoming prayer and if you want more details contact me and I will send you some lovely details about such things. But this is how I personally find myself using it.

When I pray The Welcoming Prayer, I am practicing faith even when filled with doubt, courage even when overcome with fear. I dare to pray this prayer as a way of intending to believe that God is for me, not against me; that his hand is upon me as support and encouragement, not as punishment or manipulation. It is a short but specific way I admit to God and myself that my assessment may feel certain in the moment but have often proven unreliable. I commit my intention to let go of those false strategies that honestly, never worked that great anyway. I let go of my desire to control ife, rather than surrender to God’s presence in my life.

It begins like this: Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Today, I invite you to sit quietly and welcome God into your sanctuary. Invite yourself to participate in God’s work - equipping you for spiritual survival and giving you the capacity to carry on.

Let’s pray...The Welcoming Prayer by Mary Mrozowski

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Spiritual sanctuary is not about retreats and the perfect candle. Although, both are lovely. But if we only think about sanctuary and our idealized view of its necessary accoutrements, we are missing out. To welcome God into our life requires that we acknowledge that what God does once he gets there is really none of our business.

I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment because I know it is for my healing.

In the welcoming prayer, we are - welcoming. We trust that the world is a healing place, a place of hope, a creation of God intended to bless us and others. Sometimes this is an act of fierce will, often it feels like crazy talk to believe this about our germy world. But this is the work of faith.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations and conditions.

We trust ourselves. We trust that we can handle all that is real and true about ourselves. We get curious and stop all the self-judgment and self-doubt.

I let go of my desire for security, approval and control.

Some days my desires are so long I have to take a break for lunch before I complete the list of things I am holding onto for security, the people I am looking to for approval and ALL the ways I am trying to exert control. It is what it is.

I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.

We let go of the desire, and then ask God to show us how to apply it to our daily decisions. This prayer is a commitment!

I open to the love and presence of God and the healing action and grace within.

Oh blessed relief. And, dare I say it? Perhaps the toughest part of this prayer. To trust God. To admit that his work in me is none of my business. I open up, and after that - it’s up to God to decide what happens next. Or doesn’t feel like it is happening at all. We open. We rise and take on the day.

Amen

Finding Sanctuary

“Sanctuary is finding a place to regain our bearings, reclaim our soul, heal our wounds and return to the world as a wounded healer. It’s not merely about finding shelter from the story - it’s about spiritual survival and the capacity to carry on.”

Parker Palmer

Today, I invite you to think about sanctuary.

What does it mean to you?

How might you find a place of sanctuary in your ordinary, every day, life?

I like to fantasize about finding sanctuary on a mountain top or beside a quiet lake - silent except for the cries of God’s creatures. It’s a nice fantasy.

But it is not “sanctuary.” That’s called vacation!

Lean into this idea that sanctuary needs to be an integral part of daily life.

What needs to change for you to have it?