September 16, 2024



Friends,

Poet and Liturgist Cole Arthur Riley begins a prayer about resting when it feels risky:

Rested God,

We want more than a life lived exhausted. That you have woven healing rhythms of rest into our minds and bodies reminds us we are worthy of habitual restoration . . . . .

In the last few weeks, recovering from surgery, I have been on enforced rhythm of needing more than I expected- more rest, more assistance, more care, more time, more help in doing the most basic things. 

This was not in my plan.

However unreasonable it seems, I simply thought that I would be “well” in a matter of weeks. For those of us who have ministered to and cared for family or friends during a time of illness or need, you would think I would have remembered this, but I did not. You and I would never dream of rushing someone we love into activity or “usefulness,” yet I felt my own imposed pressure to hurry up, hurry back, hurry.

Riley’s prayer continues,

Keep us from apologizing for our own healing, that we would know that when we pause or rest, we are restoring not only our own bodies but the very condition of the world held captive by greed and utility. . . . .

In the church season, September is almost always a whirlwind; the program year, mission, meetings, education, committees and more meetings, not to mention school, new schedules, sports, activities, and a hundred other ways that we are entering into a new cycle. 

I wonder if we as a people of faith could look at our calendars and discern if God is calling us into the spaces not as something to fill, but something to be filled by. If the warm days and cool nights of September are reminding us that God is always calling us into regeneration and change. I wonder if in our time in church and work could be as noticeably playful as the foggy mornings and golden sunlit afternoons of these late summer days. 

As we move again into the tasks of this year, may our recuperation and renewal be as important as anything else we do.

Riley’s prayer concludes:

Protect us from fear as we rest with you, breathe with you. Remind us that the beauty and paradox of our humanness is that we were made to close our eyes, that we might see. May it be so.

Grace and Peace to you,

Rev. Leslie