Beauty Tips for Ministers

Exercise Exorcise

March 12, 2008 on 2:36 pm | In Self Care |

Yesterday was sunshiny beautiful and just a dag-blammed TEASE for Spring-yearning Eastern Massachusetts. I’ve just finished a meeting with my student minister and have my work-out clothes all ready in the car to go get sweaty but it’s SNOWING NOW. Cold, serious, wet, driving snow and I DO. NOT. WANT. TO. GO. TO. THE. GYM!!!!

But I will, because I skipped it all last week and I felt like I was dragging even after my cold was well cured.

Where is God at the gym/treadmill/hiking trail/swimming pool/ski slope/racquetball court/dance floor for you?

For me, the Spirit comes as a joyful healer as I reach a steady cardio heart rate and the thoughts go, emotions go and I am just Being, just a creature working her muscles and tendons for the movement of it, for the chance to ignore inner strength for an hour or so and concentrate solely on external strength.

I have just learned that a deeply gifted minister of young middle age is leaving his church due to heart problems following a serious heart attack late this summer. I know that I am not alone in feeling crushed by this news –he is truly a gift to our movement, a charismatic and brilliant and funny and deeply spiritual man — not to mention so fit and health-conscious that one would have never imagined this prognosis for him. This is just further proof that, in case we had forgotten it, we are fragile and anything can happen.

Now the snowflakes are enormous and fluffy, each one practically the size of a moth ball. Holy cow.

Take care of yourselves, Incarnate Ones. Make sure to shake that groove thang soon, ’cause there’s more of value to your ministry than that space between your ears.