Hullo, darlings!
The summer is here in Eastern Massachusetts and BOY, are we savoring it! Please remember that we were recently buried under eight feet of snow to understand how deeply we adore our flower-filled, salty-aired days and balmy nights.
PB is on vacation intermittently through July and August and doing a huge amount of resting, reading, journaling, thinking, swimming and playing. I cannot recommend highly enough to all of you that you get some distance from church life if at all possible, and most importantly, GET AWAY FROM CHURCH TALK.
One of the most important things I do in the summer is devote time to friends and family who aren’t even religious, let alone church-going. They help remind me that what I do — what we do as the Church — is just one thing under the sun that God is doing, and that God is working everywhere and in many ways beyond what our eyes can see and our ears can hear when we’re focused on the institution of the Church.
Yesterday I went to a literature class that a dear friend teaches at a local college and I soaked in Romantic poetry for over an hour. OH, it was good for me to sit with college age students and see Coleridge again as if for the first time. Then the professor and another friend and I went out to lunch and talked about evil and liberal religion’s failure to deal with it, and we talked about a billion things that have relevance to the work of ministry but it wasn’t TALK ABOUT MINISTRY.
I mean, it kind of was, because I said a few things about church — but it wasn’t shop talk. It was theological and philosophical talk — the kind of conversation that feeds the soul.
What am I reading?
Wendell Berry
Hildegarde of Bingen’s diary
“The Practice of the Presence of God” Brother Lawrence
The short stories of Roald Dahl
A history of early Christianity and how the pagan Romans saw them
GQ magazine (how do you think I learn anything at all about men’s fashion?)
Movies I have seen:
“The Babadook” (very preachable)
“The Wolfpack” (eminently sermonic)
“Magic Mike XXL” (entertaining garbage)
“Inside Out” (sermonic!)
I have gone to PARTIES!
On Saturday nights, even!
And today I will go to the beach with a dear friend, my beagle, and her 3-month old yellow lab puppy.
Please check in, darlings. How goes it? The world is heartbreaking. How fare you?
First of all you’ve given me a lovely reflection for my preaching on Sunday. Thanks!
Second, amen and amen! My mentor said that when he was starting out in ministry, an older pastor advised new pastors to develop a hobby – something that could serve the church beyond their daily ministry. My mentor despised that advice and instead offered to me that I develop a hobby or relationships outside of the church that would continually keep me connected to the world beyond the stained-glass windows of any church I was serving. There’s a reason I call him my mentor. He was a wise and good man. God rest his soul.
I am in my last week of work before two glorious weeks of vacation. Being a small town priest it is important I leave the community when I take Sabbath as otherwise I get drawn into conversations and conflicts in the Church. For two weeks I will be visiting friends who live away, and who I have promised to visit but never found the time to. There will be journaling, prayer, walking, eating, laughing, sleeping and reconnecting with the creator.
What a wonderful reminder to keep Sabbath.
I have taken up water colors after much prodding at a professional development conference and I love it. I’m on sabbatical in my favorite place, Kauai, and nourishing my soul at the beach and with my morning sea side walk. I am writing a book because I’m an academic but I’m also exploring the beauty of the island: today the botanical gardens, later the Hindu temple. [That sounds heavenly — LOVE hearing this!! Enjoy! xoxo – PB]
I will never forget a sermon preached by our own dear Gidget to a group of colleagues at a professional gathering, when she admonished us to “get a damn hobby!” Hers was collage, and we all had a lovely time later messing around with pictures and glue.
So… Gidget and I totally agree with AWP’s wise mentor. Get a damn hobby!
May i suggest watching “The Overnighters”? Very moving and fascinating and troubling, all at once, and good to watch when you have to time to consider it. It’s on Netflix.