The Way to Now

Here’s what I learned in the last two months: to the average young person the church does not seem relevant AND all people are searching for community.  And, I’m pretty sure many of the people I know would like to find a church that fits their needs, that voices relevant issues, that allows God’s Spirit to burst through everyday occurrences.  As a minister, it is not often that I’m not in church on a Sunday morning, but this winter I had a full eight Sundays off in a row for a time of spiritual renewal and writing.  Not only did I live a “normal” person’s weekend life, but I also observed a lot of what my friends experience without a church community.  At first, it felt odd, but I have to admit, I adjusted just fine to having two weekend days to sleep in and do whatever I wanted.  I realized that I could probably live my whole life without stepping foot in a church and not really realize anything was different in my life than anyone else’s.  But, I also was able to contrast this time outside the church with what I have known since childhood, which is the church as a personal community of friends and mentors.  One of the highlights of a church community is that you can develop relationships with people who are generations older (or younger) than you and you learn infinitely more than you would if you choose only to be around peers.  From one set of our older friends, my husband and I have learned to value the concept of contrast.  I observed, for two months, the contrast in my life with and without the church.  The conclusions I am drawing, now that I have been back in the pulpit for three weeks, are that my life became pretty insular without this broader community, and that I did not have that outside source that is bigger than me pulling me into new areas of my spirit.

Do I miss the sleeping in?  Yes, but I think I found the solution to that.  You have to be willing to forgo the late Saturday nights, (but who in our 30s isn’t willing?!) and put yourself to bed at a reasonable hour, and morning’s not so bad.  In fact, overall, I have been shutting it down around 10 or 10:30 and getting into bed and finding that morning is a much more enjoyable experience!

The other point I talked about with everyone I spent time with over my time off talked about how the church is broken, can be hypocritical, and has too many issues.  Come on, now – doesn’t that sound like each one of us?!  The church is really a reflection of us.  It is the place where people go to work out their issues – sometimes people are unhealthy in the way they do it and sometimes the church suffers for that.  But, ultimately, get a group of people together to share in their faith and you will undoubtedly get a huge dose of inspiration and Spirit.  You know, I thought I would be writing more about how church might be irrelevant.  But, I see now that the church is vital and it is time to get more young clergy into churches where young people live.  It is also time for the church to claim more boldly that it is a progressive place for people to come with their questions, with their doubts, and find community with others like them.

Now, the second part for me is this: how do I make my career manageable and meaningful without giving up my Sabbath time?  This might be a question that accompanies me throughout my career.  Since I have been back at work, I definitely feel a new sense of balance and delight in my work.  I guess this is why people should periodically take time off.  There are some things that have fallen off, like my writing.  I desperately wish I would keep writing with the same depth and intensity as I was this winter.  But, the reality is, I expend that energy at work and in my sermons now.  Here’s hoping I can figure out a balance there.  Back on the Sabbath search, I have been practicing using the whole afternoon and evening on Sundays just to relax and do exactly what pleases me.  That’s what Sabbath is, you know.  It’s a day of rest and delight in the Lord.  It’s a day to recharge and be still and separate yourself from the cares of your busy life.  Try it!  Don’t pay bills or prepare for work or work on the house (unless you love it) or run errands.  Instead, read a book, watch a movie, take a walk, have dinner with those you love (casually and without great effort), and catch up on sleep if you need it.  I am amazed at what even eight hours of Sabbath time does for me.  Don’t feel guilty about it – God actually commanded it.  You will rest on the seventh day.

A note on my continued quest for health and healing of my body … I downloaded a book on PCOS and natural ways to cure it (specifically how you eat).  I had a procedure last month that included an IUI, but it was unsuccessful.  It just goes to show that even when the circumstances are perfect, sometimes it doesn’t work.  However, I finished my treatment with the acupuncturist, Bing Lee, who was working on restoring my hypothalamus.  He feels like after the month of taking the supplement and continuing with my regular acupuncture, that everything is restored in my brain – hallelujah!  I am always skeptically on the fence about whether that is too good to be true or whether my hypothalamus is truly restored and ready to start kicking out hormones.  Time will tell, I guess.  I do feel better and more balanced.  I actually get tired at night now (it produces the sleep hormone, serotonin), so that’s a positive sign for me.  I will continue pursuing natural and western medicine on my journey toward restored fertility and family.

For now, though, I am resting in God.

The other day I had one of those moments where it feels like it’s all coming together – hallelujah!  It is sort of like the moment of realizing graduation is actually going to happen, or the moment of seeing that a great plan came together, or the feeling of taking a big deep breath of rain-soaked air.  As I kind of expected, it took a whole month to get my backed-up system to download and unload and be in a position to rest.  And, it’s funny because rest now is not what it was one month ago.  Rest a month ago meant not talking to anyone, sleeping in, lounging, not planning anything besides a daily workout.  Now, it feels like I have more energy and want to do more things, but not busy things, Sabbath things.  I’m resting in the goodness of God, resting in the joy of friends, resting in the peace of my life.  Can I get an amen?

The thing about perseverance is that it gets you anywhere you really want to go.  There isn’t a thing I can think of that would not eventually happen if someone persevered through what looks like hazardous road signs or stalled progress.  With all this talk, you would think I was going to announce I was pregnant.  Nope.  But this whole journey that I first thought was a journey to become pregnant is really about learning to find balance.  Since August 2009, I have been seeing an acupuncturist who is also a practitioner of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine).  I have been going weekly.  After the Haiti earthquake happened in January, the clinic held a fundraiser with free appointments and donations going to Doctors Without Borders.  I thought this would be a great time to see another woman at the practice who does Acutonics and is a natural health practitioner.  Acutonics is the use of metal tuning forks that vibrate.  When they are put on certain points of your body, you feel the vibration throughout, like a deep centering gong.  During our abbreviated session that day, she asked if I wanted to make an appointment and it just so happened that my usual acupuncturist was out of town the next week.  When I went, she listened to all of my concerns, she suggested great readings, she prescribed a Bach Flower tincture and she said I should go see yet another acupuncturist in town.  I guess each practitioner is different in the same way that each church is different.  The guy she was referring me to has a gift for reading the body’s systems and pinpointing any imbalance.  He had a particular supplement she thought I might need.

In following this whole path of people who were connecting me to other people, I sensed I was getting closer to where I needed to go.  I made the appointment with Bing Lee (I love his name) and proceeded to follow a trim Asian man down a hallway to a treatment room.  He only asked what my primary concern was.  I told him it was fertility issues.  He asked me to lie on the acupuncture table and he would read my system.  I didn’t know if I should close my eyes during this seemingly critical moment in the treatment, but I was too curious.  I kept my eyes open and could see him out of my periphery – his eyes were closed and his hands were sweeping my essence toward him.  It sounds weird, but here’s what he came up with.  He said, “I know what’s wrong.”  After hearing about a dozen people say they don’t know what’s wrong, this was crazy.  He said my hypothalamus is burned out.  There is only one way the hypothalamus can be fried (essentially), and it is from over-thinking!  Over-thinking – who ever heard of such a thing!  I knew immediately what he meant.  I am a chronic over-thinker.  It’s a habit, like smoking or biting one’s fingernails.  It comes without effort and with an obsessive-like fervor.  Feeling sheepish for having burned out my own hypothalamus, I was all ears for hearing how we cure this bad boy.  He said he had a supplement to give me, a hypothalamus supplement – it contains pig hypothalamus, and he wanted to see me back in two weeks.  I would think this is all crazy-talk, but he did not know a thing about me and he nailed me on over-thinking, and said that it was mainly about unresolved issues over career – hello, two months off from work so I can regain my sanity!  I am currently taking my pig hypothalamus and I will see him again in a couple weeks.

Not only did this come about, but I also saw my western doctors who gave me the go-ahead for starting another round of fertility medicines.  Bing Lee assured me the treatments would not interrupt one another, but that if I do not take care of my body’s imbalance, I will pass it on to my child.  Yikes!  I am pretty sure my mom passed it on to me – I love her, but she is an over-thinker like no one’s business.  Here’s how the day continued coming together.  I picked up the book that the natural health practitioner said I should read and I read the chapter basically pinpointing where I missed the mark in all this western ambition we seem to have been bred to showcase.  The book is called Sabbath by Wayne Muller, and is fabulous.  In this passage, he is pointing out that Buddhists have these philosophies about desire and happiness that really get at the crux of the suffering so many of us feel.  Desire is what comes about through our natural impulses.  Our society cleverly eggs us on with advertising and lifting up a culture of consumption.  As soon as we feel desire, we are bound to feel suffering.  This can happen in a number of ways.  One is that once we desire a bigger house, then we will suffer because, down the road, we will want a bigger house still.  If there is an expensive item we desire, and we convince ourselves to buy it, we will feel suffering because of our empty bank account.  It is very hard to allow desire to come without suffering.  The alternative to desire is happiness.  Seeking happiness happens in a very different way.  Happiness comes not in consumption, but in generosity.  Simplifying, not complicating.  Being happy usually comes with experiences and people and time.  Give yourself one of those gifts.

As all my paths converge, I hope to continue seeking happiness.  My priorities will include meditation, rest, and time for friends and family.  Sometimes, we must persevere even to achieve the simple things in life.