RE*CONNECTION. Soul-Renewing Meditations for the Moments You Need Them Most. by Rev. Kerry Greenhill

Transcription

1 RE*CONNECTION ON-THE-GO Soul-Renewing Meditations for the Moments You Need Them Most by Rev. Kerry Greenhill

2 When Your Heart is Heavy By Rev. Kerry Greenhill 2017

3 When you feel weighed down, heavy laden. When the burden is too much. When the secrets and sorrows of others are piled up on your shoulders or crammed in every open space in your soul. When the demands are too many and the resources too few. When you are bowing low and don t know how much longer you can carry on: Pause. Rest. Come to me, all of you. Lay down the baggage you have been carrying the weight of other people s burdens. Set down your sense of responsibility for making it all better for fixing for healing for bringing peace or justice or reconciliation. It is good that you want these things. Beautiful and pleasing. Your heart is aimed in the right direction. But set down your pack for a moment it is full of things you cannot carry forever. Things that do not sustain you that will make you resent this journey of life and ministry make you resent the people you love and serve and that won t help anyone in the long run. So set them down. Unpack what is not necessary what does not give life and let me take care of those. Let me show you the Way of the narrow path. It is not always easy. But it is full of Life. Come to me let me show you the way. Trade your too-heavy pack for one that is better suited to your strengths and weaknesses your aches and wounds your endurance and speed of travel. You have come this far don t give up now. Let us walk the trail together. My burden is light and my yoke is easy. You can rest along the way with me. Amen.

4 When People Complain You re Too Political By Rev. Kerry Greenhill 2017

5 You re right, of course. I know how unsettling it is when your pastor sounds like a politician that is, someone who wants to change the world through public policy. I know how upsetting it is when you have to acknowledge that not everyone thinks the same way you do. I know how disturbing it is when your deeply-held values and your long-cherished affiliations and identities are revealed to be in tension with each other. It s a shame he didn t listen when others told him he was making people mad, upsetting the power-holders and money-managers. If only he had paid attention when his peace-keeping hangers-on warned him that Caesar and Herod and Caiaphas and the Romans generally were very fine people, with a legitimate point of view, and that there was plenty of blame to go around on both sides. I just wish somebody had told Moses before he lobbied Pharaoh to release the Hebrew people from slavery. I wish someone had told Deborah before she advised a general about God s opinions on battle. I wish you had been there to point it out to Samuel and Nathan when they were guiding kings of Israel on personal conduct and national affairs. I wish some thoughtful soul had mentioned it to Isaiah when he was going on and on about justice. If someone could have persuaded Christ to stop talking about God s Kingdom as something completely different from the Roman Empire, to cease and desist his teaching about welcoming those people into the covenant-controlled community, to leave off preaching that the Spirit of I AM had anointed him to proclaim good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, liberation to those held captive, justice for the oppressed, and the year of God s great Jubilee Well, the story would probably have turned out very differently, now, wouldn t it? For that matter, I know it can t be helped, but it s really too bad you weren t around to remind Jesus to be more diplomatic when he railed against the scribes and Pharisees, the lawyers and religious leaders, the rule-makers and judgment-passers.

6 When You Are Discouraged by Failure By Rev. Kerry Greenhill 2017

7 You have poured yourself out in long days and nights of planning, praying, creating, inspiring, encouraging, explaining, defending, cajoling, setting up, making room, preparing, and leading And nobody came. Or they came and they fought like every other time. Or the same people came and it felt as insular and unchanging as ever. You have turned the soil, sown seeds, watered and weeded, fertilized and fed, watched and waited and still no shoots spring up. Or they grow spindly and weak, the first two leaves weighing them down until they shrivel and die. Or they grow into seedlings with leaves aplenty but never a flower, nary a fruit. You want to curse the soil. You want to blame the seeds. You question every decision you made, every time you made a change, every time you accepted the status quo. This is a hard time, the season that feels like failure. You went into ministry to make a difference for God. Not to succeed in the world s eyes but to bear fruit of the Spirit in the souls of individuals and the life of a community. You long to show how good the news is and what gifts the faith and church can offer to those who do not trust you. You long to speak some piercing word of truth that will open the hearts of those grown rigid in their ways to allow them to see the possibilities of growth and transformation but they ve never done it that way before. You long to bring the power of prayer to bear on the problems people face: cancer, racism, depression, poverty, rejection, grief, consumerism, shame. But you cannot see the evidence from here. This is the barren season.

8 Sometimes you cannot tell if it is disease or plague or drought, some unexpected catastrophe that requires healing and new resources, or if it is simply winter or fall, a different part of the cycle, a misjudged moment for new life a time of letting go, or a period of rest and preparation. Sometimes you will have to learn new techniques of planting or tending your field, discern which species of vine you are pruning, and what stage of growth, whether to expect one harvest or two. Sometimes you may sit back and honestly say, I did all I could and it did not work out. And that may be all the clarity, all the closure, you can find in that place. Hear now these words of blessing: You will make mistakes. You are enough. You will fall short of other people s expectations. You are beloved. You will fall short of your own. You are worthy of love. You will not always see the results of the work you do. You are God s own child. You will sometimes make people angry. You are a member of the Body of Christ. You have already been forgiven. You are an agent of the Kin dom, a citizen of Heaven. You will not always succeed in what you set out to do. When you are following Jesus, striving to share abundant life with all, God sees and blesses your work even when you cannot perceive it. May you rest in the knowledge that you are enough, loved, forgiven, whole, and free. May you have the energy and hope to begin again somehow tomorrow. Amen.

9 When You Are in the Midst of Conflict or the Target of Attacks By Rev. Kerry Greenhill 2017

10 You didn t sign up for this. You didn t sign up for people projecting their deepest wounds and most dysfunctional family relationships onto you. You didn t sign up for prying open Death s grip on your congregation your agency, your institution only to have your knuckles rapped by the Defenders of the Faith. You didn t sign up to be as vulnerably human as possible only to be kicked when you re down to be played by both sides to be scapegoated for the decline of the Church and all human decency. Yet here you are. Stunned, weary, hurting, angry. Worn down, beaten up, blamed, and demeaned. Take a breath. Let it out. Cry, scream, rage, stomp, smash something if you must. Hold your tender body with your own strong arms until the shaking stops. Place your capable hands over your trembling heart and count until you feel calm. Look at yourself in the mirror: beloved child of God beautiful to behold blessed to be a blessing full of wisdom, grace, resilience able to be fierce or gentle by turns called to this task in this time and place. Here you are. You are not the cause of the storm, nor its undoing. You are not the devil s agent in the death of all that others hold holy, nor are you the savior of anything or anyone.

11 Here you are. Human, mortal, finite, flawed. Holy, divine, anointed, whole. Probe your own feelings, your vision, your hopes, your curiosity your fears, your wounds, your hot buttons. Find out where you end and others begin. Where others end and you begin. May God give you strength and breath and wisdom and peace to endure to lead and even to thrive. Amen. Start there. Take a deep breath. Let it out. You can do this. It isn t easy. But if it is hard, it is also holy, full of hope and glory. And the church is better off for the gifts that you bring into the hurting hearts of your community.

12 When You Need to Find Your Center By Rev. Kerry Greenhill 2017

13 Take a deep breath and hold it. Let it out. Notice how you are holding your body. Where are you tense? Where are you slumped, or curled in on yourself? Where are you stretched too thin? Wherever you are holding on to control, to anxiety, to anger, to assumptions or expectations let it go. Breathe in. Breathe out. You can let it go. Breathe in. God is with you in the breath. Breathe out. God is still with you in the releasing. Wherever you are hunched or slouching from exhaustion, from defensiveness, from apathy breathe in space and renewal, breathe out weariness and caution. God is with you. Breathing with you. In and out. Let your body open lightly drawn upward by a thread uplifting upholding gently unfolding releasing still breathing taking up the room it needs. You are here. God is here with you. Keep breathing.