B Proper 11 16 Ord 2018
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
July 22, 2018
When
I was a pastor on the campus of the University of Illinois, our two sons, Jacob
and Abraham, were with their mom in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, during the school
year. The first time the boys came to be
with us, probably over Thanksgiving break, our neighbor said to Tracy, “Mike
just seems lighter, happier, more at ease.”
Yes. True. There is no question but that when family is
near me, and is going to be with me, I relax back into my life. I can be totally alone at work, knowing my
kids or other family members are at home, and just . . . be at ease.
The best
vacations I have had were when we moved to just outside of Rockford,
Illinois. The Illinois Conference had a
church camp just on the other side of Lake Michigan in Sawyer, Michigan. I would figure out what I wanted to do for a
preaching series in the fall, load myself up with the necessary books, and we
would travel the three to four hours around Chicago, through Gary, Indiana,
north through the Indiana dunes and into Sawyer. The first week would be a time when I would
set my routine, read and take notes, before anyone else got up and then onto
the beach. I would begin to unwind in
the second week, the solitude allowing my soul, stretched and beaten up a
little bit, to get brave enough to surface once again.
In Billings, that
solitude was found the last couple years by playing on a softball team. Weird, right?
But it corresponds with my love for team process, laughter, and physical
exertion. When I am part of a team, my
jazz starts to emerge. I know my right
rhythms but I also know how to creatively play with those rhythms. That then needs to be something I pay
attention to in my marriage. Do Tracy
and I decide things together? Is there a
lightness in our relationship that provides grace for our hard work? Is there a regular rhythm to our sexuality
that is dependable in physical exertion and makes me feel connected to
her? If not, our souls tend to not show
up for one another. We don’t have the
necessary solitude together.
And where I at
one time thought myself to be a total extrovert, I am recognizing that it is
not about being an introvert or an extrovert but about finding the necessary
balance that is healthy for me, that allows my soul to come forward at the
appropriate time to be vulnerable, take risks, extend myself out into the
world. That does not happen by
accident. Solitude is an intentional
practice of hiddenness, simplicity, and protection that says to our depths, “I
want you to be courageous. I want you to
be loving. So I will find places and
moments of shelter for you.”
My meditation
practice, poorly done, teaches my soul in solitude that it is safe to come out
and play. Spiritual teachers in this age
talk about it again and again. There is
a difference between loneliness, or even being alone, and solitude. Solitude is about a defined intentionality
and presence. Being alone is not
necessarily by choice and our definition.
We have all had that experience of being alone in a crowd. Solitude is about intentionally making
necessary space for our souls to feel safe and then emerge. Solitude allows our souls to show up. I think solitude even allows our souls to
show up when we know we are alone, having to row against the tide of popular
opinion or criticism.
In our Scripture passage, the disciples have been out and
about, doing God’s work, Jesus calls them away to rest, away from the
crowds. In Judeo-Christian tradition,
the wilderness or desert was that bare or stark place where shade and shadow
were prevalent. It is a place where the
soul can fully present itself without fear.
If we do not find that desert or wilderness on a regular basis, our soul
recedes too deeply within us and is not available for ourselves or for
others. In the same way, Mohammed would
retreat to the mountain. It was there he
found his shade and shadow, his fierce landscape.
Director of Duke
University’s Islamic Center, Omid Safi, talks about finding the cave. As he has aged, his experience is similar to
mine. He used to find his bliss with a
brunch of a dozen friends or more, music playing in the background, and weighty
conversations about heart and soul. Now
he finds it in smaller gatherings with guests of his own heart. Solitude, Safi believes, must be found at
times when we are intentionally alone and intentionally out in the world—cycles
and rhythms we are listening for. We find
serenity and tranquility in the presence of God alone or in community.[1] This solitude becomes more fully rich when we
are intentional about showing up in each place.
What are the people,
the places, the experiences, that put us at ease in the world? How do we put ourselves with those people, in
those places, and rhythmically through those experiences so that we regularly
put ourselves in the presence of God?
Author and activist,
Adrienne Maree Brown, encourages people into practices of solitude that also
bend toward Sabbath rhythms—rhythms of rest, play, and celebration. Understand, Brown is an author who just
released a book titled, Emergent
Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing
Worlds. She is offering this advice
to activists who want to help bend the arc of history to transformative
justice. In the current age, she
believes practices of solitude are absolutely necessary, so she encourages
people to:
– rest whenever you can, deeply and well. act as if you can
store up sleep and you need as much stored up as you can get.
– reflect on what the longest-term commitments of your life are,
and see if you need to make any adaptations in order to actually center those
commitments in your daily life. don’t put it off, don’t wait on answering your
calling.
– have a summer that feels like a pleasure
and a celebration as an act of resistance against an administration that seems
to want to break us with misery. tap into childhood fun self, get a kids
swimming pool even if you’re an adult, count lightning bugs, watch sunsets,
make out in summer rainstorms, go someplace you have never been, even if it’s
in your same town, eat ice cream, wear booty shorts, cultivate your joy.[2]
I want to make it clear.
This was not your pastor encouraging you to wear booty shorts. It was included in a long quote. But, if that’s what helps you to get your
solitude groove on, well then, I guess, wear booty shorts.
It is to
remember, after Jesus calls the disciples in for intentional rest and solitude,
they then go out and feed the 5,000 and heal the mass of people who are being
laid at their feet. The gospels let you
know the kind of hunger and poverty that was ever-present at the time of
Jesus. This poverty was so pervasive
that disease, deformity, and death were rampant. Just by healing people, Jesus is saying that
this was not the life God intended for the people. I think that is what continues to plunge me
into my faith. That no matter how
difficult these days may be, the time of Christ was a time of immense suffering,
persecution, and death. The gospel
accounts may have been written as a way of saying, “This is not what God had in
mind. God is active and moving and wants
you to not only to be fed but also to be healed, have the health care you need,
when the wider world seems to encourage your demise.”
To do that work,
to extend ourselves for that work in vulnerability and risk, we need to find
that balance of solitude which guards our hearts, gives them rest and
shade. In fact, it is the very nature of
our souls that they love the shadows, a warm glow of candlelight, the path that
is not so well lit, more stark and barren than blazing with neon light.[3] But what puts us at ease so we might then be
available to the wider world? When we
find these people, places, and experiences, we are called to make that solitude
regular, rhythmic, and persistent. It is
the curse of our age in which we say, “Yeah, I need to do more of that,” rather
than ask ourselves, “How do I make that a part of what I do every year, every
week, every day?” Come away and
rest. Regularly. Amen.
[1]
Omid Safi, “Solitude is about more than just being alone,” OnBeing columnist, August 2, 2017, https://onbeing.org/blog/omid-safi-solitude-is-about-more-than-just-being-alone/.
[2]
Adrienne Maree Brown, “Star Wars and summer,” July 4, 2018, www.adriennemareebrown.net. I am hoping we might have a study of her
book, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.
[3][3] John O’ Donohue, Anam Cara:
A Book of Celtic Wisdom (New York:
Cliff Street Books, 1977), pp. 80-81.
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