Roots of Renewal | 2
Roots of Renewal
Sabbatical Musings by Aimee Postel
“Come away with me and rest a while”
Even before my sabbatical, I felt God calling me to silence. I had recently read “Practicing the Way” by John Mark Comer and had picked up “The Good and Beautiful God” by James Bryan Smith and both books call for a return to ancient practices that help us live our lives in God’s presence and walk in his ways.
One of those practices is silence.
Henri Nouwen puts it this way:
“In general, we are very busy people. We have many meetings to attend, many visits to make, many services to lead. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days and weeks filled with engagements, and our years filled with plans and projects. There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do, and we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say, or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing. We simply go along with the many “musts” and “oughts” that have been handed on to us,”
The sabbatical was Jesus inviting me into a time of rest with him.
Here is something I discovered: my existing habit of time with Jesus helped me make room for other practices. Having a regular habit of spending time with Jesus was and is like a life-line in my life. It anchors me, sustains me and regularly re-orients me toward Jesus.
“He said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Mark 6:31 (NIV)
On 8.30.24 I journaled:
Jesus, We learn about your truths – how you are near, how you offer peace, love, joy, hope, comfort, etc. and we practice relying on you for those things, but the reality is that it is much easier to experience your peace when we do not have anything heavy on our hearts and it is much easter to trust your goodness when things around us seem good. It is when we find ourselves in situations that are hard, that we need to seriously practice the truth we know. What do I do when I am overwhelmed by worry and fear? Do I fix my eyes on you, Jesus, actively believing that you care for me and do I release my worries to you? This is more an act of faith than anything else, a discipline that I have hopefully practiced already, that becomes the rope that keeps me from sinking. The hard times test the truths I “know”. The hard times are the practice arena where the theoretical can become reality.
And so I practice.
There were times during my sabbatical that the practice was filled with peace and serenity. There were other times where the practice felt like me desperately clinging to a rope and barely holding on.
On 9.10.24 I noted in my journal:
God loves it when I show up to be with him, in whatever manner or condition I am in. Silence is good for me. I like silence. Even in silence, it takes work to focus on Jesus and clear away the mental clutter and I am not always that great at it.
Silence is a practice that I engaged in before, but it became LIFE to me during my sabbatical. I found that I NEED silence. I long for solitude. But that doesn’t make it easy. And like most practices, it is hard in the beginning.
“In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract me, just me – naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken – nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. But that is not all. As soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree. Anger and greed begin to show their ugly faces. I give long hostile speeches to my enemies and dream lustful dreams in which I am wealthy, influential, and very attractive – or poor, ugly and in need of immediate consolation. Thus I try again to run from the dark abyss of my nothingness and restore my false sense in all its vainglory.
“That is the struggle. It is the struggle to die to the false self. But the struggle is far, far beyond our own strength. Anyone who wants to fight his demons with his own weapons is a fool. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Our primary task in solitude, therefore, is not to pay undue attention to the many faces which assail us, but to keep the eyes of our mind and heart on him who is our divine savior. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature. As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away and begin to experience the freedom of the children of God. And we can look back with a smile and realize that we aren’t even angry or greedy any more.”
- The Way of the Heart by Henri Nouwen
And that is what I found in silence. I encountered the grace of God in a beautiful way. In that grace I showed Jesus my wounds and he healed them. In that grace I faced my sinfulness and encountered the tenderness of Jesus. In that grace, Jesus reminded me of the truth of who I am in him.
I’ve found that our practices become the trellis or structure on which our relationship with God grows and is supported. They are not the goal, rather they are what help us make space in our lives in order to help us enter into the presence of God. God is always available to us; Our practices help us to be aware of him and engage with him.
During my sabbatical time, I added a lot of silence to my practices. I went on a silent retreat, but I also walked a lot, spent extra time outside, and extended my prayer times. I also just left some open space in my schedule. There wasn’t a particular prayer time or time of silence that was overwhelmingly powerful. However, when it was all added together, it was a very meaningful time of refreshing and connecting with Jesus.
Before we end our time together, I want to address one thing that always seems to get in our way when we try to practice times of prayer or silence. That is, what happens when it seems like God is silent? Mark Thibodeaux puts it nicely in his book, Reimagining the Ignatian Examen
“God is often silent, and when he is, it may feel as if he were distant. Our faith tells us that God is never distant from us – that he dwells in every molecule of our being. But often we don’t feel God’s presence. That’s OK! Don’t worry about that. It is perfectly natural and normal, and every saint from Teresa of Avila to Theresa of Lisieux to Teresa of Calcutta has assured us of this. For it to be a prayer, then, we don’t have to feel God’s presence all the time; we simply have to be oriented toward God. We don’t actually have to hear God speak, so long as we are listening in case he chooses to say something. It is the listening for God’s voice that orients us toward him, whether or not he speaks on any given day.”
It is our job to show up and be open to God. We may or may not “hear something” or “feel something” but it is in the showing up that there is availability to growth, grace, nearness, etc.
These song lyrics were on repeat in my head throughout the silent retreat:
“Oh how he loves us, oh how he loves…
And we are his portion and he is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes. If Grace is an ocean, we are all sinking.”
These lyrics are a reminder to me that when we are called to silence it is a call to “sit in God’s gaze of love”. So the practice of silence isn’t so much about doing something or hearing something but more about showing up to the loving presence of God and being with God.
The invitation Jesus extended to his disciples, he extended to me and he continues to extend to us today…
“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Mark 6:31 (NIV)
One of those practices is silence.
Henri Nouwen puts it this way:
“In general, we are very busy people. We have many meetings to attend, many visits to make, many services to lead. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days and weeks filled with engagements, and our years filled with plans and projects. There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do, and we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say, or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing. We simply go along with the many “musts” and “oughts” that have been handed on to us,”
The sabbatical was Jesus inviting me into a time of rest with him.
Here is something I discovered: my existing habit of time with Jesus helped me make room for other practices. Having a regular habit of spending time with Jesus was and is like a life-line in my life. It anchors me, sustains me and regularly re-orients me toward Jesus.
“He said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Mark 6:31 (NIV)
On 8.30.24 I journaled:
Jesus, We learn about your truths – how you are near, how you offer peace, love, joy, hope, comfort, etc. and we practice relying on you for those things, but the reality is that it is much easier to experience your peace when we do not have anything heavy on our hearts and it is much easter to trust your goodness when things around us seem good. It is when we find ourselves in situations that are hard, that we need to seriously practice the truth we know. What do I do when I am overwhelmed by worry and fear? Do I fix my eyes on you, Jesus, actively believing that you care for me and do I release my worries to you? This is more an act of faith than anything else, a discipline that I have hopefully practiced already, that becomes the rope that keeps me from sinking. The hard times test the truths I “know”. The hard times are the practice arena where the theoretical can become reality.
And so I practice.
There were times during my sabbatical that the practice was filled with peace and serenity. There were other times where the practice felt like me desperately clinging to a rope and barely holding on.
On 9.10.24 I noted in my journal:
God loves it when I show up to be with him, in whatever manner or condition I am in. Silence is good for me. I like silence. Even in silence, it takes work to focus on Jesus and clear away the mental clutter and I am not always that great at it.
Silence is a practice that I engaged in before, but it became LIFE to me during my sabbatical. I found that I NEED silence. I long for solitude. But that doesn’t make it easy. And like most practices, it is hard in the beginning.
“In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract me, just me – naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken – nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. But that is not all. As soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree. Anger and greed begin to show their ugly faces. I give long hostile speeches to my enemies and dream lustful dreams in which I am wealthy, influential, and very attractive – or poor, ugly and in need of immediate consolation. Thus I try again to run from the dark abyss of my nothingness and restore my false sense in all its vainglory.
“That is the struggle. It is the struggle to die to the false self. But the struggle is far, far beyond our own strength. Anyone who wants to fight his demons with his own weapons is a fool. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Our primary task in solitude, therefore, is not to pay undue attention to the many faces which assail us, but to keep the eyes of our mind and heart on him who is our divine savior. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature. As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away and begin to experience the freedom of the children of God. And we can look back with a smile and realize that we aren’t even angry or greedy any more.”
- The Way of the Heart by Henri Nouwen
And that is what I found in silence. I encountered the grace of God in a beautiful way. In that grace I showed Jesus my wounds and he healed them. In that grace I faced my sinfulness and encountered the tenderness of Jesus. In that grace, Jesus reminded me of the truth of who I am in him.
I’ve found that our practices become the trellis or structure on which our relationship with God grows and is supported. They are not the goal, rather they are what help us make space in our lives in order to help us enter into the presence of God. God is always available to us; Our practices help us to be aware of him and engage with him.
During my sabbatical time, I added a lot of silence to my practices. I went on a silent retreat, but I also walked a lot, spent extra time outside, and extended my prayer times. I also just left some open space in my schedule. There wasn’t a particular prayer time or time of silence that was overwhelmingly powerful. However, when it was all added together, it was a very meaningful time of refreshing and connecting with Jesus.
Before we end our time together, I want to address one thing that always seems to get in our way when we try to practice times of prayer or silence. That is, what happens when it seems like God is silent? Mark Thibodeaux puts it nicely in his book, Reimagining the Ignatian Examen
“God is often silent, and when he is, it may feel as if he were distant. Our faith tells us that God is never distant from us – that he dwells in every molecule of our being. But often we don’t feel God’s presence. That’s OK! Don’t worry about that. It is perfectly natural and normal, and every saint from Teresa of Avila to Theresa of Lisieux to Teresa of Calcutta has assured us of this. For it to be a prayer, then, we don’t have to feel God’s presence all the time; we simply have to be oriented toward God. We don’t actually have to hear God speak, so long as we are listening in case he chooses to say something. It is the listening for God’s voice that orients us toward him, whether or not he speaks on any given day.”
It is our job to show up and be open to God. We may or may not “hear something” or “feel something” but it is in the showing up that there is availability to growth, grace, nearness, etc.
These song lyrics were on repeat in my head throughout the silent retreat:
“Oh how he loves us, oh how he loves…
And we are his portion and he is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes. If Grace is an ocean, we are all sinking.”
These lyrics are a reminder to me that when we are called to silence it is a call to “sit in God’s gaze of love”. So the practice of silence isn’t so much about doing something or hearing something but more about showing up to the loving presence of God and being with God.
The invitation Jesus extended to his disciples, he extended to me and he continues to extend to us today…
“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Mark 6:31 (NIV)
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