Life at 3 miles an Hour

In recent weeks I've been blessed with a  challenging personal question, followed a few weeks later by an opportunity for some rest and reflection, where the question kept struggling to the surface.  The question in this instance was what I considered to be my greatest weakness as a practitioner of the pastoral arts.  The way it usually works is that a burning personal question appears in one form or another, followed by some brief attention and then a dive deep back into the next thing, resulting in not only forgetting the response, but eventually also the original question.  Ironic because my answer to this particular question was my difficulty in slowing down, backing off, and resting. For twenty four years I've lived and breathed "church".  Although there are some in the world convinced that I only work 30 minutes a week during my preaching and teaching opportunities, multiplied where multiple weekend services are involved and an occasional wedding or funer...

I’m trying something different this week. The last few weeks have suddenly added up to a year and I’m breathing a bit heavy. So I’m trying something different this week. It’s called pacing. It’s certainly not a universal breakthrough as far as concepts go, but it’s a bit of a shift for me. I’m traditionally more of the opinion that it’s better to burn out than rust out. Having been born and raised most of my life in the great northeastern United States, I’m well acquainted with rust. I am, however, a bit wiser and more understanding that neither of the previously mentioned lifestyles is conducive to leading a community o’ faith. So I will downshift and begin the process of pacing. For the moment, it’s just me and the crows who are line sitting over the sidewalk outside of my window. I began this morning by accompanying a group of preschoolers to a pumpkin farm. If that won’t clear your mind of anything seemingly life altering then I don’t know what will. Seeing life and prio...

I’m breaking the pattern. I’m going for two posts this week. I’m back in my house of caffeine, relaxing to the sounds and smells of another morning in Tully’s, and chasing this cursor across the screen. It relaxes me. I’ve earned it. At least I tell myself that. I worked a long hard day yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked longer. I’ve had harder. For some reason last night, as I drug myself up the stairs and into the house, I declared to anyone who cared….that would be my wife….that I was “going in late tomorrow”. I had earned it. I still don’t know why really. It just felt right. So I began to wonder, as I drove here this morning, what constitutes earning? I mean really, in the whole scope of labor efforts, what did I do yesterday that was monumentally above the other wanderers that I can sit here watching while they run for their busses? Some of them look longingly into the window as they pass by. I have my donut and my grande drip with a shot in the dark, my ...

Most Americans do not sleep well. That's a headline I just read recently. Of course there are many theories that go with that statement. Many hours have been invested and even more dollars have been spent trying to investigate this latest find. There are no shortage of theories on why this might be the case. I have my own theory. We just got a new mattress set and I've not slept so poorly in quite some time. The old set that we had was ridiculous. The box springs were broken, on my side of course. The mattress sagged. It was kind of an embarrassment. Oddly though, I slept very well. I slept so well in fact that I could get away with only four to six hours a sleep at the most. Most days I was wide awake long before my alarm went off at 5. That is five o'clock in the morning for those of you who didn't realize that five o'clock happened more than once a day. I had my quiet time long before anyone else in my house was conscious. My routine was set and a...