Vocation

In our Marsh Associates meeting on Monday, I was asked to write down and share a few things about what praying meant to me, along with my fellow Marsh Associates. As we went around and shared what prayer was for us, the variety of practices struck me greatly. One person prayed in singing, in holding hands in a circle; another prayed through personal conversations with the Divine; another through silence, scripture, and reflection; another in unstructured, spontaneous interactions with God.

I must admit, I don't consciously think about prayer very often. When I sat through worship services as a child, I remember just sitting in silence and waiting during the sections when we were supposed to pray. Sometimes I would think out some sentences, and I thought that these constituted a prayer. But something about the experience didn't quite ring true with me. I felt like I was just throwing words out into the void, and I was supposed to hear a voice in reply that everyone else somehow could hear.

When my turn to share came, I mentioned the role music and singing has played in my life. An incredible connection can be felt in the swell of voices joined in harmony when we sing. Music has provided a way for me to feel closer with some sensation that I would associate with a Divine presence. When I first attended a service at Marsh Chapel, I was immediately taken aback with awe when the choir began singing from the upper balcony behind me. It is moments like these that I think I experience closeness to the Holy Spirit most vividly.

But does this experience constitute prayer? It certainly is a little different from the structured experience during service from my childhood. For me, prayer involves being deeply present in the current moment. Singing is one practice which allows me to reach this state. Occasionally I can also find it when in motion, walking around on my own or in silence. At other times, I reach this state when I have deep conversation with another individual, or when I share fellowship with a community of people. I don't know if any or all of these things are prayers. But I believe that they do connect me with a deeper current, one that connects me to the world around me, and ultimately to the Divine, whatever and wherever the Divine may be.

I'll end this post with a poem by Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets. I find its simplicity and earnestness touching, and it beautifully captures that I believe a prayer entails. Maybe you see prayer differently; perhaps you yourself experience something different entirely from prayer. Whatever your experience may be, I invite you to meditate upon her words as you encounter and experience this grounding presence in your everyday life.

"The Summer Day"

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

One of my professors once told me a saying: "You can do seven days' worth of work in six days, but you can't do it in seven." I was a freshman then, and at the time his words didn't make much sense to me. How can you do more days' work in less time? As efficient as that sounds, it also seems almost impossible. It wasn't until last semester that I began to appreciate a different interpretation of this saying. This statement is mores about rest than it is about efficiency.

When I began working as an intern at Marsh Chapel with the other Marsh Associates, my supervisors encouraged us to take up a sabbath practice. The idea was to devote at least 24 hours of our week to something that we found restful. As simple as it sounds, this is surprisingly difficult to do. In the past, I've rarely been able to intentionally set aside a day to not do work. Classes, jobs, and extracurricular impose a significant demand on time and energy. A sabbath practice doesn't seem to be an easy thing to add on in addition to everything else.

But I suppose that's not the point of a sabbath practice. The intention is not to accomplish more, but to do less. If many of the regular activities and commitments that we do each day impose on our time and energy, then a sabbath practice is supposed to impose less on oneself. After taking five classes and dealing with some very stressful situations last semester, being more deliberate about this would certainly be helpful.

This semester, I'd like to try to take up something that I can call a sabbath practice. I don't have a clear idea of what that will look like yet. Ideally, there would be a day in the week that I would set aside to devote to my physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Given how unpredictable a semester in college can be, that expectation may not be realistic. But at the very least, I can start with a practice that I usually do to help me feel centered and content. A nutritionist once told me that it is much easier to build a habit on an existing one than to start from scratch. Perhaps taking on a new practice will simply involve taking more time for something that I already enjoy outside of my regular activities. Or maybe it will involve exploring something new altogether. Who knows? But as we enter into a new month of a new year, I invite you to reflect upon the practices that make you feel rested and lightened. What practices make you feel restored, and more whole as a person? Whatever those practices may be, I encourage you to dedicate time to them, so that you may be fulfilled from and take heart in the regular rhythms of your life's activity.

I began this semester with a reflection on what loving oneself meant, tying it to the myth of Narcissus and a metaphor a friend once told me. That reflection ended with an intention to redefine this principle for myself, and to apply it to my relationships with those around me. That was in mid-September. It's been almost three months since then, and the semester has reached a point where classes are almost done and finals have almost begun.

When I set out with this intention at the beginning of the semester, I didn't have a clear idea of what the process of loving oneself would look like, but I had a sense of what it would involve. This semester exceeded my expectations in these regards, both in its unpredictability and in what it demanded of me. Looking back, it continues to amaze me that despite intense periods of stress, I somehow managed to make it through in one piece.

This semester has taught me that change within oneself doesn't follow a linear trajectory. During the times when classes, work, and social relationships were a significant source of anxiety, I didn't wake up one day and suddenly feel better. Nor did the stress consistently disappear over time. Some days were much easier to get through than others; sometimes, single moments would cause the day to shift in mood and energy from bright to gloomy, and vice versa. I can't identify a single turning point in the semester because there were several instances when life began to change for the better.

Many of these moments were not major breakthroughs, sudden revelations, or great flashes of insight. They weren't as clear or as striking as the chorus of angels that appeared to the shepherds in their fields, or the bright star that appeared to the Magi in the sky. The transitions from this past semester often came in small things, simple things: an email or a text, a picture, a fragment of a song, a brief conversation, a warm smile, or a kind gesture. These small things allowed me to acknowledge both the challenges and the joys from this semester as valid, and to embrace the fluctuations in daily rhythms that seemed to accompany them. These were the moments that, in the end, allowed me to find love for myself when I wasn't able to create it on my own.

As I wait until finals and the end of the semester, I am reminded of Advent as a season waiting for a significant event. While I'm not sure if final exams and winter break are comparable to the arrival of Christ in the world, I do know that the periods before them signal a major shift that is looming on the horizon. I also know that being able to love oneself and practice self-care is especially important for dealing with stress in general, let alone the last week of classes and the exams, papers, and projects that accompany them. As we wait for the end of the semester and encounter significant periods in our lives, I invite us to appreciate the smaller moments that we may often overlook, so that we may sustain ourselves through them.

In a small group that I attend every few weeks, we've been learning about John Wesley's General Rules of Methodism. The first of these rules is to do no harm. Wesley defines this rule by listing several practices that should be avoided. Some of them seem intuitive, such as  "Doing to others as we would not they should do unto us." Some are much more practical, dealing with economic issues that were highly relevant at the time that Wesley was writing. Others I have more trouble agreeing with. For instance, "The singing those songs, or reading those books, which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God." I have some difficulty seeing how singing songs or reading books that aren't directly related to the Divine is a practice that does harm.

This leads me to ask a few questions, the first of which being: what constitutes harm? And importantly, harm to whom or what? As we discussed John Wesley's writings, we came up with a few other practices to do no harm that we felt were relevant today. One of these was taking care of the environment. Another was to practice self-care, especially relating to matters of mental and physical health. The third was being respectful toward others, in our words and in our actions.

While all of these practices would seem intuitive to many, they can be surprisingly difficult to follow. It takes awareness commitment, both financial and personal,  to consistently do environmentally sustainable practices. I continue to struggle with effective self-care, as I still have to learn to recognize when I'm feeling overwhelmed by stress and anxiety, or when I need to take some space and time for myself. Perhaps one of the most challenging ones is to be respectful toward people we dislike, or people with whom we don't get along.

Learning how to perform these practices on a regular basis takes time, energy, and a lot of mindfulness. Someone once told me something that brought me  comfort, though: "You can do no harm by simply being." As we rapidly approach the end of the semester and periods of stress, I encourage us to be mindful of practices which tend to the creation of the Divine, and those that cause injury to it.