Here's this week's video chapel message, with transcript below for those of you without speakers on your computer.
Opening Prayer:
God of the still, small voice, quiet us within.
Help us to understand your guidance.
Let the words of the scripture inform us:
“Be still and know that I am God.”
In weakness, help us know our strength.
In depression, help us know our joy.
In apathy, help us know our love.
We pray all his with grateful hearts and in your name, Amen.
Worshiping the Hustle and Grind
I’m going to start our weekly reflection with a story from the Christian Scriptures:
“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But all the preparations that had to be made distracted Martha. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’ ‘Martha, Martha’, the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’” Luke 10:38-42
Jesus’ ministry was one of healing. He knew the importance of rest and reflection in that healing process, as evidenced by this story about his friends Martha and Mary. Mary is a fine example of someone engaging in a healing experience. Martha is an example of one caught up in a sense of things needing to be exactly right in a physical sense to be successful, working herself into an unhealthy frenzy.
Worshiping the hustle and grind has long been the American way. We wear our exhaustion like some kind of war metal won in battle. The cost is high when we engage in this grind culture, working ourselves to pieces. We take work home with us, we neglect the things that make life precious. When we put work above all else, we lose our heath and time with those we love.
I am all for productivity and focus on the job, do not get me wrong. I am all for reaching for new heights on the job and providing better-quality services. But I feel concerned the lessons we learned from the pandemic are being lost in a frenzy to get things going again and getting back to “normal” - whatever that is.
It been proven that a balanced approach, periods of rest and work make us more effective on the job.
Do me a favor. Just stop. I see so many of us rushing. Please slow down, pause. Remember. Honor. Take some time to reflect. Hurrying only prolongs the hurt of trauma, and yes, it is a trauma we have all been though.
I might have hurried, too, but I was asked to speak recently, specifically to the topic of some of my experiences in the past year with COVID 19. I have had six weeks’ time to reflect before I spoke.
Speaking about it was quite the stretch if I do say so, and super helpful to me. Helpful because I was able to acknowledge that this have been an incredibly difficult time that has impacted me in ways that are positive and in some ways that are not positive.
If we do not take some time to contemplate and heal, it will come out sideways at some point. No one will help us do this. We will always be pressured repeatedly to do more and more.
If we have some sense of not-enoughness within us, someone will always come along and try to exploit that. Set boundaries my friends, loving but firm boundaries. Resist any sense of being not enough. You are enough, I promise.
Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, writes;
“We exist in a culture that supports sleep-deprivation; we have been brainwashed by capitalism to work at a machine-level pace, and to equate our worth with how much we can produce.”
But there is hope. We are not helpless to the whims of grind culture. Just like anytime there is wrongdoing in the world, we can stand up for what it right. What is right for our health, for our family, for our local and world community.
Tricia Hersey puts it far better than me, she also writes, “May a space to daydream and slow down open to you. May you realize the power of taking rest since no one will give it to you. This is why rest is a resistance and a slow meticulous love practice. We must continue deprogramming from grind culture. We must continue not turning away from our own terror. We must deconstruct around the ways we uphold grind culture. We must wake up. We will rest.”
Get some rest, friends. I thank you for listening. May the God of your understanding bless you today and always.
Just because we are not meeting in person does not mean we cannot make prayer requests. You can do so in the chapel on the first floor of the hospital, or by email to jshawker@connallymmc.org Your requests are kept confidential and prayed over for a total of sixty days.
The Prayer for Protection (Rev. James Dillet Freemen)
The light of God surrounds us.
The love of God enfolds us.
The power of God protects us.
The presence of God watches over us.
Wherever we are, God is.
Amen.
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