Boundaries…. – katyandtheword

Holy Words: No and Yes

God help me,

to discern when to say no

So that I can also say yes.

Help me do the junk,

the stuff that has to get done anyway.

But also…..

Help me to know when to draw

the boundaries that need to be drawn.

To be healthy

To hold firm

to say

No.

Simply

as a complete sentence.

So that when I want to

Say Yes, to something that I am called to

To something that is fulfilling and right

that I can say Yes.

No to overdoing

Yes to stretching

No to bullies

Yes to God.

No to Bigotry

Yes to Welcome

No to busywork

Yes to upholding, enouraging and supporting

No to perfection

Yes to good enough

No to doing everything

Yes to help

God, I give thanks, for all the Holy Nos, and all the Holy Yeses

In my Life.

Amen.

Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Mundane Prayer to Survive the Day to Day

Pandemic Prayers & Resources

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Enough, A Prayer of Olympic Boundaries

God, I stand in awe today.

Of those Black women.

The ones who stood up

and once again said…

enough.

Proudly.

With the Strength on their Ancestors,

and with the Radiance of their Daughters.

They pushed the limits of everything,

Body, Brain, Spirit, Heart

Including Fame, and when enough

was enough

They said enough.

I thank you

for the eloquence

of their embodied

passion

the quivering, vibrancy of life

that streamed out of Simone Biles* and Naomi Osaka’s Very Being

The Self-Evaluation that Let Them

Tell Themselves,

And the World

To Have Limits

To Set Boundaries

To Say No

To Own Your Own Body

and to Say

I am Enough

I Have Done Enough

I am Beautifully and Fiercely Made

I am God’s Beloved Image Bearer

Enough

And The Stars will Sing Out

And and Angels will Sing Out

And the Universe will Sing Out

For we Are All Important Parts of It

And It is Enough

Thank You For All You Have Done

Simone Biles*

Naomi Osaka

Never Doubt

You are Enough

I thank God for you

Thank you

For Giving Your All

Physically and Mentally

For All Your Yeses

And All of Your Nos

Thank you

May You Feel God’s Blessings Roll Down

And May You Feel That You Too

Are Enough

Amen.

Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

* with apologies with the wrong name before. I have a real issue (perhaps disability) with names which means that even though I double checked the name online my brain typed it wrong.

Please Check out #BlackLiturgies: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/blackliturgies and The Nap Ministry: https://thenapministry.wordpress.com for more resources not by a white person

Open to relationships

My colleague Rachel Young wrote an interesting piece about being missional http://pres-outlook.org/2015/02/can-introverts-missional/

which reminds me of an ongoing conversation that I have with people.

I try, try, try to practice trust, and yet still be safe. Its a particular balance. It means that sometimes your credit and debit cards get stolen right out of the church office, because you tend not to lock. I am still uncertain whether I was being too trusting or not….I now only lock when that particular group is in the church.

However, I think that the only way to build trust is to give it. You treat people with suspicion and the likelihood is they will return the favor. Plus if you don’t take chances its hard to have a relationship. You have to say hi, you have to share about yourself. Eventually you have to share your address if you want people to come over.

Basically, I feel like that trust and grace go hand in hand. In order to trust someone you have to be gracious with them, trusting that they are doing the best that they can and being gracious when people can’t live up to your standards or do things differently

Henri Nouwen calls this forgiving people for not being God i.e. all knowing and perfect.

It doesn’t mean being stomped on either, it means calling people into account, whether its because they are disrespectful to you during a meeting or they leave a mess in the church or they siphon money off the church’s accounts.

So much of my job is being open to be in relationship with people, whoever, however and whatever state they may be in. That takes trust, and graciousness and hope. It means worrying a little less, setting safe boundaries and then building a community of people who can help you if the relationship does not work out.

But I think that is a good way to describe being a minister.

Open to being in relationship with the church, the community and the world…..That is true ministry..and one in which everyone can get in on.

No Strings Attached

What if the Good Samaritan was really conflicted…????

You know what, “helping” people isn’t always as clear cut as it seems. There seems to be no real way to be a “hero” in bad situations so often you are making the best decisions that you can (you know those times when there is no “right” thing to do or say, you just try to make better instead of worse decisions). Some of those choices are fun like “Should we have children?” for (most) people there isn’t a “right” answer, its just that one solution seems to be “better” than the other…

Then there are the situations where you are helping people. In helping people, its important that you are

a. actually helping (in my family we say it isn’t really helping if a person doesn’t want help–think about that in terms of life, family, addiction, etc.)

b. Setting clear and consistent boundaries (ie making sure you take on a good level of responsibility and that the other person is clear on where their responsibilities lie)

c. You can be sane after the help is given, because sanity is a really, really good thing.

This leads me to the good Samaritan story. What if the person who was left half-dead on the street had some situation where it wasn’t clear that helping him was the best thing to do…maybe it gets the helper into trouble, maybe there had been a story of someone helping a half-dead person earlier that week and getting beat up for it. What if the Good Samaritan knew he would be reviled for helping this Jew. (I think this is something like Jean Val Jean helping Javert, or maybe a Gay person-who is known to be gay-helping Rush Limbah or somesuch evangelical who categorically hated homosexuality)…

So much for being a hero, heh?

But it makes me wonder about Jesus’ call to care for our neighbors, when are we really helping them? How much are we called to sacrifice? What situations are “too much” and when are we neglecting our Godly duty to help others by crossing the street and getting on with the business of our own lives, which already loom so heavy…….