Illustration of Pooh sitting among the Trees @A_AMilne “What I like doing best is Nothing,” said Christopher Robin. “How do you do Nothing?” asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long tim. “IT means just going along, listening o all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” “Poh!” said Pooh. -A.A. Milne.
Week 1 “What would it feel like to be consistently rested?” p. 56 Genesis 1:27-2:3 Psalm 46:10a Come & Rest with Me (I am using these Biblical passages to name that God commands us to Keep the Sabbath and the first thing God does when God creates us, is to just hang out with God, to rest and be with God. However, we demand work, creation and productivity out of each other, instead of breathing, care, community and doing nothing)
Call to Worship will be practiced with Breath Prayers: the hope will be that they can be a little deeper and longer as the sermon series goes on. Here is information about breath prayers that you can educate your congregation on through word or reading material https://www.asacredjourney.net/how-to-practice-breath-prayer/
Call to Worship (Breath Prayer) (Breathe in) Be Still (Breathe Out) and Know that I am God
Prayer of the Day God invites us to rest to spend time to sit to be still the first invitation before we move, spoke, thought God said Let us do nothing together. God Let us remember that, as we practice Sabbath.
Call to Confession: Let us rest our burdens with God.
Confession: God, we confess that we are not good at resting. We do not even know how to do nothing. And, we confess, if it is difficult to do nothing by ourselves, it is even harder to do it together. Yet your invitation–to be still, in community, is beautiful and daring. Help us to hear it, hold it, and savor it; not with guilt but with sacredness we pray. Amen
Assurance of Pardon: Hear the Good News: God is always awaiting to restore us, so we can proclaim the Good News: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.
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@iconawrites “Are you ‘burned out” or are you having a reasonable reaction to a never-ending barrage of bad news which you can do very little about. (Tricia Hersey recommends Social Media breaks, and taking care of your full self and remaining rooted int community over trying to save the world)
“We have been trained to believe that everything we accomplish is is because of our own pushing alone. This is false because there is a spiritual dimension that exists in all things and in everything we do. To understand that we are spiritual beings navigating life in a material world opens us to the possibility os rest as a spiritual practice. Our entire living is a spiritual practices. Much of our resistance to rest, sleep and slowing down is an ego problem….We can do nothing alone.” p. 18
“All of culture is in collaboration for us not to rest. This includes: K-12 public education, higher education, faith and religious denominations, medical industry and not-for-profits, activist organizations, corporations.” p. 24
“We are divine. Our bodies are divine and a site of liberation. Wherever our bodies are, we can find, snatch, and center rest.” p. 26
“When we honor our bodies via rest, we are connecting to the deepest parts of ourselves. We are freedom-making.” p. 26
“You are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn rest. Rest is not a luxury, a privilege, or a bonus we must wait for once we are burned out.” p. 28
“I want you to firmly plant yourself inside your imagination Take refuge in the beauty and power of community care and our daydreaming…Rest is a portal. Silence is a pillow. Sabbath our lifeline. Pausing our compass. Get your healing. Push back. Slow down. take a nap.” p. 32
Only you could encase bone and blood with flesh, and then say You are made in our image. Treat each other with inherent dignity.
What does that even mean Jesus? Have you seen my pathetic body. It grows in peculiar and hilarious ways, until it starts to fall apart. And I have to feed and water it every couple of hours.
Don’t even get me started on the sleep.
It is almost as if you made us so complicated for a reason. It is almost as if we each body was handmade with unique flaws, to show the creative artisanship, so that we can stop and wonder.
God, made in your image you say.
Ok, I say, let me see dignity
less as perfection
and more as embodiment.
Breathe with me God,
Embody with me Christ, I pray.
Amen.
Feel free to use/adapt/Share with Credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
“Let the children Come, more than silence, Come, Laugh, Dance, cry Spirituality in body, voice, people and silence” xi “we must repeat with regularity that to love ourselves is to survive” p. 5 “You don’t give dignity, you affirm it.” p. 11 Idolatry, “You are no longer the image of God, you are currency…how much a person can do” p. 11 “How can anyone who is made to bear likeness to the maker of the of the cosmos be anything less than glory? This is inherent dignity.” p. 7 ”What does evil have to gain in tricking us to into believing we are anything less than glorious?” p. 9 Our dignity may involve our doing, but it is foremost in our being—our tears and emotions, our bodies lying in the grass, our scabs healing.”p. 12 “Or did she see her flesh for what it was holy? Weak, powerful human, and holy? “That the creator of the cosmos would choose to rely on an embodied creation. To be grown, fed, delivered—God put faith in a body. In Mary’s muscles and hormones, bowels and breasts. And when Christ’s body is broken and blood she, we should hold in mystery that first a woman’s body was born, her blood shed, in order to deliver the hope of the world in to the world.” p. 57 “When we neglect the physical, it is inevitably suffocates the image of God who ate, slept, cried, bled, grew and healed.” And whether or not the origin of that negated is hatred, it will indeed end in hatred.” p. 60
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture
We are the sheep of God’s hand, come Let us Praise God!
Prayer of Confession: (unison) God I confess that sometimes I do not want to be a sheep. Sometimes it is hard for me to take direction, and I do not know if it is unwillingness, or ignorance or simply weariness that stands in my way. And yet you walk beside me, to comfort and protect me. Help me to accept you as my shepherd I pray. Amen (Silent Confession) Amen
Assurance of Pardon: Hear the good news, God promises to restore us, know the truth in your hearts: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.
Prayer of Dedication: God you know we entered here thirsty. Send the Holy Spirit out with us, to shepherd us, comfort us, and to quench us. Send us into the world refreshed by your Word and Holy Spirit we pray. Amen.
Hymns: Create in me a Clean Heart, There is a a Balm in Gilead, Spirit of the Living God, Any version of Psalm 23
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