Vacation this year for the Culmer family was a “stay-cation,” time spent at home rather than traveling some distant unknown. We do stay-cations most especially if we are saving for some future trip, and this year was no exception. Part of the rule of stay-cation is that one travels and sees the sites nearby, which we did. One of the highlights was seeing parts of Yosemite that we as a family had never seen before. It was magnificent.
This is not say that our time was unproductive…far from it! Diana and I spent several days working the yard, getting rid of weeds, removing shrubs, planting flowers, laying down cloth, putting down wood-chips, etc. It was tiring but rewarding work, and Home Depot is probably very grateful for the many purchases we made.
On a personal note, stepping out of the daily round as rector of St. Clare’s was at time challenging: I love this job and when I’m not doing it there are physical effects. For instance, Sunday morning would come around and my body would naturally wake up in time to get ready for the 8 am service. I would then have to remind myself “Oh, yeah, you’re on vacation!” Do you ever find yourself in a similar space? Sometimes we get so caught up in our work that we forget the holiness of leisure. Debra Farrington author of Unceasing Prayer: A Beginner’s Guide proves my point:
“Over the course of the summer I made time for leisure and for fun…And in the process I discovered that God doesn’t need me to be deadly serious all the time, that God enjoys my laughter and the creativity that flows from me when I don’t take myself too seriously…All of our leisure activities—our hobbies, the things we do to relax and to express our creativity—can be sacred times, times to remember and enjoy the presence of God and to be grateful for our gifts. Planting flowers or repotting houseplants leads us to reflect on protecting and nourishing our own fragile roots, and those of others. Reading a book is an opportunity to discover wisdom from someone else’s perspective, to expand our horizons, and perhaps to learn to know God from a new vantage point. Gratitude for the gifts we have, or for the giftedness of others, arises naturally as we sign or hum, or applaud a fine performance. The peacefulness or the energy that these activities give us, the sheer enjoyment that we find in participating in them, makes leisure times one of the easiest times to pray our prayers of thankfulness to God, the source of all that exists.”
Those “concerns and twitches” we have when we are away from our usual grind is telling us something: we’re missing out on the deeper blessing found in God’s holy leisure and we’ve been away from it far too long. If this is a summer of rest for you, I pray you, seek God’s face in your rest! If your working, make time, any time you can for respite…even God did the same at the end of creation and we call it “Sabbath!”
Here’s to holy leisure!
Yours for the reign of God,
Ron
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