SOMETIMES A FRIEND BRINGS YOU UP SHORT ...

The Revd Deacon Polly M. Bowen

“And what are you doing for fun these days?” asked my friend on a busy Sunday morning

I thought long and hard, and then I began to describe my activities of the previous week to her.  Of course I worked in the office in the mornings, and then I went home to catch up on whatever needed to be done – shopping, cleaning, cooking, laundry – all the usual things.  I visited some sick people, met with a spiritual directee and with another person in need of some grief counseling.  Hmmmm, oh, yes – the evenings?  Well, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I mentored EFM classes.  Wednesday I dismissed the class a little early so I could sit in on some of the vestry meeting.  Friday night I came back to the church to do some pre-baptismal instruction for the parents and Godparents of two beautiful babies.  That leaves Saturday . . . let’s see, oh, yes!  I was at St. Paul’s Springville all day for a workshop preparing for the Cursillo weekend, on which I’m to be a spiritual director. 

My friend just looked at me, fixing me with her somewhat withering stare.  I knew what she was thinking – that I ought to follow my own advice.  A third year EFM student, she knows perfectly well that this is the time of year that I am walking my first year students through the two creation stories in the Book of Genesis.

(Two creation stories, you ask?  Yes, indeed.  There are two very different stories there.  Check it out!  If you’re confused, stop in the office and we’ll look at them together.)

I love teaching from the Pentateuch, but as my students can attest, in class I have a tendency to write or speak as I’m thinking, so I can sound very authoritative when in reality I’m still working things out in my own mind.  This is a common, if sometimes unfortunate, extravert trait.  (After all, how do we know what we think if we don’t hear it spoken or see it written?)  I suppose that marks me as a very earth-bound, material (which is not the same as materialistic) person.  It should follow, then, that of the two creation stories I should be drawn to the more primitive, more anthropomorphic God of the Jahwist – the God who gets down in the mud to do his creating.

But I’m not.  Except for the Jahwist concept of the Creator breathing life into his creatures, I am more attracted to the grandeur of the Priestly writers’ account.  Like a Hellenist scholar I like the idea of a God who speaks things into existence, and like a Hebrew scholar I like the progression of all creation to the climactic final recorded act of creation – Sabbath-time, or rest.

We tend to think of rest as refraining from activity rather than as an activity in itself.  I don’t believe this is God’s intent.  Rest is a vital, necessary force in our lives, a re-creating of ourselves to be the dynamic God-images we are meant to be.  Creative Sabbath-time (not to be confused with innovative Sunday liturgies) is an indispensable part of our on-going work as co-creators in a world crying out for renewal.

“Send forth your spirit and we shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth,” said the psalmist.  “We are a pilgrim people, and our journey is not only toward God, but with God and in God,” said my onetime theology professor, now a good friend.

There is a connectedness between God and humankind, between Creation and Renewal, between journey and rest.  Rest is not an afterthought.  It’s not something we do because we are finite and imperfect and our bodies tend to wear out.  Intentional, creative rest is active, a part of God’s plan from the beginning, and we need to enter into it joyfully and without guilt.

This is a short message because the Deacon decided to take a nap.  Zzzzzzz.  Perhaps when she wakes up she’ll go to lunch or a movie with her very perceptive friend . . .)