From the Minister's Desk

One of Silent Unity’s affirmations during the month of July is “I experience indescribable peace through the spirit of God.”

I’m sure that I’m not the only one looking forward to a respite this summer. As I write this in mid-June I am getting ready to drive to Winter Garden, Florida to spend some time with my daughter and grandchildren. For the past two weeks my list of “To Do’s” seemed to get bigger and bigger. I know that everyone out there is busy, but it seemed to me that “my case is different, I really am overwhelmed and over committed.” Then when we had a series of “emergencies” at the church, I became frantic. How was I ever going to leave? Whoa, I realized that I had succumbed to the lies of the world. I was getting caught up in a frantic treadmill that said life had to be hard.

I have a card on my desk at the church that I keep in front of me at all times because it is a lesson I am learning. It reads, “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence…this frenzy…destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” (Thomas Merton).

I realized that I was allowing an image of what a minister is “supposed to be” destroy the most important aspect of ministry, to allow God to be God through me and as me. That doesn’t happen unless I respect myself enough to allow for sacred space, intimate communion with spirit. At that point, I surrendered it all to spirit.

And wonder of wonders, people started showing up to handle everything that needed to be handled. I even decided that before driving all those hours to Florida, I would give myself a day of rest, right here and now to pray, get centered and allow Spirit to do it’s work.

We can write such ridiculous stories of the way life has to be. It’s not the truth. A wise person once said, “Life will always be full of ups and downs, but we don’t have to go up and down with it.” We write the stories of our lives. Perhaps there are situations and incidents over which we may not have control, but we control how we view them and control our response to them. When life seems to be speeding up, it is important to pause and review the story we are writing.

The story I was writing was “before I go on vacation I have to pay for it with stress and frenzy.” This is a lie. The truth is every day in every way I experience indescribable peace through the spirit of God, if I write God into the story.

So friends, ask me about my vacation when I get back, rested and renewed. That’s the story spirit wants to write, and I decided “Spirit Knows Best.”

In the One Love We All Share,

Rev. Lisa