Celebrate Being!
Indianapolis First Friends
Pastor Bob Henry
June 13, 2021
Good morning Friends and welcome to Light Reflections.
This morning I want to begin with our scripture passage from Hebrews 10:24-25 (The Message). I find it a good text to emphasize my thoughts for this morning.
22-25 So let’s do it—full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out. Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.
As I mentioned in last week’s sermon, we are moving into the summer months by looking at two important subjects – Sabbath Rest and Celebration.
Last week, I started us on this journey by talking about how taking time for rest can help reorient our lives after this long pandemic. This reorienting is a reconnecting with our self, the Divine, and, probably the most challenging after being isolated in a pandemic, a reorienting to each other.
Over the years, I have found that often when I talk about Sabbath or even rest in general, people tense up or begin to push back. Sabbath for some has a negative connotation – everything from childhood rules and regulations to long periods of quiet, stillness, and boredom. But that is not all that Sabbath Rest is all about.
Over the years, I have come to see Sabbath as an opportunity for Celebration. It is an opportunity to reorient yourself to the core of who you are. To reconnect you to your Inner Light. To reengage your neighbors, friends, and loved ones.
Most of our week is spent “doing” – it is about work, production, providing for yourself and possibly your family. Even if you are retired, I often notice that you are still “doing.” Since we spend so much time “doing” often our lives get entangled and what we “do” becomes our identity.
Let’s be honest, the pandemic did not help this – it only exacerbated this situation. For many, the pandemic stripped away all other aspects of connection and left us dealing with life and work alone and isolated. All that was left was “doing” to survive.
Many of us adapted, some of us struggled, but all of us began to miss one aspect of life that seemed to be forced to end – that being celebration.
If you look up celebration in the dictionary, you are quick to find that celebration is a concept that evokes a great deal of action – it includes descriptors such as:
· To preform
· To honor
· To mark
· To hold up
· To observe
Celebration also speaks similarly to Sabbath in that it also includes refraining – but in this case from one’s ordinary business – or as one definition puts it “a deviation from routine.” One definition even highlights the sacredness and solemnity of celebration.
This is why I find Sabbath Rest and Celebration going hand in hand. They have commonalities, as well as similar foundations.
Yet, I have a feeling you are thinking…now wait a minute, Bob…I don’t see rest and celebration at all in the same category. And for many that is probably true, but it doesn’t have to be.
If rest is to reorient us, celebration can be the response to that reorientation.
Just think, when we went into the pandemic and everything began to be shut down, we had to reorient ourselves greatly. We had to see life, work, family, worship in new ways. We reoriented to our homes, to Zoom Rooms, to ordering online, to cooking again, to our backyards, to virtual spaces for everything from worship to doctor’s visits.
And while we reoriented to this “new normal” we also saw people saying things like, “I seem to never stop working” or “All I do now is watch the news” or “I am climbing the walls not being able to see people.” Both extroverts and introverts struggled in different ways – because reorienting takes time, it takes something from you, it creates unexpected and unwanted change.
And what usually brings us out of that is some type of celebration.
In our country, we celebrate the weekend. We celebrate by going out for dinner with family, having drinks with friends, planning a date, and listening to live music. We go see movies, concerts, visit museums, go on road trips, take vacations.
Yet in one fell swoop, the pandemic forced us to reorient ourselves and refrain from ALL forms of this type of celebration – big or small.
When this happened, we began another process – the process of grieving.
One of the hardest things for me as a pastor during this time was not being able to celebrate fully the lives of those who passed away in our meeting. Just a few days before we shut down, I spent the day grieving the passing of our friend, Dan Raines. Then soon after unexpectedly came our Friends, Richard Mills, Kristin Noble’s mother, Flora, and Jody and Janis’ mother, Kay. None of these, did we properly have a chance to celebrate during this time.
I performed weddings with no guests or limited attendance. We did what we could outside. But we didn’t fully celebrate with one another or in our own hearts and lives.
Sue and I took a moment to look back over 2020 to ponder all that the reorienting to the pandemic caused us to miss and then grieve.
Our son, Alex’s College Graduation
Our son, Sam’s High School Graduation
Sue and my 25th Wedding Anniversary
Sue’s 25th year of teaching.
My 25th year of professional ministry
(After 10 years) my recording among Friends.
And I could go on, but I know many of you missed milestones, anniversaries, and so much more as well.
This is why as we reorient back from the pandemic; we must find time to rest from all our doing AND celebrate once again!
As I spoke of in my “As Way Opens” article this week and as Beth pointed out in waiting worship from my sermon last week, this is going to take a reorienting or shift from our focus on doing to being.
We have been consumed with “doing” for over a year, now. As Kelsey Courter illustrated in the table I shared in my article, there are two mental modes we work within and that are often at odds with each other.
These are the Driven-Doing Mode and the Being Mode.
The Driven-Doing Mode is characterized by things that have become essential and heightened during the pandemic. Things like:
· A sense of “have to” or “should”
· Constant monitoring
· Focusing on the past or the future
· Progressing toward goals – internally and externally.
· Evaluating things being “good” or bad” and what we should do with each.
I know for me those clearly describe how I reoriented myself during the pandemic.
I and many others, were constantly asking questions like:
· What do I have to do or what should I do to be safe?
· How do I monitor that safety – who can I believe is telling me the truth?
· Why can’t we go back to the way it was before the pandemic and what does the future hold?
· How can I stay focused on my goals? What are my goals now? How is this effecting my goals and outcomes?
· What is good in this situation? What is bad? And how might I find a way through?
I know at times I became hyper-focused on questions of this nature.
But when looking at the Being Mode, I am realizing that to reorient myself, I first need to slow down, stop the questioning and doing, and move into a new space of being. Corter describes the Being Mode this way.
· It is not attached to a goal.
· It accepts and allows what is.
· There is no pressure to monitor.
· The focus is on the PRESENT MOMENT.
· Feelings come into awareness and are temporary.
· Experience has freedom to be fresh and responsive.
Now, I know some of you will say, “Well, this is rather ideal.” And you would be right, because this is not a shift from Driven-Doing Mode to Being Mode – but rather a balancing out of these modes.
We have spent so much time in Driven-Doing that I would say that we have lost a lot of our being. This is yet again why we need to celebrate. We need to celebrate our being!
· We need to celebrate what is!
· We need to celebrate the fact that much of the pressure to constantly monitor our safety is being lifted.
· We need to celebrate our awareness and the awareness of others and come together around our new understandings of one another.
· We need to celebrate our freedom and all the fresh new opportunities that are ahead of us and respond with hope.
· We need to celebrate once again the PRESENT MOMENT.
Folks, we have grown more than we know, and I sense as we take the time to find Sabbath Rest and reorient ourselves back to our relationships with self, the Divine, and one another, we are going to continue to find new ways to celebrate! To revel in the Present Moment. To Celebrate what is!
I hope you will join me in the summer months to seek a balance. Keep doing but also lean into being. Be aware but not obsessed. Embrace the freedom and new opportunities and find ways to celebrate! I sense if we do this, we will find ourselves growing spiritually, mentally, relationally and living into the Present Moment with gusto!
Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, I ask that you ponder the following queries:
1. What celebrations have I missed during this pandemic? And how has it affected me?
2. How might I seek a greater balance in my “doing and being” this week?
3. In what ways do I plan to celebrate my being in this present moment?