Perhaps, you didn’t sleep well, or you have a looming deadline, or you’re juggling a heavy load of responsibilities, or you’re troubled by the news, you’re at wits end with your teenager, or you’re in a conflict with someone you love.
Whatever it may be, you are worth wellness, space, grace, peace, insight, and connection.
And a moment of play, something at once simple and profound, serves as a reminder. Play reorients and grounds us in what is most true: We are loved and living in a world with lovely gifts, even as it contains real challenges.
Play changes our brains. It calms us and helps us feel more connected. It also shifts us away from our anxious reactivity, allowing us to use the higher levels of our brain functioning to solve problems.
So find a way to play a bit today, even if it’s just for a moment.
Today, I take my cue from a hilarious, adorable toddler. She has a really hard time continuing to sulk in that tantrum once she starts to delight in squeaky, red shoes. Enjoy this video:
I stumbled upon an article that was fierce in its truth telling. Its words brought home a crucial point we need to hear: Wellness is not the answer to our overwork. That is, it isn’t the answer alone.
The only cure for overwork is to stop working.
We live in a culture fueled by a growing insatiability for greater profits and production. As such, we are working longer hours than ever before with pressures for constant availability, and there are fewer days off. But if we want individuals and communities to be truly healthy — including our sense of teamwork at work — we actually have to work less, and we actually have to make that commitment a priority.
Zoë Krupka brings this home in the article I mention: No, it’s not you: Why ‘Wellness’ Isn’t the Answer to Overwork. Krupka is concerned that we run this rat race of overwork continuously, thinking that a little meditation, yoga, or exercise will be able to keep its effects at bay. Physical and spiritual practices of wellness are truly great for us, but over time, the cumulative effects of overwork do harm our bodies, mental health, and relationships.
We have limits, and We actually have to stop working.
And let’s get honest: There can be a cost to honoring this commitment. In the article, Krupka mentions stories of clients she counsels in therapy. Her clients are hard workers who gave their best efforts, but their work was never perceived to be enough in their workplace culture. In one company, all people were told if they do not perform at 150% capacity of their position descriptions, they are not pulling their weight.
It takes courage to assert human needs for limits and balance. It can even get you disciplined or fired. Without question, that feels scary, and even more so when we have financial needs, family members who depend on us, or a desire to progress in our careers. But do we really want to work in a cultures that thrive on this kind of fear? When we’re working 60, 70, and 80 hour weeks consistently, even when we’re meeting the goals, those fears can still hang over our heads. No amount of work seems to keep them at bay.
And sadly, the great irony is this: More and more, studies are showing that productivity is significantly higher with fewer hours. Productivity drops after 50 hours, and it falls off a cliff beyond 55. We are working harder and losing more of our lives for less productivity.
We all want to work hard and do our best. Above all, we want to work in ways that add meaning, creativity, worth, and purpose. But when we feel like we’re losing our life to work — losing time with family, depriving ourselves of friendships, always rushing, and continually feeling the pressures of the impostor’s syndrome — is it really worth it?
We have to stop, and We have to change our relationship to work itself.
Dr. Cynthia Rigby, one of my professors in seminary, talks about this, and I love her language for it. She says that often, we think we need a bit of recreation to refuel us with more energy to jump back into the rat race. Instead, she said, we need Sabbath and play to help us change our relationship to the rat race itself — not mere recreation but re-creation.
As an addendum, I also love this quote from Barbara Brown Taylor:
“At least one day in every seven, pull off the road and park the car in the garage. Close the door to the tool shed and turn off the computer. Stay home, not because you are sick, but because you are well. Talk someone you love into being well with you. Take a nap, a walk, an hour for lunch. Test the premise that you are worth more than you can produce–that even if you spent one whole day of being good for nothing, you would still be precious in God’s sight. And when you get anxious because you are convinced that this is not so–remember that your own conviction is not required. This is a commandment. Your worth has already been established, even when you are not working. The purpose of the commandment is to woo you to the same truth.”
A close up of partially ripened blackberries on a blackberry bush, Photo: Renee Roederer
Dr. Ellen Langer, scholar and researcher on mindfulness, uses a particular phrase to describe the ways we become disconnected from the present moment. She says that so frequently, we live in a perpetual state of constant partial attention.
Constant partial attention. . . Isn’t that a perfect way to describe that kind of experience? So often, we move through our days simply going through the motions, rarely paying attention to what is right in front of us. Instead, our minds gravitate toward our to-do lists and the situations that make us most anxious. We get stuck mulling over the past or worrying about our imagined future. In the process, we miss the present moment.
And sadly, this means we lose some awareness of our surroundings, our inner life, our neighbors, and the deep stirrings within us.
Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries. [1]
Sometimes we experience the daily delights of what’s in front of us; other times, we’re more disconnected than we’d like to be.
The good news is that we can keep reorienting ourselves again and again.
We have never once — not even one time! — charted a path that has been taken previously. Nope, never. Not even one time!
In the history of our lives, In the history of humanity, In the history of the earth as we know it, and In the history of our solar system, We have never repeated the same rotational pathway. Not even once.
We have never resided in the exact same physical space we inhabited two minutes ago, two years ago, two millennia ago, or two zillion millennia ago.
Why? Our universe is expanding.
The earth is not traveling the exact same path, year by year, around a static sun. We are charting new pathways on June 23, 2021, which are entirely different from the pathways of movement and physical space we forged collectively on June 23, 2020.
BECAUSE The sun is not standing still. It has never done so. It is shooting forward (as if we could know in the cosmos which way is forward?) through the Galaxy, in an ever-expanding universe.
So tell me again. . .
. . .why do we think our lives cannot change and adapt?
. . .why do we think we have to stay in the same rut?
. . .why do we think “But we’ve always done it that way…” is an accurate or appropriate argument?
Perhaps, grounded to this very earth, with our eyes to the skies, and with our feet firmly planted, we might just accept that our personal universe Can EXPAND Too.
Image Description: A white microwave with the door open, Public Domain image.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve enjoyed leftovers after eating out at restaurants with friends, preparing meals for guests at my house, or cooking delicious feasts together.
These are the best kinds of leftovers. After a year plus of a pandemic, I hope I never take shared meals for granted.
I never thought warming up dishes in microwaves would make me smile so big.
This week, I had the occasion to provide the Voice in the Wilderness segment on the Pulpit Fiction Podcast.
It takes place toward the beginning, right after the intro. If you’d like to check that out or hear the whole podcast (I always love this one!) feel free to have a listen here.
Pastor Ralls had gone to the nursing home to visit a resident who was a member of his congregation. While they were sitting together and conversing in the atrium, he heard some strange, intriguing words.
“I love you little. I love you big. I love you like a little pig.”
These words soon became a playful refrain. Pastor Ralls and his friend heard these words innumerable times throughout their conversation. They were spoken by a woman who was sitting nearby them. She was a resident too, and though she was sitting close enough to touch them, she paid no attention to their conversation. He writes, “During my visit to the nursing home that afternoon, I must have heard this sweet, odd rhyme more than a hundred times.” She continued to look out the window, and with a broad smile on her face, she let her refrain fill the room.
“I love you little. I love you big. I love you like a little pig.” “I love you little. I love you big. I love you like a little pig.” “I love you little. I love you big. I love you like a little pig.”
She seemed continually delighted by these words.
After inquiring of a staff member, Pastor Ralls learned that this woman had been a first grade teacher for decades. Each morning, when the children entered the classroom for their day at school, she would lean down and speak these very words into each beloved ear.
What a beautiful, playful ritual.
I love this story because it invites me to imagine what those words must have been like for the children in her classroom. . .
. . . I wonder if they would giggle before she could finish, each one anticipating the end of the phrase.
. . . I wonder if they would smile before she started, each one anticipating that they were loved and valuable.
. . . I wonder if they would ever add their voices to the chorus, each one rehearsing the truth of their worth, silly as the phrase may be.
I also love this story because it invites me to imagine how those words must have formed her as a teacher. . .
. . . I wonder if she spoke these words on days when she was feeling discouraged, and they lifted her mood just a bit.
. . . I wonder if she took pleasure in speaking these words to particular children who struggled to trust love.
. . . I wonder if the rehearsal of these words helped her love herself more fully too.
No matter how these words were spoken or received in her classroom, it is clear that they resonated deep within her psyche many years later when she was challenged by dementia. The refrain is delightful and silly. It is also so meaningful.
It makes me wonder. . .
Who has told you that you’re beloved? Who has told you that you’re loved through and through? Who has told you that you’re valuable and worth it all?
Do we rehearse those words and memories? Do we recall them and let them sink into our very being?
We can always begin that rehearsal again.
And if we doubt those words within us. . . guess what?
We can rehearse them again. And again. And again. And again.
And if no one has told you today, And if you’re struggling to tell yourself, Please hear this truth: You are Beloved, Loved through and through, Valued and worth it all.
“I’ve had so many rainbows in my clouds. I had a lot of clouds. But I have had so many rainbows. And one of the things I do when I go stand up on the stage, when I stand up to translate, when I go to teach my classes, when I go to direct a movie, I bring everyone who has ever been kind to me with me — Black, White, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American, Gay, Straight — everybody. I say, ‘Come with me. I’m going on the stage. Come with me. I need you now.’” — Maya Angelou
I love this video from Maya Angelou.
Where do we each need support today? How can we call forth that internalized support? How can we ask for it?
A gray-blue caterpillar with orange stripes, walking on a stem. Photo: Renee Roederer
While taking a walk, I found a cute, little caterpillar and snapped a photo. I shared the photo on Facebook and Instagram.
Later, I found myself thinking, “This caterpillar knows nothing about humans, let alone that this one used a device called an iPhone to take a thing called a photo that could be shared on a thing called social media that involves a thing called websites.”
There’s a complex, larger reality that this caterpillar knows nothing about. Is it any wonder that we could be a part of realities much larger than we can comprehend too?
Then later, I thought, “How much does a caterpillar know about its own lifespan? When it begins spinning a cocoon, does it know what’s ahead? Can it know that it will dissolve into goo and then emerge transformed with wings?”
There’s a complex, seemingly miraculous reality this caterpillar likely cannot anticipate fully even in its own lifespan. Is it any wonder that more transformation might be ahead for ourselves too?
Smuggling Grace 